Tag: Ecommerce

Manila, Philippines – Philippine installment payment platform BillEase has announced new partnerships with four ecommerce platforms namely Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento and Prestashop to bring payment installment schemes for merchants and retailers in the country

Merchants that use any of these platforms can now integrate with BillEase and activate ‘Pay Later’, ‘Pay in Installments’ and ‘Pay with Down Payment’, which will provide customers with flexibility in payments and smoother shopping experience.

The multi-platform partnership is in response to retailers doubling their efforts in ‘moving’ their businesses online in the mid of the pandemic. Furthermore, as many Filipinos are still unbanked and uncarded due to signup processes, BillEase provides both merchants and customers ease of service. 

BillEase, which is developed by SEA-focused fintech company First Digital Finance Corporation (FDFC), enables customers to spread the cost of their purchases over time at a low interest rate, giving them flexibility and increased purchasing power. It also allows customers to afford big ticket purchases beyond their credit limit with a down payment solution. 

On the other hand, the payment platform benefits merchants by paying them in full, absorbs all credit and fraud risks through its proprietary credit decisioning technology. BillEase also lifts conversion rates in the online space to accommodate payment with less friction and faster approval time.

“With this integration, we’re bringing our financial product closer to consumers by making it easier for merchants to add our point-of-sale financing option. Installment purchase is already a very popular option for most Filipinos when they shop in malls. But these offline offerings often don’t translate well to the online world and the payment experience is not seamless,” said Georg Steiger, CEO and co-founder of FDFC. 

He added, “Our goal is to help merchants improve their conversion rate by making the online buying experience a pleasure for customers. Spreading payment over monthly installment with extremely affordable rates makes their shopping experience lighter. For merchants, they can enjoy an increase in basket sizes and more conversion as we also support 0%-APR plans with no cost to customers. Over 90 percent of Filipino consumers are disenfranchised when it comes to credit cards. In contrast, BillEase is a simple, safe and transparent cardless alternative to revolving credit lines for online shoppers who primarily use debit cards and are usually underserved.”

Singapore – As Shopee celebrates its fifth year in the business, the Southeast Asia and Taiwan platform shared the three key strategies it lived by to propel the company’s leadership in the e-commerce landscape today. 

In 2019, Shopee reigned over Alibaba-owned Lazada and Indonesia-grown Tokopedia, where it emerged as the most used e-commerce app with the highest number of monthly active users, at the same time, coming out as the most visited e-commerce website in Southeast Asia, according to a collaborative report by iPrice, App Annie and SimilarWeb. 

This 2020, the platform continues to set new records with its recent shopping events, with the just concluded 11.11 sale recording 200 million items sold across the region.

Chris Feng, CEO at Shopee

Shopee was born with the vision of making online shopping accessible, easy, and enjoyable. We built Shopee from the ground up, listening to the specific needs of people in each of our markets, and turning our understanding into well-executed localized strategies that make Shopee what it is today.

Chris Feng, CEO, Shopee

Shopee shared that in shaping the platform, it circles its strategies on three e-commerce trends: social, personalization, and integration.

With social, Shopee recognized the power of replicating the human touch to online shopping. Advancements in technology have increased consumers’ expectations of their shopping experience, demanding more engagement, one with rich and unique content.

To address this consumer need, Shopee was one of the first e-commerce platforms in the region to launch a live chat function, Shopee Live Chat, in 2016, enabling direct conversations between buyers and sellers.

Through the years, Shopee has continuously improved on and introduced new in-app engagement features such as Shopee Games, Shopee Feed, and Shopee Live, to retain the social experience in the platform.

Another trend, hyper localization, has grown to be an imperative among brands, and as a platform that runs on seven different markets, Shopee lives and breathes such strategy.

“Personalization is critical in the e-commerce of today. A highly personalized experience is crucial to make online shopping more efficient, enjoyable and unique for consumers, while helping brands and sellers drive increased traffic and growth,” said Shopee in a press statement.

To do this, Shopee continually refines its recommendation engines to offer more customized and relevant shopping suggestions made to fit consumers’ needs.

