DESPITE the rapid increase in online shopping in the Philippines, NielsenIQ said data showed more Pinoys will transition to brick-and-click shopping.
In a statement on Wednesday, NielsenIQ said this may already signal the beginning of the nascent phase of e-commerce in the Philippines.
The country showed the most dramatic increase in online shopping, which soared by 325 percent. The data also showed 67 percent of Filipinos who made online purchases still plan to continue to buy online even after quarantine restrictions are removed.
“This signals a more permanent transition towards a brick-and-click shopping behavior where both formats influence the final purchase decision,” Pauline Jill Uy-Yu, NielsenIQ’s Consumer Intelligence head in the Philippines, said.
“As consumer habits continue to evolve, it’s important for retailers to track performance versus competition or risk becoming obsolete to the omni-shopper,” she added.
While e-commerce has been viewed to transform retail, Nielsen said Covid-19 accelerated its trajectory, including the transition to the next phase.
In order to maximize this new trend, NielsenIQ said retailers need to overcome five key challenges.
These include greater fragmentation in retail, redefining the role of physical stores, divergent realities, increased fight for consumer attention, and the race to last mile fulfillment.
“We have entered the end of the beginning of e-commerce in Asia and those who rest now will sleep through the most formative time of growth for e-commerce,” said Vaughan Ryan, Nielsen IQ’s Consumer Intelligence managing director in Asia.
“The technological advancements and creativity of the last decade have made the retail world more advanced—leading to an environment where trust is solidified, where it is more than logistics but more about pushing the envelope on personalized discovery and curation, where there is exploration of new categories, and seamless omnichannel integration,” he explained.
Last year, ADB Chief Economist Yasuyuki Sawada said that while the pandemic reversed the gains in poverty reduction, it also highlighted the growth opportunities offered by digitalization.
In a recent survey, Sawada said e-commerce accelerated during the pandemic. B2B companies became more digitized by increasing their online support and e-commerce transactions.
ADB estimates supported these findings as their own estimates showed online purchases as of May 2020 increased.
It was particularly high in South Korea where the increase in online purchases increased by around 50 percentage points. In the Philippines, the increase was around 20 percentage points.
In 2019, the government said it is eyeing to attract some half a million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to do business online by 2022 as part of the new road map on e-commerce aimed at digitalizing trade in the Philippines for the next three years.
Pinoys seen to still do online shopping post-Covid
