The New Wave of E-Commerce in Southeast Asia
By Louise Ann Montañez
Last January 27, 2022, I attended John Clements’ industry briefing for the e-commerce industry, the second episode of the Weekly With JC series. Invited as guest speaker was Teresa Condicion, Co-Founder and CEO of Shoplinks. Present on the panel were Charmagne Cruz, Head of Reporting and Analytics for Shopee Philippines, and Jon Santico, Co-Founder of LocalEats.Ph.
Teresa started her talk by introducing Shoplinks, a company that helps FMCG brands and retailers distribute personalized digital promotions to shoppers. Their vision is to become the leading O2O promotions (online-to-offline promotions, a business strategy in e-commerce, which aims to draw online channels customers to purchase from physical stores) partner for FMCG brands in Southeast Asia.
She then posed the question, “How many of us have online shopping apps on our phones?” To which the answer was 8 out of 10 people.
According to Teresa, 70 million people around the world shopped online in six ASEAN countries since the pandemic began and even predicted that the number of online shoppers in Southeast Asia will reach 380 million by 2026. In the Philippines alone, online sales grew by 43% in 2020, with 8 in 10 adults claiming to have shopped online.
As e-commerce grows, so do digital payments. E-wallets are now more preferred than cash. More than 80% of venture capital funds have flowed into the internet and technology space so far, with the vast majority going into the fintech sector.
Along with this, social commerce has also risen. As Teresa put it, “The biggest factor — online selling!” She cited that 37% of discovery happens through social media and 21% of buying happens in the social media space as well. Selling can now happen wherever the shopper is, with influence and social network reviews as very critical factors.
The rise in e-commerce and online shopping naturally resulted in the growth of logistics, with joint ventures between real estate developers (Metro Pacific, SM Investments, Ayalaland, among others) and logistic companies for warehousing space beginning to take shape.
What skills would an organization need in order to win? According to Teresa, talents skilled in the data science field, as well as engineering, will be needed. These include those who are in the backend development and solutions architecture, security engineers, and digital marketers. “Everyone who is well-versed in the digital space will be very much needed by these winning companies.” She added, driving the point home.
As if agreeing to that statement, Charmagne opened her reaction by discussing data science and machine learning. She explained that data science is being used mainly by merchants and e-commerce enablers. After all, data analysts and data scientists use Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, and Google Analytics daily. She then cited the rise of digital merchants and pointed out that these merchants are helping save SMEs from closing or going bankrupt during this pandemic. “E-commerce boomed all of a sudden and they were the biggest factor as to why it did,” she mentioned, smiling.
Jon brought in more perspective from the digital marketing side and added to the discussion by focusing more on the depth of digital marketing, which according to him, requires more diverse, creative, and technical skillsets. He also pointed out that aside from acquiring new, digital-ready talent and technologies, there is still the need to continue re-framing existing talent and processes to embrace the new normal and succeed more in the field of e-commerce. It is a rapidly growing sector and we need to keep up.
In my case, I see e-commerce and digital marketing as new weapons organizations can arm themselves with. With the pandemic forcing people to stay at home, having a presence in the e-commerce space may just help companies stay afloat.
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About the author:
LA is an anime and k-drama fan, considering herself to be somewhat an otaku to both. She enjoys watching anime and k-dramas when she has the time, but is also a self-proclaimed frustrated writer, having written stories whenever she feels like it. Mostly due to her love for anime, she can speak a bit of Nihongo, and can understand a bit of Korean as well. This woman’s dream is to be able to visit other countries, and first on her itinerary would be — you guessed right — Japan and Korea.
