Affected by Covid-19, the e-commerce industry now serves the two top needs of selling groceries and providing fun at home for users.
According to the second-quarter e-commerce report published by iPrice, online grocery is the only industry that has maintained steady and consistent growth since the beginning of the epidemic. This also partly explains the strong increase in demand for online stores selling essential products during the months of social distancing.
Google searches related to the keyword “grocery store” increased 223% in the last quarter. The number of searches increased 11 times in July compared to May and 3.6 times compared to June, when the social distancing order under Directive 16 was implemented in some provinces and cities.
In particular, people pay more attention to fresh food, meat and fish, beverages of all kinds, packaged foods and vegetables when the growth rate is 99%, 51%, 30% and 11% respectively compared to the first quarter of 2021.
Statistics for the first 7 months of 2021. Data and graphics: iPrice
“Thus, social distancing activity can be one of the driving forces to explode the demand for online grocery stores and online supermarkets”, iPrice’s research team assessed and said, in response to the demand. In this situation, the online movement of essential retailers will probably be more urgent.
In fact, at the beginning of July, when Ho Chi Minh City started to apply Directive 16 across the city, people’s demand for grocery shopping increased sharply. Lazada once recorded selling 120,000 boxes of fresh milk in 3 hours, or 10,000 chicken & duck eggs and in the first 12 hours on 7/7. Recently, on September 2, Tiki decided to open fresh goods delivered in 3 hours in Hanoi.
Not only shifting towards mainly serving the needs of grocery shopping, the epidemic season also makes shopping platforms try to become a more entertaining application for customers to have fun at home.
Since July, Lazada and Shopee have aggressively organized Shoppertainment activities (a form of shopping combined with entertainment). Capturing the shrinking ability of users to go out, these two exchanges organize home music shows and launch more bonus minigames.
The livestream channel also continues to be used to increase interaction because it is entertaining and lively. Lazada’s second quarter report noted that every day, the livestream channel recorded 2.5 times more views compared to the same period last year. Shopee said that in the first half of the year, the total time users watched Shopee Live increased by more than 200% over the same period.
Similar to MoMo, a payment and shopping platform that organizes a city-building puzzle game with a prize of 10 billion VND, attracting 8 million participants after a month. They think that, during a stressful epidemic period, this idea helps people’s lives have more relaxing and fun times. “We will continue to organize similar programs,” stated Nguyen Ba Diep, Co-Founder and Vice President of MoMo Wallet.
The Shoppertainment trend, which was predicted early on, will emerge stronger in the context of the Delta mutation raging in Southeast Asia. A survey in March of more than 1,800 users in this area said that 1 in 3 people said that they want to shop and that shopping makes them feel happy.
“This year, we are witnessing the rise of Shoppertainment – a combination of content creation and e-commerce,” said Ng Chew Wee, TikTok Business Marketing Manager, Southeast Asia. price.
But does pouring money into making music festivals, writing new games, investing in livestreams to “entertain” consumers really bring tangible benefits? The answer seems to be yes.
The ranking on the Vietnam e-commerce map in the second quarter of 2021 announced by iPrice Group and SimilarWeb has revealed the results for those who know how to grasp the trend. After several consecutive quarters of being surpassed by competitors, Lazada Vietnam rose to second place in the “four-horse race” in terms of website visits of multi-industry e-commerce platforms.
Data and graphics: iPrice
Accordingly, Lazada’s average website visits increased by 14% compared to the first 3 months of the year and received 20.4 million visits. They are only behind Shopee, with the 12th quarter leading in terms of website visits, recording 73 million visits, an increase of 9.2 million compared to the first quarter. No one else, Lazada and Shopee are the two active units. in the field of Shoppertainment recently.
As the 9/9 shopping festival approaches, the duo also continue to signal that they are ready to launch shopping tricks combined with entertainment and overwhelming promotions to attract consumers.
In addition to the recent announcement of Korean star Hyun Bin as the ambassador of LazMall Southeast Asia, Lazada Vietnam continues to host the “SuperShow” music festival as they have done continuously during the recent peak promotions at 9/8 evening. They also launched a 10 billion prize for LazGames players on this occasion.
In addition to using familiar tactics, claiming to be “crazy sales”, Shopee also has a big party on September 9 with an exchange program with trainer Park Hang Seo, player Vu Van Thanh, player Nguyen Tien; or the Korean night with exclusive performances of TWICE and Secret Number.
In the first half of this year, possibly because users are at home and working more online, the total number of visits to the top 50 shopping websites in Vietnam reached more than 1.3 billion, the highest ever. The data also shows that the number of visitors in the second quarter increased by 10% compared to the first quarter, coinciding with the gradually tightening social distancing.
A recent report by Facebook and Bain & Company in the Southeast Asian market shows that Vietnam’s e-commerce sales in 2021 are estimated to reach 12 billion USD. It is forecasted that this number will increase 4.5 times and reach 56 billion USD by 2026, the second largest market size in the region after Indonesia.
Source: vnexpress.net
