Since COVID-19 happened, I guess many aspects in our life changed including the habit and buying pattern. Even before Covid came, E-commerce has already been growing steady fast worldwide, especially across Asian country such as China and Indonesia. When most of all businesses got hit hardly because of the global pandemic, it is only few businesses that got opportunity not only to stay survive but growing rapidly in my country, Indonesia.
Not to mention those companies which run in medical supplies, manufacturing (for hand sanitizer, mask, hand wash, etc), the biggest win, perhaps delivery services (such as Gojek, Grab, In driver, etc) and E-commerce platform such as (Tokopedia, Shopee, Lazada, etc).
Because of technology improvement and progress, we are living in Digital era in which everything can be done in short time. Just alike how E-commerce has become unicorn business model for these last few years. I should admit, since Covid happened, E-commerce platform has become the only option for me to purchase things, aside of the benefits such as easy, quick and competitive price, many of us were asked to stay at home, in order to slower contagious and keep low the cases. A country alike China even went extreme by fully lockdown it’s country.
While people gradually thought to leave Bricks and Mortar business because it becomes less attractive since E-commerce offered low-cost business such as seller doesn’t need to have physical store to start up or you don’t have to have stock in order to have transaction (reseller/middle man/Drop shipper). While customer can sort or filter the items easily with keyword based of brand, price, quality, rating, etc.
Since everything seem good to be true, then why I am cutting off my spending in E-commerce platform (buying online)? In this post, I would like to share my perspective and also experience after fully purchasing stuff in E-commerce for couple years.
For almost three years fully shopping through the E-commerce platform such as Tokopedia, Shopee and Bukalapak (I often used these three platforms purchasing stuff). Since last year August, I have slowly started to buy things in offline stores and gradually cut off my online shopping.
When I started to actively buying and spending amount of money through E-commerce platform, the first reason because I found many benefits offered by it. Everything seems to be so easy, friendly user, quick and price quite competitive. I did enjoy shopping experience through these platforms. Yet, after I reviewed all my purchasing (especially for past three years), I am bit startled.
The offers and Promotion Strategy (double-edged sword)
I try to stop online shopping because I realized my buying habit and pattern changed. It became unhealthy habit and almost turned me to be shopping addict. I felt like my head got a brain wash with their promotion strategy from discount, coupon, to free shipping within Indonesia territory (Tokopedia covered until 50K while Shopee has subsidy shipping fee and the range territory within Asia countries such as China, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia)
I should admit during the first to second years of Covid, I could see the significant increased in my purchasing (amount of nominal) and unhealthy buying pattern (too many unnecessary things purchased). The offers and promotion strategy worked well since I couldn’t go out due to the Partial Lockdown in my city. The intensity of login and scrolling down things became daily habit.
Fortunately, world condition has gotten better, covid pandemic has already gotten in control though the virus kept on mutation and changing yet the condition isn’t as worst as first outbreak which suddenly killed dozen of thousand people daily in all over the world while we don’t have vaccine that time. While experts in this field were racing against time to find way to keep us stay alive with the uncertainty caused by the virus.
And now since there is no any lockdown or partial lockdown and we free to travel, Bricks and mortar (offline store) can be an option to buy stuff. Since I feel E-commerce platform has lost few of its competitiveness with new additional charges and less benefits which make me lost interest.
Tokopedia as the biggest E-commerce in Indonesia, starting in this year, it has increased their charge to seller by 4%, added IDR 1,000 per transaction to customer as service charge. The accumulative cashback, free shipping fee and discount coupon has turned to be an optional option means I can get all in one in the past and now only able to choose one from among. This is also happened for Shopee.
Many benefits in the past had gone while the charge kept on rising. I asked to few sellers whom I usually buy from, most of them raised their price 10-15% in order to maintain initial profit while at the same time, they should afford to pay platform charge. As for me, a buyer. I cut off my spending because the price become less competitive (tend to be higher), the offer less attractive (Tokopedia case)
While Shopee, the increasement of service charge isn’t in line with the improvement of the customer service (Shopee CS).
azurro4cielo 