For brands and sellers, being able to offer personalized recommendations helps to increase overall awareness and conversions. Through Shopee’s own AI capabilities, the advertisements on the platform are ensured to be delivered to the right users at the right time and place.

Lastly, Shopee stresses the importance of integration or creating a seamless customer journey online.

The rise of e-commerce has shifted the physical shopping experience to a virtual one, and with the pandemic rigidly restricting in-person interactions, the need to enhance the online customer experience has been more resounding.

As more retailers switch to online selling, Shopee helps brands and sellers of all sizes to rightly deliver across customer touchpoints by providing fundamental operational support through integrated payments and logistics, while making the experiences innovative that value-add to the overall customer journey.

For its 11.11 sale event last month, the platform partnered with CapitaLand mall in Singapore for an online-to-offline experience. Both parties designed a new version of the popular Shopee Slice game, allowing users to play and earn CapitaLand vouchers, which could be redeemed in-store to boost traffic for offline retailers.

Source: CapitaLand

Shopee also doubled down on defining the integration of physical experience to online when it partnered with consumer goods company P&G in July, introducing the first-ever experiential online Show Me My Home initiative, which allowed shoppers to discover and shop for P&G’s popular household items in a simulated household environment.

“2020 has been a transformative year. It has shown us the importance of technology and its ability to not only connect people and meet their basic needs but also to entertain and engage. We are just at the beginning of our digital journey and looking ahead, we believe e-commerce will have an even more profound impact on businesses and consumers, creating new ways of living, working, and engaging,” said Feng.

As Shopee’s 12.12 Birthday Sale approaches, Feng also commented, “This year’s 12.12 Birthday Sale has added significance as we celebrate our fifth birthday, and as we come together with our brand partners, sellers and shoppers to support one another through a challenging year. As we look back on our journey, we are proud to have adapted quickly to serve the needs of our local communities.”

Shopee believes the three key trends which have shaped e-commerce, including its own, will continue to drive the growth of the medium in 2021 and beyond. As it anticipates this, the platform said it will continue to drive initiatives around such trends like its Shopee Mum’s Club, which provides like-minded mom consumers with one-stop exclusive access to baby product deals and parenting content, its Book Club for a new generation of digital readers in Vietnam, and a “Pawrents” club, which it mounted for Singapore consumers to meet the growing online demand for pet products in the country.

Malaysia – The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), Malaysia’s national agency tasked with leading the country’s digitization, has announced its latest virtual expo titled Go-eCommerce Expo, with the main theme “Unleash the power of live streaming e-commerce”.

MDEC said following the success of its nationwide e-Dagang Expo (eDX) in May 2020, which gathered SMEs to discuss the transition from offline to online selling, the new expo aims to continue the agency’s efforts in educating local businesses on why they should be selling online.

The Go-eCommerce Expo, which will take place from December 8 to 10, aims to promote the adoption of live streaming e-commerce as a new sales channel for Malaysian businesses. Another agenda of the expo is to also encourage live selling by imparting the latest skills, techniques, best practices, and platforms in line with it.

Among the speakers are Nur Azre, community and government relations manager from e-commerce enabler ShopLine; Jerry Hang, founder and CEO of MODEN, the first academy in Malaysia in training professional KOLs and a KOL marketing service for brands; as well as MDEC professionals themselves such as Mohd Fazreen bin Maslan and Mohd Zullutfi Abd Razak who are PeDAS heads, MDEC’s one-stop digital learning centers for MSMEs.

With logistics and payments also among the expos’ focus points, MDEC has gathered speakers from e-commerce fulfillment company TresGo Janio Asia, end-to-end electronic payment MPAY, and Visa among others.

MDEC said the event will be concluded with a LIVE Selling Carnival, featuring PeDAS participants, where viewers can purchase locally made products at deals and discounts.

Singapore – Food company Dole has released a new social initiative called #UnstuffedBears to communicate the rising issue of childhood hunger around the world.

The newest initiative is launched in retrospect to the increase of awareness and global movement in addressing the global hunger crisis. The campaign comes to life through the imagery of the teddy bear, a universal childhood icon.

