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Tag: social commerce

  • Ninja Van shares how SMEs can optimize social commerce in Southeast Asia

    Ninja Van shares how SMEs can optimize social commerce in Southeast Asia

    Ninja Van Group, Southeast Asia’s leading tech-enabled express logistics company, launches a white paper that unveils the challenges faced by sellers in Social Commerce operations.

    Together with market research firm Milieu Insight, 600 Social Commerce sellers across six countries — Singapore, Malaysia, The Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam — were surveyed in November 2023. Social commerce takes place in social-first, commerce-second platforms that disrupt the usual consumer journey by letting it unfold in a social environment, such as TikTok Shop.

    Ninja Van Group’s analysis of the survey results finds that Social Commerce sellers face the same operational challenges as anyone selling on other online platforms. However, Social Commerce presents entirely new challenges for sellers wishing to harness this platform’s potential for business growth. 

    Sellers turn to Social Commerce platforms for their already captive audience, allowing them to reach more audiences. Despite this, Filipino sellers remain challenged in creating effective content as well as chasing the ever-changing and often elusive platform algorithms. 

    Almost half (46%) of surveyed Filipino Social Commerce sellers struggle to create and curate content for their pages — a trend reflected across the region. 

    41%, meanwhile, find it challenging to stay on top of the platform’s algorithms and, therefore, are unable to fully capitalize on the platform to stand out. 

    Despite these pain points, Social Commerce remains crucial for sellers.

    Spotlight on The Philippines

    In the Philippines, sellers take advantage of Social Commerce platforms’ ability to reach more customers by selling around three different categories of products. The top product categories sold by these Social Commerce sellers are Food and Beverage, Fashion, and Beauty or Personal Care. 

    Compared to the other markets, more Filipino sellers say that Social Commerce allows them to quickly find out if products will be successful or not. This demonstrates Social Commerce platforms’ ability to capture audience interest in products not solely based on sales alone, but also on reach and engagement of product-related content. 

    However, Filipino Social Commerce sellers also find it hard to stand out in this space — highlighting that Social Commerce is just as challenging as selling on other platforms. 

    “On top of the quantitative survey conducted with Milieu Insight, we also consulted some of our Social Commerce sellers to find out how they tackle these challenges. By consolidating these insights and solutions into this white paper, we hope to equip sellers for a more adept navigation of Social Commerce,” says Sabina Lopez-Vergara, chief commercial officer, Ninja Van Philippines.

    Winston Seow, group chief marketing officer, Ninja Van Group, adds: “The process of uncovering challenges that Social Commerce sellers face not only enables us to refine our existing tools, like our suite of digital solutions, but it also helps us to add new tools to our toolbox, such as our suite of full-funnel marketing solutions, for sellers who wish to sell better.”  

    Ninja Van Group entered Southeast Asia a decade ago during the early stages of the e-commerce scene’s development, securing a strategic position to observe its evolution. Building on this long-standing presence, Ninja Van Group leverages this unique vantage point to support sellers beyond logistics, fostering a robust e-commerce environment in the region. 

    Gadgets Magazine 17

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  • Indonesia bans e-commerce transactions on social media in major blow to TikTok | CNN Business

    Indonesia bans e-commerce transactions on social media in major blow to TikTok | CNN Business


    Jakarta
    Reuters
     — 

    Indonesia has banned e-commerce transactions on social media platforms, the trade minister said on Wednesday, in a blow to short video app TikTok, which is doubling down on Southeast Asia’s biggest economy to boost its e-commerce business.

    The government said the move, which takes effect immediately, is aimed at protecting offline merchants and marketplaces, adding that predatory pricing on social media platforms is threatening small and medium-sized enterprises.

    The move comes just three months after TikTok pledged to invest billion of dollars in Southeast Asia, mainly in Indonesia, over the next few years in a major push to build its e-commerce platform TikTok Shop.

    TikTok, owned by China’s ByteDance, has 125 million active monthly users in Indonesia and has been looking to translate the large user base into a major e-commerce revenue source.

    A TikTok Indonesia spokesperson said it would pursue a constructive path forward and was “deeply concerned” with the announcement, “particularly how it would impact the livelihoods of the 6 million” local sellers active on TikTok Shop.

    Indonesia Trade Minister Zulkifli Hasan on Wednesday told reporters that the regulation is intended to ensure “fair and just” business competition, adding that it was also intended to ensure data protection of users.

    He warned of letting social media become an e-commerce platform, shop and bank all at the same time.

    The new regulation also requires e-commerce platforms in Indonesia to set a minimum price of $100 for certain items that are directly purchased from abroad, according to the regulation document reviewed by Reuters, and that all products offered should meet local standards.

    Zulkifli said TikTok had one week to comply with the regulation or face the threat of closure. Indonesia Deputy Trade Minister Jerry Sambuaga earlier this month named TikTok’s live streaming features as an example of people selling goods on social media.

    Research firm BMI said TikTok would be the only business affected by the transaction ban and the move was unlikely to harm the digital marketplace industry’s growth.

