PH entrepreneurs lead region in live selling

More Filipino online entrepreneurs are conducting daily live selling with longer hours compared to the rest of the Southeast Asian sellers as they seek to establish better rapport with the customers, according to a study by Ninja Van Philippines.

The logistics company, in its recently published white paper titled “Live Selling in Southeast Asia,” noted that nearly half or 47 percent of the Filipino respondents said they sell their products via live social media feed on a daily basis, higher than the 31 percent average for the region.

Filipino sellers spend up to 14 hours of the live selling sessions weekly. This is more than double the six hours on average for other entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia.

Drawing customers

The local business owners are motivated to maximize social media through live selling because doing so attracts new customers, the study noted.

More than half also said that live selling increases the chance of moving the products instead of just posting them on marketplaces and other online spaces.

Nine in 10 entrepreneurs prefer doing live selling by themselves while the rest hire influencers to do it. The product categories of the live sellers include fashion, beauty and personal care, food and beverage and home and living.

“Live selling is an interesting marketing tactic for e-commerce sellers,” said Winston Seow, chief marketing and enablement officer at Ninja Van Group.

Relationship builder

“It’s the only tactic that can fast-track shoppers’ purchase journeys from awareness straight to conversion. Live selling also gives e-commerce sellers the ability to build relationships at scale with their shoppers, both new and existing,” Seow added.

Shopee, Facebook and TikTok are deemed the top live selling channels in the region. Their market shares are marginally close to one another, with Ninja Van saying that “the champion has yet to emerge in Southeast Asia.”

The study explained this could be due to e-commerce sellers using multiple channels for live selling to reach more shoppers in the online space.

For the study, Ninja Van had respondents of over 1,000 e-commerce sellers across the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. INQ