Indonesia’s double-day sales are one the largest sale periods in the region. With evolving consumer preferences, sales campaigns also need to evolve. In this article, we take a look at changing e-commerce landscape in Indonesia. As the number of consumers grows in the country, preferences have shifted towards convenience-based shopping.

1. Indonesia’s double-day sales campaigns have slowed down recently due to several reasons

Double-day sales have been trending down in recent years. This is due to several factors

a) Growing consumer maturity leading to a less discount focussed shopping approach

b) Higher consumer base leading to low potential new users

As these challenges continue to affect the sale season, players must look for alternative strategies to come out on top.

2. The trend is visible in China as well, where players have started retooling the campaign to focus on customer loyalty

Players in China have also noticed a similar slump in Singles Day sales and have taken steps to mitigate the decreasing demand.

Membership programs to offer consumers loyalty benefits have been a key focus area. Players have also started to take the sale globally by opening online stores in other countries during the campaign. Players see high demand from other regions for their products during this period of the year and hence are diversifying.

3. As the customer base expands leaving little room to onboard new customers, players need to shift focus towards driving loyalty

While historically, double days would act as a massive consumer onboarding drive, players now need to focus on the existing consumer base more. The total consumer base for online shopping is larger than ever and holds massive potential spending to unlock. Online shoppers look for platform trust and convenience before discounts now, and players need to shift their focus towards driving loyalty through services for these platforms.

4. Players can also increase focus on profitability due to high seller participation and high interest in advertisable and analytical tools

We also see that platforms notice a significant jump in ad revenues during double-day sale campaigns as the number of participating sellers nearly doubles during these campaigns. Barring a slump during the pandemic, the number has continued to increase as the benefits of ads are perceived well by the sellers.

This could massively boost a platform’s revenue streams during the sale campaigns and coupled with less focus on discounts, allow them to gain more profitability.

Author

  • Roshan is a Partner at Redseer Strategy Consultants and is focused on Southeast Asia. He was ranked highly by key long-only and long-short institutional investors. He has organized several conferences, corporate events, and non-deal-roadshows.