Southeast Asians ride digital boom to E-commerce

ACROSS Southeast Asia, digital consumers are going online in droves to browse, research, compare and purchase the products and services they need and want. Filipinos, Vietnamese and Singaporeans are most inclined to purchase items online, according to a new study conducted online by Nielsen, while in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand consumers are more likely to go online to browse. 

The growth of connected device ownership is laying the foundation for a booming online retail sector, with the number of consumers in the region making online purchases increasing significantly in the past two years. In fact, in Asia Pacific as a whole, online shopping — as opposed to online browsing — outpaced all other regions surveyed by Nielsen. This despite having the lowest Internet penetration, on average, among regions surveyed.

The Nielsen Global Survey of E-Commerce polled more than 30,000 online consumers in 60 countries throughout Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and North America.

Travel services such as airline tickets and tour and hotel reservations are the most commonly purchased items online in Southeast Asia and other regions as well, along with tickets for events such as movies, live performances, exhibitions and sports games. 

So what about the personal care industry?

The global online market for groceries and other consumable products ? while not as strong as non-consumable categories ? is starting to show promise, too, said Nielsen. Since 2011, global online purchase intentions for the cosmetic category increased 6 percentage points to 31%.  

In fact, consumable categories have consistent browse-to-buy rates. In cosmetics, 33% of global respondents say they browse, and 31% say they buy. Similarly, about one-third of global respondents say they browse (31%) and buy personal care products (29%). More digital consumers in Asia Pacific than in other region also signified their intent to purchase cosmetics (43%) and personal care products (43%) online in the next six months*.

Noting that a large proportion of Southeast Asian consumers also view the Internet as a means of checking out products to inform their offline purchases, Nielsen said that retailers need to ensure they do not neglect digital as part of their overall engagement strategy, was most prominent in Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore where a large number of consumers often look at products online before purchasing them in a store.

* From the time the survey was conducted between 17 February and 7 March 2014