Livestreaming shopping – which rapidly gained popularity in Asia-Pacific after the trend first emerged in China – is a real-time video shopping experience, where hosts showcase products, interact with viewers and promote instant purchases through integrated shopping links.
Ms Goh uses e-commerce platform Shopee for some of her buys, but she shops much more frequently on China-based platforms such as Taobao, Douyin and Xiaohongshu.
Most recently, she found herself getting hooked on viewing “blind box livestreaming”, a new Chinese e-commerce trend that puts a spin on conventional livestream commerce by adding a game of chance.
Under this variation of livestreaming, retailers showcase and sell such “blind boxes” or “blind bags” – mystery bags containing random items – at low prices.
Viewers pay small sums of money to buy these bags and the seller then unpacks the blind bag on the livestream to reveal what is in it.
Depending on what the blind bag contains, the viewer may then receive more blind bags at no extra cost, which presents more chances at winning new items that may be valued at a higher price than what the viewer had paid for initially.
While Ms Goh does not buy the blind bags herself, she noted that it can get addictive for shoppers, especially since the blind bags are not very expensive, normally costing S$4 for each round.
Livestream e-commerce is just one of many strategies that online retailers and platforms have employed to boost sales and it has worked like a charm.
Without revealing exact figures, Mr Chua Kel Jin, director at Shopee Singapore, said that the Shopee Live viewership here grows during its year-end campaigns and that its livestream sales surged by 30 times during the 12.12 or Dec 12 sale period, compared to an average day.
“Engaging content continues to play a key role in online shopping as buyers look out for live product demonstrations and real-time interactions with sellers and affiliates to make their purchase decisions,” he added.
Besides livestreaming, other popular strategies that retailers use include personalised algorithms, frequent sales, influencer marketing tactics, stackable discounts, free shipping and easy returns, as well as gamified elements on the e-commerce platform, marketing experts said.
With algorithms, these effectively tailor advertisements to individual users, prompting shoppers to consider products beyond what they would usually buy, the experts said.
Dr Shilpa Madan, assistant professor of marketing at the Singapore Management University (SMU), said: “E-commerce platforms use advanced algorithms to analyse your browsing habits, past purchases and preferences to suggest products tailored to your tastes, making shoppers feel like the store ‘gets them’.”
Agreeing, Dr Hannah Chang, associate profesor of marketing at SMU, said that this is one way e-commerce platforms set themselves apart from offline shopping.
“(Retailers) can personalise their advertising. The more information they have about you – if you’ve been shopping for a long time or on a particular platform – the more information they have on all of your shopping behaviours.
“They can use that to deduce what you’re like as a shopper, what are your preferences, what are your interests in different categories … And that helps them come up with better targeting and more accurate recommendations, which makes it even harder to resist because now, they’re showing you things that you’re much more interested in.”
These personalised algorithms will only get much more effective over time as shoppers interact with the online sites.
A shopper, Ms Ong, who declined to give her full name because she was not comfortable publicly divulging her shopping habits, said: “After I click into a page or brand that I like, (online advertisements) would very consistently recommend me many more brands with the same kind of look and items.
“With that, I am more inclined to buy … because I’m seeing the same thing over and over again within the short span of even just an hour. I think that repetition makes you like the item a bit more.”
The 30-year-old, who works in client relations, shops online two to three times a week. She typically frequents e-commerce platforms such as Shopee, Amazon, AliExpress, TikTok Shop and Instagram Shop, as well as other brand-specific sites.
She estimated that she is spending between S$500 and S$1,500 a month on online shopping.
