Tag: E-commerce

China – The Olympics has become more than just an event for sports fans – simply by being part of the current generation alone instills the excitement and eagerness to witness this massive and seasonal coming-together, that brings all nations and people of all races to celebrate the human strength and talent. 

AliExpress, Alibaba Group’s e-commerce, is taking an extra step to celebrate the upcoming Tokyo Olympics. After the event has been halted for a year, people around the globe will finally see it to fruition, with just a few days left before its opening on 23 July 2021. 

In the new campaign by AliExpress, everyone will be able to experience the camaraderie and oneness only such global event could bring, at least digitally. Called ‘ONE FLAG’, the campaign is a global one that forefronts a digital flag that absolutely anyone, from any part of the world, can be a “part of.” 

The digital ‘ONE FLAG’ is simply made of strings woven together that bear the trademark non-black colors of the Olympics – Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. It’s a flag with no fuss until you learn what the strings are “made of.”

The global retail online marketplace has curated an exclusive website made especially for the campaign for people to join. In it, you would only need to upload a photo of yourself, where without any further ado, you’ll see yourself transform into a ‘thread,’ and now interlaced to form the digital flag. 

A screencap from the campaign’s official website

Any photo can be uploaded but AliExpress encourages that it be one showing that you are supporting or cheering for the Olympics. To make things official, and make the experience personalized for the participant, he or she will be informed of the specific count of his or her thread in the entirety of the flag, such as for example, being the 9000th thread. On the website, a certificate can be also downloaded as proof that you are one strand to the flag, something that you can share and boast about on social media. 

“At AliExpress, we’re committed to connecting people through innovative digital experiences, and we are honored to partner with the [International Olympic Committee] to create an engaging and interactive experience that brings people together,” said Christina Lu, the head of marketing at AliExpress. 

She adds, “In many ways, the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 will be a completely new experience for athletes and fans due to the pandemic. With fans unable to cheer from the sidelines during these unprecedented times, our ONE FLAG initiative fosters togetherness among millions of people who will be watching the Olympic Games at home this year to show support to the Olympic Games and athletes.”

Yuto Horigome, a Japanese skateboarder who is currently ranked 2nd on the World Skateboarding Rankings, will be among the first athletes to participate in the ONE FLAG initiative to call for worldwide support for Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 and athletes.

In January 2017, Alibaba Group and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced their long-term partnership that would see them collaborating until 2028. As part of the Olympic Partner (TOP) worldwide sponsorship program, Alibaba has been tapped as its official ‘Cloud Services’ and ‘E-Commerce Platform Services’ Partner. 

Prior to the current campaign, AliExpress has also launched an Olympic-themed campaign for the pre-pandemic Winter Youth Olympics which was held in Lausanne, Switzerland, the home of the IOC, in January 2020. Through the Lausanne 2020 campaign, AliExpress promoted winter sports and encouraged fan engagement, mainly connecting consumers from around the world with thousands of featured winter sports products.

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics will be held from 23 July to 8 August 2021. 

Singapore – Sales used to be a one-off thing, or at least a seasonal event that sees it happening after a particular interval, but now, sales, in the mid of the rise of e-commerce, has now become so much more than just brands offering discounts, but has turned to be a ‘celebration’ of some sort – a celebration of consumers’ buying power and merchants’ easier access to revenue. With this, mega sales are now being held on a regular basis, specifically every identical date of the month – such as ‘7.7’ for July, or ‘8.8’ for August.

The trend on mega sales events quickly transcended online commerce, and is now being joined by offline brands as well. This then makes brands think, how is the consumer behaving amid all this hoo-ha? Short-video platform TikTok conducted a 2021 survey among over 1,800 Southeast Asian users in March 2021, where 82 percent admitted to purchasing a new brand instead of a regular brand during mega sales. 

Moreover, the same survey demonstrated that over half, 55 percent, made unexpected purchases during the said sales events, even when they had prepared a shopping list. This comes as an interesting insight as brands are in constant search of ways to attract new buyers. Adding to this, TikTok’s data also found that during this time, consumers are more open to exploring, with them shopping more across all categories. 