Images will depict five teddy bears, four of them seemingly have full bellies, while one has been unstuffed, signifying someone who is hungry. The campaign goes on to say that “one in five children worldwide may go hungry this Christmas”.

The newest campaign is in line with Dole’s commitment to “The Dole Promise”, which vows to provide access to sustainable nutrition for 1 billion people by 2025.

“According to the UN World Food Programme, the impact of COVID-19 may double the number of people suffering from acute hunger. This exacerbated food insecurity crisis is acutely affecting children around the globe and in our own backyards,” said Pier Luigi Sigismondi, worldwide president at Dole Packaged Foods. 

“Acting on our promise to bring food and support to those in need, as well as raising awareness of this growing crisis, is at the center of this campaign. And this is just one of many steps we are taking to make a change for the better,” said Sigismondi.

The campaign will roll out via online video, display, and social media throughout the holiday season. It has already been launched in Europe and the US, with Asia launching next week. 

In order to live up to the campaign, Dole is rolling out its promotional purchase of select Dole Packaged Foods products on some eComm channels, where profits on these purchases go towards food security charities.

Melbourne, Australia – Consumer brand Kogan.com has recently acquired Mighty Ape, a New Zealand-based online retailer, which signals a much larger retail business growth across ANZ via new customer offerings and renewed business structure.

The complementary acquisition provides Kogan.com an immediate access scale of the New Zealand market, to which Mighty Ape has built its own business presence in New Zealand. 

For David Shafer, Kogan.com’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer, the recent acquisition speaks to the shared history and values they have with Mighty Ape, noting the business track of the New Zealand online retailer to many customers.

“Mighty Ape will give us significant scale in New Zealand and further strength across a variety of operational dimensions. We will be drawing on Mighty Ape’s deep experience in gaming, toys, other entertainment product categories, and the New Zealand market, and combining this experience with Kogan.com’s sourcing, technology, systems, infrastructure, and marketplace capabilities, to further enhance the group’s already market-leading offering across the Tasman,” Shafer stated, also noting that “they will look forward to serving and delighting customers throughout New Zealand and Australia”

On the other hand, Mighty Ape Founder and CEO Simon Barton said, “The Mighty Ape team is very happy to be joining forces with the Kogan.com Group, as we embark on the next stage of our growth. Combining with Kogan.com will assist Mighty Ape to expand our product range and improve our customer experience. I am excited about working with Ruslan and David, and the broader Kogan.com team — who have built an incredible business — while also aligning and creating more growth opportunities for the incredible team that helped build Mighty Ape to be New Zealand’s most trusted retailer brand.”

Melbourne, Australia – Supply chain consultancy TM Insight is expanding its executive line by hiring three former e-commerce executives as part of TM Insight’s new e-commerce and digital team.

The executives are namely Nicole Scherholz Cipolla (middle of the banner picture) from the Global Fashion Group, Jan Becker (left of the banner picture) from e-retailer Zalora, and Mitch Bittermann (right of the banner picture) from fashion brand Adidas.

Cipolla and Becker will join TM Insight as executive directors of e-commerce, based in Australia while Bittermann joins the company as the executive vice president of e-commerce for TM Insight Asia, based in Singapore. 

Prior to their key positions at TM Insight, Cipolla had served as the group senior strategy director at Global Fashion Group and Zalora Philippines’ chief commercial officer, while Becker is a former director of brand marketing and consumer strategy at Zalora and also the vice president of marketing at Thai-based retail conglomerate Central Group Online. Meanwhile, Bittermann served as the director of e-commerce at Adidas  Southeast Asia.

“Consumers expect a smooth, frictionless, and convenient digital experience, and if they don’t get it from a retailer they will switch to a competitor in a matter of seconds. I’m excited to bring to TM Insight my extensive experience in developing profitable e-commerce businesses and help our clients reimagine what success looks like in the digital age,” stated Cipolla. 

Asked about his new executive position, Becker said, “Nicole, Mitch and I have built and scaled major e-commerce and omnichannel businesses across Europe and Southeast Asia. We understand best practice and now, as part of TM Insight, we can assist clients with their holistic strategy, commercial offering, digital merchandising and marketing, right through to their supply chain and fulfilment solutions.”

