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How can SEA businesses expand their presence through social media?
8 out of 10 consumers in the region use online platforms to find items they want to buy.
Over one billion users look for items like shoes, baby gear, cars, and apartments in Facebook Marketplace every month
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outheast Asia is leading the growth in digital transformation, with the number of digital consumers expected to reach 350 million by the end of 2021, according to the SYNC Southeast Asia Report by Facebook (now rebranded as Meta Platforms) and Bain & Company. In terms of digital consumer spending, the average reached US$238 in 2020 and the SYNC Southeast Asia Report has seen this to grow up to 60% by the year-end to a total of US$381. Meta has understood these figures. Having started as a social media site connecting people virtually, Meta has also transformed to allow people to sell and buy products with the Marketplace feature launched in 2016. “Marketplace was a natural next step for us in response to how people were already interacting with each other—we first observed such activity in Facebook Groups, which only grew substantially from there,” Benjamin Joe, Meta Vice President for Southeast Asia and Emerging Markets, told The Asian Business Review. Joe said there are more than one billion users in the Marketplace every month, looking for items like shoes, baby gear, cars, and apartments. According to the study, 72% of businesses in Southeast Asia said social media helped them engage more with their consumers. Joe also said that digital discovery is “crucial” for
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THE ASIAN BUSINESS REVIEW
consumers in the region with online channels comprising 80% of channels people use to discover items they want to buy, compared to 20% of offline channels. The study also found that 56% use online as the primary channel for purchases, up from 46% in 2020. Benjamin Joe
Get to know the consumers During the pandemic, the study also found that digital consumers in Southeast Asia were buying a wider range of categories at an average of 8.1 categories in 2021, which is 60% higher than the 5.1 average in 2020. Indonesian consumers were leading in terms of the widest range of categories at 8.8, from an average of 5.1 in 2020. This is followed by Thailand with an average of 8.3 categories, and the Philippines at 8.2. Fresh groceries, food delivery, and healthcare categories were amongst the drivers of first-time online buys, with 59%, 56%, and 52%, respectively, of the respondents purchasing them in the past three months since the survey was conducted in May 2021. Shoppers from the region who purchase predominantly online also increased to 45% in 2021 from 33% in 2020, posting a 35% growth. The largest increases were seen in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, which rose 1.5 times higher in 2021 compared to the previous year.