Consumers’ likelihood to demonstrate an adventurous disposition during these mega sales events can be chalked up to the feelings of elation that shoppers have when these special sales arrive. According to a Nielsen Global Authenticity study, likewise commissioned by the short-video platform, 67 percent of users felt ‘happy’ or ‘excited’ towards the mega sales shopping season. 

On that feel-good factor, it seems that shoppers are not only looking to the shopping event itself to ignite these positive feelings but are also expecting it at every step of the experience – becoming more inclined to engage in ‘shoppertainment’ or the fusion of entertainment and shopping. Brands themselves have raised the bar, leveraging today’s digital platforms in order to allure shoppers such as through live streams, short videos, and even augmented reality. 

The same Nielsen study shows that 83 percent of users prefer to see video ads from brands over gifs or text posts. 

Ng Chew Wee, the head of business marketing for TikTok in Southeast Asia, said that people have ceased simply searching for products, but are also searching for ‘people’. 

“This year, we are seeing a rise of Shoppertainment – a convergence of content and commerce – where shoppers expect not just to be sold to, but to be entertained as well. Instead of people searching for products, products are now searching for people. We hope these insights can help businesses own their Mega Sales moment and engage with TikTok’s community of happy users. Happy users, happy buyers!” said Ng Chew Wee.

Singapore – Chinese B2B e-commerce group, ZALL Smart Commerce Group (ZALL), is eyeing to become the world’s leading global digital trade platform with its new strategic rebrand. The group aims to bring an open and interconnected B2B trading ecosystem between China and ASEAN.

ZALL currently serves around 30 B2B platforms in China, the United States, and Singapore, as well as millions of SMEs worldwide. It has also been investing in the development of next-generation intelligent trading platforms to help empower seamless data exchange across platforms integrating information, logistics, and capital flows across wholesale and commodities, retail trade, and logistics industries in China and Singapore.

The strategic rebranding aims to drive the rapid growth and development of industries and businesses through the use of its new trading methods and advanced technologies across B2B transactions, supply chain services, and digital cloud services. It also seeks to transform industrial value chains across Asia and enable businesses to improve overall efficiency.

Peter Yu, ZALL Smart Commerce’s executive vice president for Singapore, shared that as the world continues to adapt and rise up to the challenges posed by the pandemic, they wanted to focus their efforts on digital innovation, creating an even more resilient and sustainable global trade and supply chain ecosystem.

“This can be done by incorporating data and digital technologies into every part of the industrial value chain, from both the demand to the supply side. With our expertise in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Blockchain, we believe we are well-positioned to help businesses worldwide adopt innovative technologies to succeed in the new digital world order,” said Yu.

Just recently, ZALL announced the launch of ‘Z-Block Gateway’, a blockchain Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution that is both low-code and easy to operate and deploy across various industries and mainstream cloud servers.

The group has also recently partnered with one-stop global trading platform, Commodities Intelligence Centre, to offer ‘Know-Your-Counterparty’ and ‘Credit Info’ services to help SMEs manage their business risks by being able to verify and conduct due diligence on prospective business partners and counterparties before engaging in official dealings.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Food and beverage company Danone, in its objective to build health-focused food categories, has recently launched its new regional campaign on the e-commerce platform Shopee, kicking off first in Malaysia for the upcoming ‘Super Brand Day’ in the country by Shopee.

Called the ‘Our Health, My Choice’, said campaign, which will be featured on the Shopee Mall, will provide consumers with access to Danone’s full Specialized Nutrition (SN) portfolio for the whole family. The SN portfolio in Malaysia focuses on growing milk products for children. With more people going online to shop for health products, the collaboration aims to support more families to make informed nutrition choices and discover products that support their health and nutrition needs.

Danone ensures that its product portfolio provides the right nutrition across age groups with scientifically researched nutrients.

