MKT30018 – Marketing Insights – Assignment 2: Trend Report
Trend Report: Online shopping
2022 Semester
Submission Date: 26 Jun 2022
Student: Do Duc Ha - 103426942
Tutor: Tran Thu Trang
Words count: 2950
Table of contents
Executive Summary ………………………………………………………………………….1,2
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………...2,3
Trend Funnel…………………………………………………………..3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13
Zone 1: Trend Identity…………………………………………………………………………...3
Zone 2: Trend Drivers……………………………………………………………………..3,4,5,6
Zone 3: Target Customers…………………………………………………………………...7,8,9
Zone 4: Aspirational Touchpoints……………………………………………………..9,10,11,12
Zone 5: Trend Location …………………………………………………………………….12,13
Zone 6: Opportunities……………………………………………………………………….13,14
Conclusion………………………………………………………………..................................14
References ………………………………………………………………………………14,15,16
Executive Summary
The paper below will analyze how online shopping trend works; consumers prefer to purchase
online rather than traditional in-store purchase. With the advancement of e-commerce sites and
online payments, a growing amount of people have discovered the joys of online buying. People
are also drawn to e-commerce because of its ease of use, ease, and accessibility.
In the trend funnel, there will be six zones and each zone will analyze different aspects of the
trends from the trend’s identity to the long – term opportunities that can be created by this
shopping online trend, where it is happening and what motivates people to follows the trends,
with trusted sources and papers used to supply the trend and how the trend impacts our habits
and lifestyle, TRA and TPB (Theories of Reasoned Actions and Theories of Planned Behaviors)
and many of the logical explanations have been applied to further understanding the principle of
the trend. A customer persona and a customer Journey map have also been created based on web
analytics and researches to better understand this online shopping trend
Introduction
Nowadays, many people prefer shopping online rather than in-store experiences, and I believe
this has become a long-lasting trend. With the development of e-commerce sites and online
payments, an increasing number of individuals have come to enjoy shopping online. The
simplicity, convenience, and accessibility of e-commerce also motivate people to buy things
online. Consumers may make purchases from the convenience of their own homes. They may
also select from a variety of delivery alternatives and have a more personalized buying
experience. They may access product information and customer reviews from any location, at
any time with just a click of a mouse. There are many retail industries have taken part in the e-
commerce shopping, the face of shopping is changing because of technological advancements,
the web has revolutionized the consumer purchasing experience and have improvements in smart
and linked gadgets (Ladhari, Gonthier and Lajante, 2019).
This trend is likely to impact many retailing industries such as fashion, canned food, furniture,
electronic devices etc... but here in this report I will not only analyze a single industry, but I will
also examine and give example of any retail industries that have participated in this trend. For
example, we can see how well the fashion industry has adapted to today's trends and has
dominated many e-commerce shopping platforms such as Shopee, Tiki, Lazada and Tiktok’s
Shopify, the industry dominated even more in social media applications like Instagram and
Facebook. According to my research, in Malaysia, the overall online shopping sale percentage
have been forecasted to reach $2,53 billion by 2022 in revenue (Salem and Alanadoly, 2021) and
in Vietnam, fashion currently being ranked number one most popular category for online
consumptions with 33% of total consumptions of all the categories, just behind food and
beverages with 26% (Cimigo, 2019).
Trend Funnel
Zone 1: Trend Identity
As I said in the introduction, many people nowadays have a habit of shopping online. Here in
this report, I will be digging into the online shopping trend, shopping on ecommerce platforms
such as Shopee, Amazon, Tiki, Alibaba or purchasing, making trades on social media platforms
such as Instagram, Facebook and Tiktok
Zone 2: Trend Drivers
Firstly, A lot of people prefers shopping online because of its convenience, one of the most
common reasons is that people find it lazy to get out of their pyjamas, they would rather use a
phone and search for stuff they need online because it is way more convenient. According to
research, people also lean toward bargain hunting on e-commerce shopping platforms which
offers numerous coupons and vouchers for us every day, having to walk from store to store to see
differences in price and having to remember all the information to decide which one is the best is
certainly cannot be compared with having to see all the prices and information from different
stores all on one screen, Ecommerce applications that attract repeat users may be an effective
marketing strategy because they offer portable, convenient, and engaging engagement options,
allowing customers to interact with the brand on a regular basis (Kim, Wang and Malthouse,
2015). Less common reasons including too busy to go shopping, don't have a car so cannot carry
big things or cannot carry many things at once etc..., there are numerous causes to drive people
to hop on the shopping online trends "Online shopping has given all types of consumers the
ability to be able to buy anything, anywhere, and any product, regardless of where its location is
in any part of the world." (D and Kaur, 2017).
