Ninja Van Singapore has released its first-ever white paper on live selling in Southeast Asia (SEA).
Live selling is when retailers showcase their products for sale through social media live streams. The white paper introduces live selling as an up-and-coming SEA e-commerce trend and shares live selling insights collected from one thousand Ninja Van’s e-commerce sellers across Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
The paper revealed that Singapore has the lowest number of live sellers, with only 20% surveyed doing live selling versus the regional average of 33%. The top two reasons cited by non-adopters were that “a lot of effort and energy is required to do it” and “live selling takes up a lot of time”.
One in three of the surveyed SEA e-commerce sellers are doing live selling, spending up to six hours weekly conducting live selling sessions. Most of the early adopters of live selling are from low-involvement product categories such as fashion, beauty and personal care, food and beverages, as well as home and living.
While Shopee (27.0%), Facebook (25.5%) and TikTok (22.5%) are ranked as the top three live selling channels, the close margins signal that the champion has yet to emerge in SEA. This could be explained by the fact that on average, the surveyed SEA e-commerce sellers use two channels for live selling, which the researchers presume is to maximize their outreach to live shoppers.
For e-commerce owners who have yet to explore this new marketing tactic, the paper explains why now is a good time to start. It also explores the challenges and recommended solutions for live selling, such as keeping live shoppers engaged and preparing on-set logistical requirements, as well as sales and post-sales arrangements.
Winston Seow, chief marketing and enablement officer at Ninja Van, said, “Live selling is an interesting marketing tactic for e-commerce sellers. 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.”
Mark Sim, the founder of Moss Fashion, added, “We first explored live selling in 2021 when Covid heavily impacted our business. We took our stores to Facebook and were among the first few in Singapore to jump on the bandwagon of live selling. We are currently running two four-hour live sessions weekly and have seen our online clientele steadily increase since our launch. There is untapped potential in live selling, with its unrivaled convenience and cost saving, which can be trickled down to benefit customers.”
Please click here to access the full white paper.