According to Deborah Chong, head of e-commerce at Danone Specialized Nutrition Global, they have witnessed an ‘incredible growth’ of their business online, including a 20 times growth across Southeast Asia during the Shopee 12.12 Birthday Sale last year. She added that this is due to the fact that more people are turning to e-commerce platforms to seek convenient and reliable product options.

“We believe this collaboration will further scale our presence in the region. Prioritizing consumers’ health is crucial for us and we believe this Super Brand Day, which focuses on our ‘Our Health, My Choice’ theme, lets us show our care and appreciation for our customers by providing convenient access to products that support their health and nutrition needs,” Chong stated.

As part of the online campaign, Danone will be introducing its Shopper’s Choice Shopping Guide to help consumers choose the right nutrition products for their needs while leveraging Shopee’s engagement tools. This guide will showcase their best-selling products and user reviews through engaging content on how specialized nutrition can address the different health concerns and needs.

For Benoit Delater, commercial development director at Danone, they are proud of their partnership with Shopee, stating that the partnership speaks volumes of their aim to fulfill the mission of making good nutritional choices accessible for more health-conscious consumers.

“We believe that our portfolio can cater to the specific nutrition needs of all consumers and encourage the consumption of essential macro and micronutrients for a well-balanced, healthy diet. That’s why we are very excited to leverage Shopee’s wide reach and customer engagement tools such as Brand Membership to better connect with customers and provide them greater value all year round,” Delater stated.

Meanwhile, Ian Ho, regional managing director at Shopee, notes that their recent partnership with Danone reflects the rise of live streaming, as it is becoming a key part of the online shopping experience in the region. Furthermore, it has also grown to become an effective way for brands to acquire and connect with shoppers, showcase their products and prompt users to make purchases on the spot.

“We are also working closely with brands through our double digit campaigns like the upcoming 8.8 Brands Festival where brands could leverage this interactive engagement tool to reach out to Malaysians. We’re excited to see more brands such as Danone enrich the shopping experience by integrating entertainment and educational content into their campaigns,” Ho concluded.

Starting 15 July, Danone shoppers can enjoy several perks, including gifts when they buy specific Danone products, discount vouchers for up to RM40, and earning online loyalty points from purchasing within the Danone Shopee Mall.

Beijing, China – With China becoming more and more open to exploring new trends and strategies within the retail and commerce market, Asia-Pacific and Western brands ought to take better attention in order to succeed in tapping the Chinese consumer market, a new report from Wunderman Thompson Intelligence shows.

Citing data from market research firm eMarketer, who notes that 52% of total retail sales globally originate from China, the report unveils how China is ‘opening’ itself to the world in terms of commerce. For Chen May Yee, APAC director for Wunderman Thompson Intelligence, Chinese tech giants and global brands alike are trying new ideas first in cities like Shenzhen, from where they spread across China and its borders, hence no global brand can afford not to pay attention. 

Statistics-wise, 27% of Chinese consumers shop online four to six times a week, compared with 19% of Indians, 14% of Thais, 12% of Australians and 11% of Indonesians. Despite the regularity, 9% of Indian consumers say they shop online every day, compared to 7% in China.

In terms of spending power, Chinese consumers are willing to spend the most on online purchases, averaging to US$1,507 though Australia is not far behind, with an average of US$1,177.

While there has been a significant rise of the Gen Z demographic in the consumer space, the older generation are not to forget as well. China’s seniors are the last untapped demographic when it comes to commerce, but not for long. Post pandemic, 81% of Chinese consumers that are aged over 55 years old are now more comfortable using digital technology.

The report also notes that the pandemic and accompanying lockdowns have pushed record numbers online, often through sheer necessity when shops were shut down. This is evident by the fact that even in China, which already boasted a high level of digital literacy before the pandemic, 62% state that they have become more comfortable using digital technology post-pandemic.