Secondly, to explain further why people go shopping online, the Theory of Reasoned Action
(TRA) and the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) have been applied. Researchers revealed that
consumers' opinions regarding the shopping channel, the subjective norm, and the level of
control experienced throughout the purchase process all impact consumer online shopping
behavior. Other factors influencing consumer online shopping behavior have been considered,
such as consumers' experiences, privacy concerns, consumers' dissatisfaction and
satisfaction, consumers' perceived enjoyment and flexibility in navigation, consumers' perceived
advantages and risks and consumer communication (Cai and Cude, 2016) and shopping online
channels often help customers to access and evaluate product in a very effective way (Parra and
Ruiz, 2009).
It has been found that cultural, demographic, economic, technological, and human psychology
precursors to internet purchasing. The key drivers of the online shopping trend, according to
research, were congruence, impulsive buying behavior, value consciousness, risk, local
shopping, shopping enjoyment, and browsing enjoyment. (Venkatesh, Speier-Pero and Schuetz,
2022). A great example of shopping and browsing enjoyment would be Shopee, an ecommerce
shopping platform that is very popular in Southeast Asia sale hunting organized on 6 June
annually, people would have vouchers and coupons that reduce up to 50% of a products original
price including free shipping locally, on this day, thousands of people would browse the Shopee
mobile apps and Shopee websites to hunt for a good deals and this often makes the app or
website overloaded.
Finally, the last main driver of online shopping was covid 19, a pandemic that brings havoc to
our globe in the last two years, As a result of the Covid-19 epidemic's impacts, people are
increasingly becoming acclimated to staying at home and working from home, and online
purchasing is becoming more easy (Hoang Long cuu et al, 2020). During the Covid-19 outbreak,
a variety of products were purchased online, with an emphasis on personal health care and
domestic appliances, with cosmetics and personal care goods being the most popular.
Nonetheless, the epidemic would have a long-term impact on consumer behavior. To retain the
market competitiveness, retail companies must adapt swiftly to changes in consumer demand
(Koch, Frommeyer and Schewe, 2020); thus, they must always have exact understanding of
consumer requirements, particularly during the COVID-19 epidemic.
Zone 3: Target Consumers
First and foremost, to further understand about the motives that makes people follows the trend,
a depiction of an ideal online shopping buyer has been created based on data and research
digging into the customer persona that I have just made, we have Hong Han, a 24 years old
female working as a full – time freelancer, so she can works wherever she wants and her ideal
place to work is at her home, this developed another habit of her, that habit is lazy, she doesn’t
want to leave her “comfort zone”, well, in both literal sense and figurative sense, so she usually
order foods online or shopping online, because her income depended on her clients and her
skills, she have to manage her money wisely, so she often hunting for discounts, she can also be
called a “discount chaser” , discount and sale campaigns are both very effective ways of
attracting customers in both online and offline shopping, Consumers see prices encountered
within the range that they expected as anticipated and reasonable, but those found beyond
(below) a consumer's range of expectations are regarded underpriced (inexpensive) or overpriced
(expensive) said (Sheehan, Hardesty, Ziegler and Chen, 2019) and this could affect their decision
in buying a certain product. Han found a lot of good deals for many products and develops a
habit of hunting discount and vouchers in ecommerce shopping platform. The gas price is
currently skyrocketing in Vietnam, this makes Han very nervous about the money that she
spends on her motorbike, she usually goes out to see friends but now she wants to cut down on
gas prices, refusing to cut down on gas prices basically mean she will have to cut down on her
excessive habits of online shopping, so she decided not to go out much and for her, this is
acceptable because she’s shy and lazy.
Looking into her personality, we can see that she’s picky too, when looking for a certain product,
she cannot decide and must go to many different sites to decide what is the most suitable for her.
She understands that if she goes to a certain retail store, their range of products are limited and
she will have to go to different stores that maybe located very far from her home, this will cost
her time and gas money, so instead of that she would stay at home and looking for the products
on the web. Online consumers are younger, more educated, have higher computer proficiency,
spend more time on their computer, spend more time on the Internet, find online buying to be
easier and more interesting (Swinyard and Smith, 2003). The practice of purchasing items or
services online is known as online shopping behavior. When a potential customer sees the need
for a certain commodity or service, they utilize the Internet to search for relevant information,
evaluate the possibilities, decide whether to buy, and their post-purchase behavior.