    Indonesia’s e-commerce market is dominated by the likes of homegrown tech firm GoTo’s Tokopedia, Sea’s Shopee and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s Lazada.

    E-commerce transactions in Indonesia amounted to nearly $52 billion last year and of that, 5% took place on TikTok, according to data from consultancy Momentum Works.

    Indonesia is among the few markets where TikTok has launched TikTok Shop, as it seeks to leverage its large user base in the country.

    Its 125 million active monthly users in Indonesia is almost on par with its user figures for Europe and behind US users of more than 150 million. TikTok launched an online shopping service in the United States earlier this month.

    Reactions from retailers were mixed.

    Fahmi Ridho, a vendor selling clothes on TikTok, said the platform was a way for stores to recover from the blow dealt by the Covid-19 pandemic.

    “Sales don’t have to be necessarily through [brick and mortar] shops, you can do it online or wherever,” he said “Everything will still have a portion.”

    But Edri, who goes by one name only and sells clothes at a major wholesale market in Jakarta, agreed with the regulation and stressed that there should be limits on items sold online.

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  • Did #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt Give Amazon the “Social Commerce” Push It Needed?

    Did #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt Give Amazon the “Social Commerce” Push It Needed?

    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    For a long time, Amazon has been known as a search engine for people ready to buy. Over the last year, with new features such as Amazon Live, they seem to have gradually positioned themselves as a discovery-based platform. That’s traditionally been the realm of search engines such as Google and social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

    It seems that social media platforms and online marketplaces are each heading in each other’s direction. If consumers are lucky, they’ll meet somewhere in the middle and end up making the way that we all shop in 2023 more streamlined and fun.

    Related: What Brands Need to Know About Social Commerce

    Here’s what I’m really talking about.

    Over the last few years, influencer marketing has become a critical (and very valuable) part of online commerce. The influencer marketing business model has exploded from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $13.8 billion in 2021. Industry analysts predict that this year it will reach $16.4 billion.

    And where do all those influencers call home? TikTok, that’s where.

    OK, not just TikTok, but also other short-video-format heavy platforms such as Facebook and YouTube as well. Accelerated by the restrictions imposed by the long pandemic, they have all contributed to an exciting new way of effortlessly transitioning from social media engagement directly to shopping for favorite, influencer-recommended products.

    TikTok signaled their eCommerce intentions with a recent announcement about a new partnership program designed to assist US merchants with advertising on their app by positioning the TikTok For Business Ads Manager as a home base for their TikTok-based marketing.

    Related: 3 Ways TikTok Can Improve Your Marketing Strategy

    TikTok For Business allows merchants to create and manage TikTok campaigns without leaving their own native eCommerce platforms.

    As importantly, they can do it by engaging with users right out at the tip of the spear, those users interacting with high-profile marketing trends.

    Now, #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has become both a trending hashtag and a place where products become viral eCommerce legends.

    TikTok for Business is ground zero for influencers and online sellers looking to find what people are talking about, and, more importantly, buying.

    The growing #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt hashtag movement doesn’t beg customers to make purchases. Instead, it just shows how cool these trending new products are. And it’s working! TikTok also has a “For You Page” that they say is intended to work as an online “matchmaker” between content and a curated audience.

    At the same time, the same thing is happening on Amazon’s marketplace but in reverse!

    Amazon just launched Inspire, “a new, personalized in-app shopping feed designed to make it easy to explore new products, discover ideas, and seamlessly shop content created by other customers, influencers, and brands (you) love.”

    Sound familiar?

    It should. It’s very similar to the experience that a TikTok user would have. Browsers (and not necessarily shoppers) could scroll through curated photos and videos tailored to their selected interests and engagement.

    Related: When It Comes to Social Media, TikTok Can Maximize Your ROI

    What’s groundbreaking about this new app is Amazon’s seeming willingness to create a platform for users who might not even be interested in shopping. That’s a business model that I’m not sure Jeff Bezos saw on the horizon.

    Users of the Inspire app can swipe through the content to simply see what’s out there, get inspired by something new, cool, or crazy, and of course, make purchases with just a few clicks.

    Amazon, along with several other large Ecommerce marketplaces, has decided that the long-held acceptance that their platforms were unapologetically for “shopping” had run its course. Now, they’re building entertaining ecosystems that also allow for shopping.

    Amazon’s Inspire isn’t available for desktop applications. Instead hinting at the intended functionality as well as the demographic, it’s only available as an app for IOS and Android.

    Amazon says it will roll out to select customers in the U.S. in early December, with the projected goal of completing U.S. accessibility completed in a few months.

    Marketplace Pulse recently referenced “Prime Day is the best example of social commerce,” with videos tagged #primeday2022 viewed over 52 million times on TikTok.

    It seems that very soon, a better representation of “social commerce” might just be groups of Amazon Inspire users passing their phones back and forth, alternately “liking” and making purchases from a marketplace formerly known for its single-minded focus, and let’s admit it, lack of fun.

    Brian Burt

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