In China, the country that created the mega-influencer capable of moving millions of dollars of merchandise in a single livestream, a degree of influencer fatigue is setting in. About 24% of Chinese say friends and family are now their biggest influence on buying decisions, versus 16% who cite social media influencers and 4% who say celebrities. In China, some online marketers are tapping into this shift by promoting friend recommendations, micro-influencers and peer-to-peer networks.

The report also notes that the Chinese market has pioneered various strategies and new demographics to tap into, including launching of live commerce as well as venturing into the gamer market, where eight in ten among Chinese respondents are playing games on mobile phones. Surprisingly, 91% of respondents who are over 55 years old say they do gaming as well on mobile.

Manila, Philippines – Coming fresh from its recently-concluded pre-series A funding, local mom-centric e-commerce platform edamama has reached US$5m in total, which will be used in the company’s new endeavors in automation, product development, and innovations, as well as the company’s warehouse and logistics operations. 

Said investment round was led by venture capital Gentree Fund, together with Foxmont Capital Partners, Robinsons Retail, and Kickstart Ventures, Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of local telco Globe Telecom. 

Edamama was established amid the pandemic by its founder Bela Gupta D’Souza, alongside her husband Nishant, to address the issue of quality, as well as the other challenges common among today’s e-commerce platforms, such as channel fragmentation, non-established brand trust, the lack of a discovery-led buying experience, and poor customer service. 

Furthermore, D’Souza also found pain points of mothers as consumers when purchasing online. She said that it is common for mothers to spend many hours in search of the best products for their children only to end up with mediocre items that have the inferior quality from untrusted sources.

“E-commerce is a scale game and we’re very excited about scaling up. Our goal is to continue being vertically focused, so we could gain and build the trust of more mothers in the country,” she said.

Edamama services mothers nationwide, although it acknowledges the need for further upgrades on its logistics operations to cope with the increase in orders coming from all over the country. It hopes to use part of the funds raised to expand its warehouse capabilities and further improve its delivery services for customers to receive their goods more quickly.

Apart from this, the company is also working on omnichannel expansion and providing new mediums of direct-to-consumer communication, such as selling through a live stream.

In addition, there are many features within the platform including ‘Gift Registry’ for creating gift wish lists for special occasions, ‘Subscribe and Save’ which is an online diaper subscription service, and ‘Explore’ which is a one-stop destination to book online events and activities for children.

“The edamama team constantly works towards creating innovative features for moms to use, staying true to their mission of simplifying decision-making and reimagining online shopping for mothers,” the company said in a press statement.

Singapore – E-commerce has now hit its pivotal growth: consumers now can’t imagine life without it, and merchants and brands have moved past seeing it as a vanity, and now takes space in their main business strategies. 

If there’s an entity that has benefitted the most in this new economic change, it would be the SMEs. SMEs, with their nimble nature, have always had fast growth as its advantage, and the opportunity to digitize has recently been the sure-shot route to growth.

Innity, the digital media transformation partner in Asia, has shared one of the recent digitization initiatives it has developed for one particular SME in the area of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) – China Tangshan in Singapore – a manufacturer of the said pharmaceutical products in the country since 1977.

China Tangshan
China Tangshan’s e-commerce website, developed in partnership with Innity

China Tangshan was founded by Chong Kee Fee, who served many years as an apprentice and operations supervisor at a traditional(TCM) factory in Malaysia. Coming into Singapore in the ’70s, he put up the same nature of business with his wife. 

The long-time seller and manufacturer of TCM, which saw its early stages rolling out proprietary formulations under house brands Chankang, Heaven Star, and Tongsha, shared that they have always had limited resources, but have always wanted to expand its distribution network, to reach out to more medical halls and potential sales outlets.

At present, it continues to seek enough manpower, capital, and time to grow its network, and while a digital marketplace was briefly eyed on, it had not been top-of-mind until recently. 

“We considered digitizing our business when the online and social media platform started flourishing. We even made the effort to set up a website ourselves a few years ago. We knew we had to digitize to cater to the changing consumer habits, but it was not our top priority,” shared the company. 