On the other hand, Bittermann stated, “Having e-commerce as a small subsection of your retail strategy doesn’t cut it anymore – retailers need to create a holistic e-commerce, retail, and supply chain strategy. Now with TM Insight’s new e-commerce and digital offering matched with the business’ existing supply chain expertise, we can provide a full end-to-end solution. This will be a gamechanger in the industry, which I’m incredibly excited to be a part of.”

The new executives will lead the company’s e-commerce and digital offering across the Asia-Pacific region, working with TM Insight’s broader supply chain and property consulting business to provide businesses a true end-to-end service offering in their retail and supply chain transformations.

Travis Erridge, CEO of TM Insight said, “Our clients have experienced incredible acceleration in e-commerce growth, with global online retail expected to reach up to US $10 trillion by 2023. With this growth, e-commerce is now a crucial component in a retailer’s business strategy that defines its supply chain and property solutions.”

Singapore – To improve app marketing measurements and fraud prevention for their digital advertiser clients, app marketing platform Adjust has joined the Adobe Exchange Partner Program to utilize client-inclined strategies for performance marketing online, through Adobe’s Experience Cloud.

The Adobe Exchange Partner Program is an ongoing partner program designed for technology partners, which include software and data vendors to integrate third-party apps to companies looking to diversify and analyze their digital reach impact.

With this partnership, current and prospective mutual clients will be able to build a more complete view of the user journey across all channels — augmenting their customer experience stack analytics. This is done with a combination of mobile app data and data collected from other touchpoints.

Furthermore, the partnership entails a combination of solutions for marketing, analytics, advertising, and e-commerce, and the inclusion of a suite of measurement, fraud prevention, and automation products to provide data integration between Adjust and Adobe.

“As a driver in innovation in mobile marketing, we’re thrilled to become a premier level partner in the Adobe Exchange Partner Program, bringing actionable analytics and measurement, fraud prevention and automation to leading businesses globally — and with a single platform approach Adobe customers are used to. We are excited to see the business benefits both our current and future clients will see from this new relationship,” said Andrey Kazakov, VP Partnerships at Adjust.

Cody Crnkovich, head of platform partners and strategy at Adobe Experience Cloud commented, “As customer activity shifts along with the pandemic, advertisers are facing greater challenges connecting mobile marketing spend to app revenue and customer lifetime value. Adobe is delighted to have Adjust as a business partner, giving advertisers the capability to see mobile data across all available channels, automate campaign reporting and protect ad dollars from fraudsters in one place.”  

Singapore – Media company Clozette and online marketplace Sift & Pick have announced a new partnership to allow Japanese merchants enter the Southeast Asian e-commerce scene through a one-stop e-commerce solution.

Entailed within the collaboration is the leverage of discovery shopping platform Shoppin’guu, which is operated by Cool/JP, another Clozette partnership with Cool Japan Fund, that is supported by Japan’s Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. Cool Japan Fund is a private equity fund focused on funding enterprises focusing on promoting Japanese products globally.

Along with Cool/JP’s growing editorial authority and Clozette’s rising number of partner influencers and creators, Clozette integrates its knowledge of content consumption behavior among millennial & Generation Z consumers to create a curated global e-commerce marketplace and physical retail store at Changi Airport in Singapore, alongside Sift & Pick’s e-commerce solutions, logistics experience,  and payment infrastructure development.

“Our special partnership with Sift & Pick allows us to offer merchants in Japan exciting market entry opportunities in SEA that were previously not possible. COVID-19 heightened global demand for increased digital touchpoints through social engagement solutions such as influencer marketing, snackable videos and livestream selling,” said Roger Yuen, founder  and chief executive officer at Clozette.

“As a pioneer in the social commerce space, we are uniquely placed to address the needs of today’s consumers given our proven proficiency in social storytelling, our extensive network and rich insights into the Southeast Asian market, having worked with over 300 global, international, and local brands over the past decade.” 

Roger Yuen, founder  and chief executive officer at Clozette

The new partnership between the two companies will see a close collaboration on  category development, supply chain, and fulfilment as well as data and influencer marketing, and social commerce, which seeks to help Japanese brands and sellers, especially small and medium enterprises (SMEs), gain collective resources and expertise of the alliance to face challenges specific to online retail in SEA.

