1. eCommerce categories all show a massive jump in GMV in Q4 2020

The Q4 sale season sees quite a high jump in GMV for all categories due to heavy promotions and increased supply of products.

Consumers tend to buy electronics in this period as new product launches happen around the months of September-October, boosting Consumer demand.

Fashion this year is also expected to do well in Harbolnas due to lockdowns being lifted, and consumers are expected to release some of the pent up demand for Fashion built up over the past few months.

​E-tailing Market GMV by category (2019), USD Bn

Indonesia eCommerce Category Trends in Q4 2020

2. Players have started campaigns already leading up to the major sale days

The lead up campaigns to the sale days are already in full flow across the horizontals. The campaigns are modelled in different ways across the players.

Tokopedia and Bukalapak are cashback heavy and focus on electronics and fashion is high for these platforms.

Shopee and Lazada have a month long teaser campaign running; both featuring daily live streams to drive consumer interaction and also different themed promos across days.

The monthly increase in traffic grows ~5x during the festive season and there is a 2x increase in conversions making it a significant contributor to the Annual GMV figures.

Key Initiatives

Key Metrics

3. Logistics – Players introduce higher rebates or larger fleets for post sale days to cope up with huge increase in volumes particularly from Jabo region

To support the massive jump in Q4 , Logistics players have also been actively preparing and scaling up.

Q4 sees a jump in instant deliveries due to strong consumer demand for it during the period.

Delivery related promotions are also offered by platforms in partnership with 3PLs to attract consumers.

The majority of demand rise during Q4 shopping season is from Jabo region which pushes up share of in-house deliveries due to strong in-house logistics footprint in the region.

The In-house capabilities are also slightly underutilized in other months due to internal restrictions (among other reasons) such as using in-house only for B2C products, which are more relaxed in sales seasons.

Indonesian share of logistics modes in e-commerce shipments, % of transactions

Key logistics trends post COVID

4. All preconditions look set for a massive upsurge in 4Q’20 eCom GMV, leading to a strong finish to the year

In 2020, post Ramadan months do not show a huge fall (unlike previous years) as COVID restrictions encouraged people to continue buying products online.

While FMCG/Groceries was the biggest gainer and GMV driver during the first half, subsequent months have seen the demand for non-essential categories like Fashion and Electronics slowly picking steam.

The stage looks set for the Indonesia eCommerce ecosystem to have a massive Q4’20, ending the year with a bang.

E-tailing market trend – 2020 GMV, USD Bn, GMV is annualized for each month

Note: 1 USD = 14,600 IDR