With the effects of the pandemic coming into full circle, hitting the economic health of businesses both big and small, China Tangshan, like others, knew it was the right time to go digital. With this, it soon partnered with Innity to finally see its digitization through, under the digitization support scheme by the country’s Enterprise Singapore. 

China Tangshan

“Prior to the pandemic, the market for TCM products had already changed drastically. The younger generation is less exposed to TCM products which affected the market. Medical halls also closed one by one as operations got on in age and could not find successors. Hence, we faced a stagnant customer base and a dwindling distribution network,” said the company. 

With its new e-commerce, China Tangshan bared that its visibility has increased, now having been able to reach and engage its target audience directly and at scale.

“We also hope to grow a new following especially among millennials,” added the company. 

China Tangshan

Lee King Huat, country head of Innity Singapore, commented, “We were delighted to work with China Tangshan on digitizing their business. With our solutions, we are confident that China Tangshan will be able to extend its reach and expand into regional markets in the future.”

The new website and e-commerce portal of China Tangshan was built out of an integrated e-commerce solution by Innity which includes custom-building the website, product photo-taking, social media marketing, and tracking of sales performance. Innity also took the lead to establish the TCM seller’s suitable payment gateway and the best language to use for its website content.

In the interview between Innity and China Tangshan, it shared that now, having brought its digital footprint down, it aims to target the millennial consumer amid growing its website traffic, and as it further enriches its content on the website and through engaging with the audience through social media.

On recommending SMEs to go digital, China Tangshan said, “A definite yes. Not only is online shopping and social media here to stay, but digital marketing is also much more affordable and cost-effective as compared to traditional marketing. SMEs like ourselves need to digitize to stay relevant.”

Boon, Germany – E-commerce has been seeing an unprecedented rise in adoption in the past recent years, and with this, a slew of new players in every touchpoint in the ecosystem is biting at the open opportunity. The giant in logistics Deutsche Post DHL Group (DHL) has come out with a new global brand campaign to reassert its leadership and expertise in e-commerce, and it is titled ‘Keep up with the clicks’.

Besides providing delivery service in the growing e-commerce industry across 220 countries and territories, DHL also offers advice to companies on improving their website presence with a website health check.

The campaign’s TV spot, done in collaboration with DHL’s creative lead agency 180 Amsterdam, aims to remind businesses that DHL is the ideal partner to help it deal with the current increasing demand in e-commerce and to help it “keep up with the clicks.”

The TV spot features the voice of ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ actor Tom Hollander, who explains in a rhyme-like rhythm how e-commerce has grown rapidly over the last few years. He tells the story of online shopping, from the early days when it was still easy for a retailer and logistics provider to keep track of and meet demand, and how online shopping has now become more established and almost a routinary part of our lives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOQcZXK2Tw0

DHL Express’ CEO John Pearson said, “As logistics experts, we can help companies keep up with the growth and benefit from it in the best possible way. In addition, we can help any brand to be a global brand tomorrow. Especially offering express delivery is beneficial for fast-moving e-commerce and can increase consumer buying activity and consumer loyalty.”

The campaign will be running in more than 30 countries, and in addition to the TV spot, the campaign will be seen across digital channels, both in the form of digital banners and video, as well as print ads.

Singapore – As the industries of retail, banking and finance, and digital entertainment become more and more active, these industries have ramped up their personalized customer engagement across their target users in Southeast Asia, as a new report from customer engagement company MoEngage shows.

According to the report, daily active users (DAUs) of e-commerce, retail and D2C brands increased by 13.36% in the first four months of 2021. When studying the monthly active user (MAU) trends of the same brands, web MAUs had increased the highest (by 8.7%) compared to mobile. 

The report notes that such activity is recorded most likely due to pandemic movement restrictions and shoppers working from home, as opposed to shopping via mobile on the go.

As the report targeted three main channels in their report namely push notifications, email, in-app messages, and website messages; they found out that push notifications that used behavioral attributes with an added layer of personalization from shopping brands saw deliverability of up to 85.67% and campaign conversions increased to over 27%.