“We are delighted to partner with Clozette to bring more Japanese brands into Southeast Asia. Adding to our carefully curated selection of fashion, beauty, lifestyle, and home and living products will provide our diverse customer base with a richer shopping experience. Shoppin’guu’s blend of storytelling is very well-suited to drawing out the heritage, high quality, and uniqueness of many Japanese brands that are often neglected, and we look forward to seeing how our collaboration will further delight shoppers with new brand discoveries on our marketplace,” added Cavin Poh, general manager at Sift & Pick.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – Marketing consulting-meets-agency, Entropia, has launched three new services under its eCommerce arm MEDICI – MEDICI Live, MEDICI Engage, and MEDICI ROI to optimize each stage of the commerce funnel and maximize sales conversion for its clients.

Together with international technology partners mobile live video streaming Bambuser, end-to-end conversational commerce and shopper engagement platform Jumper.ai, and eCommerce selling solutions Split Dragon, the new eCommerce services are aimed at converting brands’ leads to customers – from demand generation to demand capture – helping brands stand out from the saturated Southeast Asian digital marketplace.

Considering consumers increasingly rely on live video to assist in their online shopping decision process, MEDICI Live aims to drive a digital brand experience by integrating live stream shopping and utilizing live selling via influencers or KOLs, an increasingly-popular sales strategy. Relevant to high context categories such as cosmetics, education, and infant nutrition as well as financial services, or even electronics, with this technology, viewers can become paying customers, all without missing the show.

As one of the top-ranked countries globally in mobile social media penetration, it is not surprising that about 80% of Malaysian consumers obtain information on products and services from social media. MEDICI Engage will leverage the power of conversational commerce and shopper engagement platform, to tap into social media’s massive, yet cost-effective reach.

Meanwhile, MEDICI ROI will help brands optimize shops on eCommerce platforms like Lazada and Shopee. Simply featuring products on marketplaces and spending money on direct marketing channels is not enough for brands to attract the evolving consumer, and through the service, MEDICI aids brands in improving product visibility, storefront design, and search ranking.

In the Malaysian context, considering there are more than 55,000 sellers across marketplaces in Malaysia alone, brands need more than deep discounting, free shipping, and special event campaigns to stand out from the crowded digital marketplace. And now, equipped with MEDICI’s data-driven approach, these new services and partnerships offer just the right measurable solutions for our clients looking to reshape their commerce transformation.

Sourabh Agrawal, partner at Entropia

Tasked with leading MEDICI, Kelferd Hor, added, “Part of our mandate is to bring best-in-class technology partners on board to implement clients’ direct-to-consumer trade strategies – helping marketers up their ‘See Now Buy Now’ game, capitalize on impulse purchases and increase conversions. We’ve also made great strides in ensuring a seamless and consistent eCommerce experience for users across devices and platforms.”

Singapore – As COVID-19 restrictions are in place, more and more Singaporeans are shifting towards patronizing digital gateways, a report from customer experience management company Qualtrics shows.

About 57% of the respondents said they have made more online purchases at this time, and shifted towards using online banking; while the study also found a 44% increase in online grocery shopping was also evident among respondents.

“After months of disruption, we are beginning to see new behaviors and preferences emerge that are likely to remain post-pandemic. There is no doubt that there has been a massive shift towards digital, making it critical for brands to ensure they are able to optimize the experience they deliver on their digital channels including mobile applications,” said Harish Agarwal, Qualtrics’ head of CX strategy for Southeast Asia.

The study also probed on Singaporeans’ concerns during the pandemic, where the majority of respondents, 92%, shared that they are still worried about the global pandemic and its effects on normal activities.

Despite growing pandemic concerns, some Singaporeans were shown to be optimistic about resuming routine activities such as  using public transport (61%), eating out at restaurants (58%), visiting a park (51%), and going to the mall (50%) in the next six months.

“Simultaneously, even though Singaporeans are beginning to go back to some previous habits, high levels of ambiguity remain, meaning businesses must be able to understand and quickly respond to changing environments,” Agarwal added.