The Philippine eCommerce marketplace penetrate more Filipino consumers in terms of social media activity, however it struggles to establish a strong hold in traffic activity as international players take a huge lead.
It comes as a surprise that only a few international players take over the country’s eCommerce marketplace traffic activity. Based from our Philippines’ Map of eCommerce Q2 2018 findings, there are more local active players however, it’s the international players that heavily fuel the market activity as its share in the overall traffic accounts 93 percent of the overall eCommerce marketplace traffic activity. Meanwhile, local players lead in social media activity as its share accounts 75 percent of the overall eCommerce marketplace social media activity (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter).
International Players Are The Main Driver Of eCommerce Market Activity
There are only eight players that make up the international eCommerce share of traffic and these are the giant eCommerce: Lazada, Shopee, Zalora, eBay, Sephora, Sophie Paris, My Sale and Melissa Philippines. Out of the eight players mentioned, the four eCommerce: Lazada, Shopee, Zalora and eBay tops as the 1st to 4th most visited eCommerce marketplace in the country. Notably, Lazada’s streak performance in the Philippines makes the majority of overall eCommerce marketplace traffic activity with 68 percent share.
In specific, Lazada Philippines’ lead in traffic at the least is triple the size of its closest competitor, Shopee. This trend is unique to the Philippine markets as its SEA counterparts namely: Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand markets are leading with less than half of the overall eCommerce marketplace traffic activity with 45, 20 and 47 percent, respectively. For Indonesia and Singapore markets, local players- Tokopedia and Qoo10 hails as the most visited eCommerce marketplace.
The rationale behind our findings is that Filipino consumer’s online shopping preference is primarily based on brand familiarity. In fact, according to Kantar Worldpanel survey, 84 percent of Filipino consumers responded that they prefer to purchase from well-known and trusted brands despite the abundance of low cost alternatives available in the market. This specific Filipino consumer behaviour mainly affects the local players as majority of it have just started their respective operations in the digital marketplace.
Local Players Begin To Attract More Followers From Social Media Platforms
The local players total traffic share only accounts for 7 percent of the country’s overall marketplace traffic activity while there are more local players in the overall eCommerce share of traffic.
The most visited local eCommerce in the country is BeautyMNL placing 5th overall with less than a million-traffic followed by Kimstore in 9th place. Galleon, O Shopping and Takatack which were previously in Q1 2018’s top eCommerce all dropped one notch placing 7th, 8th and 11th respectively. Only Argomall managed to accelerate two notches placing 6th overall.
Interestingly, our report found that majority of the local players experienced inconsistency in traffic activity as there are occasions of leaps and slips in traffic ranking. In specific the following eCommerce with the major leap in traffic are Seek the Unique, Apartment 8 Clothing, Zeus, Straight Forward Clothing, Great Value Plus, Bayan Mall, TV Shop, Mall Hallo Hallo and CesaPH which increased its traffic ranking for about 7 notches in average.
While the following eCommerce with major slip in traffic are Adobomall, Watch Portal, Goods, Mommy Mundo, Bigmk, Abubot, which in averaged decreased traffic ranking for about 8 notches.
Despite the local players low reception in website traffic, its social media activity for Instagram and Twitter attracted more followers with 70 and 51 percent of the overall eCommerce marketplace social media followers. Meanwhile, the social media activity for Facebook is mainly taken over by international players as it share of social media followers account for 77 percent of the overall eCommerce marketplace.
As more local players are slowly increasing its market reach through social media platforms, it should also prioritize in building eCommerce branding. Currently, the Philippine government is aiding the industry by helping local players in venturing to digital marketplace however it lacks a definitive support to competitively perform against the international big players.
Methodology:
The Map of E-Commerce ranks Philippines’ top 50 e-commerce players based on their average quarterly traffic, mobile application ranking and social media following.
1. Quarterly Traffic Data was taken from Similar Web;
2. Mobile App Ranking Data was taken from App Annie;
3. Social Media Following Data was taken from their respective Facebook, Twitter and Instagram handles.
