Access, Trust, Experience, and Price
According to Eva Claravall, Research Director of TNS, the Philippines ranks 6th in the world in accessing content online. However we’re very low in terms of e-commerce or online shopping/buying. She identified 4 major barriers that came up in their research that are stopping a lot of Filipinos from buying online.
Not Everyone Has Internet Access
Internet penetration in the Philippines plays around from 45-50%. While it’s a huge improvement and has been rapidly growing, we’re still at the halfway mark. More than 50M Filipinos still don’t have Internet access. The 50% that do struggle with unreliable connections, especially on their mobile phones.
A lot of People Still Don’t Trust Online Shops
Since e-commerce is still in it’s infancy, not a lot of people trust online shops. They feel that they will either be scammed or their credit card information will be stolen and they will be charged for stuff that they never bought in the first place.
Bad Experiences They’ve Had or That They’ve Heard of
Personally we can relate to this. We’ve had at least 3 bad experiences buying online here in the Philippines. It’s either the product TAKES FOREVER to arrive or it NEVER arrives at all. This is actually the reason why we prefer COD or meet-ups because at least we are sure that we get the items we want on time.
Little difference in Price
Lastly, it’s not compelling to buy online if there are no savings. A lot of online shops here sell their goods at the same prices they sell it in the malls. Since we’re still in the infancy stage of e-commerce, online shops should offer more value so that more Filipinos use their hard-earned cash online.
How about you guys? Are you averse to online shopping in the Philippines? Regardless if your answer is a yes or no, feel free to share your thoughts on this issue below in the comments section.
PS: Visualization above was made by Pushpin Visuals. Awesome company that does real-time graphic recording.
*Eva Claravall presented at the IMMAP Summit 2015
