Southeast Asia's Digital Transformation: Country and Category Insights

Consumers are becoming more open to the wide range of goods and services they can order digitally, including healthcare, food delivery and fresh groceries. But its adoption varies by country and sector:

• Overall, the categories most likely to be purchased online are clothing, footwear and accessories; consumer-packaged goods (CPG) in general; as well as consumer electronics.
• The categories least popular among online shoppers are fresh and packaged groceries. At best, they were cited by only 41% and 48% of respondents, respectively. ¹
• At a country level, Singapore demonstrates the highest propensity to shop online, especially for technology and groceries. The most popular categories among consumers here are consumer electronics (60%), clothing, footwear and accessories (55%) and alcoholic beverages (55%). ²
• Online as a purchase channel has the greatest room to grow in the Philippines and Thailand, where online as a purchase channel is least popular compared with other countries. Categories that Filipino and Thai respondents are most likely to go online for include clothing, footwear and accessories (42% and 44%) and consumer electronics (43% and 39%) as well as baby care (35% and 41%) and beauty products (34% and 42%).³

In all categories, awareness occurs primarily through a combination of social media feeds, social media videos and ecommerce marketplaces, our study found. Together, these three channels make up a majority of all the discovery that takes place online.

Respondents of the study chose social media (videos and feeds) as the single biggest driver of awareness across all categories (36% to 42%), frequently outperforming ecommerce marketplaces. The three categories most heavily driven by awareness through social media are beauty (42%), clothing, footwear and accessories (41%) and personal care (39%). After social media comes ecommerce: Shoppers looking for clothing cite it as their top channel for discovery (29%), alongside those in search of home office buys (28%).⁶

Social media and ecommerce marketplaces aren’t just the top channel for discovery—consumers use them to evaluate products and services too.

For consumer-packaged goods such as beauty products, personal care, baby care and some groceries, social media tends to be the single most influential channel for evaluation, cited by 26% to 29% of respondents across Southeast Asia.

For tech products such as consumer electronics and household appliances, social media is more evenly split with ecommerce marketplaces. For these categories, 25% of respondents cite social media as a top online channel for evaluation, compared with 23% for ecommerce marketplaces.⁷

Beyond discovery and evaluation, respondents also picked social media as the leading channel for brand consideration across most categories in Southeast Asia, outperforming video platforms, online word of mouth and ecommerce.

Ecommerce marketplaces and social commerce together take up more than half the share of spending by online channels, our study found. In most cases, these two scoop up more spending than delivery apps, brand sites, retailer sites, and small online shops combined.

Between the two, ecommerce marketplaces have a slight edge over social commerce, depending on the category.

For consumer-packaged goods spending such as beauty, personal care, baby care and groceries, ecommerce (23% to 35%) tends to be most influential followed by social commerce (18% to 22%).

For tech spending such as consumer electronics, household appliances and home office, ecommerce receives the greatest share of spend (28% to 36%), followed by social commerce (20% to 22%). Same goes for direct-to-consumer spending on clothing, footwear and accessories, where ecommerce (35%) has a bigger share than social commerce (22%).⁸

Consumers are switching from their most purchased brands in the past 3 months, our study found, driven mainly by better product quality, greater availability and faster delivery times.

The extent to which they do so depends on the country and category. Overall, categories most susceptible to brand switching are clothing, footwear and accessories; consumer electronics; as well as home office.

Countries most likely to switch are the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, where 48% to 68% of consumers report switching away from their most purchased brand in the past 3 months, regardless of category. In contrast, Singapore consumers appear to be the most loyal, with only 25% to 46% saying they switched from their most purchased brand, while Indonesian and Malaysian consumers are somewhere in between.⁹

Stay-home orders prompted many to shop online. But how many people will continue to do so once countries open up and pandemic restrictions are lifted?

In our study, the majority of respondents reported they will continue to spend the same or spend more online after their countries reopen, regardless of category. Overall, the largest number of responses in most categories came from people who reported that they will spend the same after the pandemic (45% to 54%).

Categories that are expected to see a net increase in online spending—where the "spend more" crowd outnumbers the "spend less" ones—are fresh groceries (+40% net increase), baby care (+28%), packaged groceries (+26%), non-alcoholic beverages (+21%), beauty (+10%), consumer electronics (+6%), clothing, footwear and accessories (+3%) and alcoholic beverages (+2%).¹⁰