What consumers think of Indonesia’s top 6 ecommerce sites

This is an excerpt from ecommerceIQ’s consumer pulse report “Uncovering the Value of Indonesia’s Top Online Platforms.” You can access the full report here.

The survey zoomed in on the six most popular sites in Indonesia based on their traffic and app rank in Google’s Play Store.

Each platform offers a variety of products, but there are differences that make them attractive to different types of shoppers.

Why do consumers prefer one platform over the other?

When asked why users choose to shop on their favorite ecommerce sites, these were the results:

Shopee: Aggressive spending to win market share

Customers who prefer Shopee say it stands out because of cheaper product price and free delivery. This isn’t surprising, as Shopee is known to offer subsidies in order to catch up to earlier competitors like Lazada in Indonesia. Shopee’s parent company Sea is publicly listed and recently reported heavy losses.

Launched in Indonesia in 2015, Shopee is a late entrant compared to the others, and the firm will have to continue to invest heavily if it wants to sustain this strategy.

Tokopedia and Bukalapak: Impending identity crisis?

According to respondents, Tokopedia’s strength is its product variety. The site originated as a C2C platform and only recently started to make inroads into B2C by offering official store concepts to brands. Users often go to Tokopedia to find products unavailable on other platforms.

I find Tokopedia’s interface the easiest to navigate. The ‘Hot List’ with popular products is very neat. The pictures show effort to please the visitors’ eyes. —M. Maramis, a frequent online shopper in Indonesia

Moving forward, Tokopedia’s challenge will be attracting premium brands given its bazaar-like origins. With one of the lowest scores for the category “Authentic products,” users shopping on Tokopedia risk buying grey market products with quality issues.

What are the popular categories on each e-marketplace?

What is the average order value (AOV) for each platform?

What do consumers dislike about each e-marketplace?

How likely are consumers to recommend each platform?

What are the popular payment methods on each platform?

Key insights and takeaways