There has been an increase of 54.9% in the number of DAUs across all digital banking, fintech, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending, insurance, and cryptocurrency platforms during the first four months of 2021.

In terms of email click-throughs, it saw better click-through rates and conversion across all industries as compared to the generic ones: open rates of emails from shopping brands went up to 28.17% and the 0.5% of emails that were behavior-based in the digital entertainment sector saw 2.4 times better click rate, while in banking, behavior-based emails boosted conversions by 2.72 times compared to generic broadcasts.

Finally, the report noted that digital media and entertainment brands using custom user segments based on behavioral and user attributes to send in-app messages to Android users saw twice the increase in click-through rates and conversion rate of up to 50.05% as compared to sending the same message to all users.

“Consumer behavior in Southeast Asia has changed rapidly over the last year, and digital adoption across industries has accelerated during the pandemic period. We’re pleased to provide organizations globally with a holistic view of how their current and prospective customers are behaving and guide them through their insights-led customer engagement and business growth journey,” according to Saurabh Madan, GM for SEA and ANZ at MoEngage.

The report concludes by stating that the findings demonstrate the importance of closely analyzing consumer behavior across every critical channel and developing both proactive and reactive outreach in association with these insights.

“Laser-focus on this [customer engagement] establishes customer-centricity, ensuring that brands meet and exceed the expectations of their customers and boost long-term loyalty and repeat business,” the report added.

Singapore – In conjunction with the nearing 7.7 Great Shopee Sale, Shopee has officially launched the ‘Shopee Mall Brand Memberships’ program for brands – a tool that aims to help brands to amplify their customer experience and growth through customer retention and loyalty program that can be personalized by the brand.

Shopee first gave a peek at the program in January during its Brands Summit 2021 last January. According to Shopee, the program is a response to the increase in brands looking to e-commerce as a key channel for brand-building in the entire customer journey. The new tool will allow brands on Shopee Mall to build deeper connections with potential and existing customers, converting them into valuable lifetime customers.

Similar to the way brands oversee their own loyalty programs, the ‘Shopee Mall Brand Memberships’ program will be driving more conversion and repeat purchases. For instance, brands can customize their own membership program for shoppers, including the welcome gift, number of membership tiers, and brand loyalty points awarded to members for every purchase. 

Furthermore, members of the program can accumulate and redeem these loyalty points for exclusive benefits such as upsized vouchers and gifts with purchases. What’s interesting is that ‘Shopee Mall Brand Memberships’ vouchers can be stacked by customers with other Shopee vouchers, thus unlocking even more savings, helping to promote further sales for brands; something that the platform ought to restrict in their standard promos. 

It would be recalled that Shopee also recently launched its own four-tier loyalty program within the platform. This is however catered to bringing in more shoppers into the platform itself, rather than a specific program. 

Shopee’s Regional Managing Director Ian Ho shared that with consumers now spending a larger part of their shopping journey online, they want to empower brands with more ways to capture their customers at every touchpoint. 

“Hence, we are proud to launch this program that will not only support our brand partners in achieving more sustainable growth by driving conversion and higher spending, but also deliver greater value to shoppers. We have already seen how brand members tend to spend twice as much per order compared to non-members, demonstrating the effectiveness of this tool in building greater brand affinity in the long-term,” said Ho.

The ‘Shopee Mall Brand Memberships’ program will also be providing brands with an effective way to identify and manage different customer segments through the understanding of their profile, purchasing habits, and preferences. 

The ‘Shopee Mall Brand Memberships’ Grand Launch campaign will officially start today, 1 July, to encourage sign-ups and will be rolled out across seven markets, including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Taiwan, as well as Indonesia, and the Philippines. Over 200 brands on Shopee Mall and Shopee Premium across popular categories are expected to participate, and many more brands joining the program down the line.

Shopee also shared that it will further enhance the program with new features planned out for brands, which includes creating a more seamless shopping experience through omnichannel integration, where brands can integrate their offline and online CRM systems with the new tool.