Second, besides the customer persona, I have also created a customer journey map to illustrates
each step that the ideal buyer goes through in engaging with her online purchasing choice and the
experiences and emotions she got, how she feels during those stages, the interactive goods and
services we encounter in our daily lives have the ability to shape how we feel, which will
undoubtedly influence our purchasing experience (Hassenzahl and Tractinsky, 2011). Here in
this map, I would analyze her decision of buying a woman’s perfume, from her motivations to
her evaluation of the perfume and her choice to buy again another time, while analyzing about
her process, her emotion when see pass through every of her steps is also being depicted in the
map from very excited to annoyed and go back to happy.
Zone 4: Aspirational Touchpoints
One thing that in common for every ecommerce shopping platform and social media platforms is
that it’s very convenient, we can access to a certain product information, everything about that
product with just a click of a mouse. But in e-commerce, convenient is just a basic part, service
quality and consumer satisfaction are the key definition to maintain the prosperity of a shopping
platform (Sheu and Chang, 2022).
In this Shopee study case conducted by (Lestari, Handayani and Mahacandra, 2021), Shopee
opened services for a more convenient online payment called ShopeePay and Shopee Paylater,
the ShopeePay service allows us to get more coupons and free shipping vouchers but in
exchange, we will have to create a separate account just to make transactions on Shopee and the
Shopee Paylater service allows us to pay later by our own credit card. Plus, Shopee also have
campaigns and mini games that makes customer engage more with the platform, examples of this
would be Shopee Prizes, Shopee “What’s hot this week?” and Shopee voucher hunting – the
campaigns that attract most of the consumers in Southeast Asia especially Vietnam. These
campaigns itself are the touchpoints of the Shopee ecommerce platform, it is what makes Shopee
standout to the rest of other ecommerce platforms, and we can see that efficiency service
influences consumers’ satisfaction and loyalty.
Another case is TikTok, one of the most famous social media platforms not just in Asia but in
the Europe as well. According to research, TikTok currently ranked number one for the most
downloaded social media application with 656 million people worldwide and approximately
30% of users spend on TikTok one hour a day (Ceci, 2022). With that huge percentage of user
interactions, of course TikTok is also very famous for being an effective shopping market, and
the benefits that TikTok brings to retailers are undoubtedly very enormous. Right now, TikTok
has just opened a shopping feature called Shopify, it is a service that enables the buyer to
purchase a product right away when they are watching seller’s livestream. The feature is
extremely benefiting in some retail industry like fashion and food and beverages, which have a
high number of Gen Z customers. “I built my business on social media; it's where my fans go
first to look for what's new from Kylie Cosmetics, I have so much fun creating TikTok videos,
and I love sharing posts of my fans using the products. That's why I'm excited for Kylie
Cosmetics to be one of the first to let customers shop directly on our TikTok”. Said Kylie Jenner,
a famous supermodel (Lee, 2021). Unlike Shopee which is only used in Southeast Asia, TikTok
is famous worldwide, therefore, the feature is an aspirational touchpoint of TikTok, a feature that
is the true definition of “convenient” when you can just click and simply buy it while watching
the livestream about the information of the product.
The common in the services that Shopee and TikTok provide is that both platforms can keep a
high rate of customer satisfaction and provide good service qualities, online customers can
always compare products and alternatives easier than offline customers, especially for functional
products and services. A competing offer is just a few clicks away on the Internet (Shankar,
Smith and Rangaswamy, 2003) so the services that ecommerce shopping platform provide must
influence the customer satisfaction and decision. The online purchasing experience may also
modify customer expectations about services—if they have more information ahead of time, they
know what sort of service they will receive and are less likely to be startled or irritated with the
service got than if they make a purchase offline.
Zone 5: Trend Location
This shopping online trend of course would be considered a global trend, statistics have shown
that in Latin America, ecommerce sale reached $85 billion, up 25% from $68 billion in 2020.
Ecommerce sale in Indian grow even stronger with an expectation of $111.4 billion by the end of
2025, up from $46,2 billion in 2020. In United Kingdom, the country saw more than 20% in
ecommerce sale growth in 2021 and China still dominated the market, a true king in ecommerce
with 52.1% of all the retail ecommerce sale worldwide and reached $2 trillion in total online sale
in 2021 (Keenan, 2022). E-commerce revenue in Vietnam reached roughly 11.8 billion US
dollars in 2020, accounts for at least 5.5 percent of overall retail sales of products and services in
Vietnam that year. With a growth rate of 36% in 2020, Vietnam is among the fastest growing
internet economies in Southeast Asia. In US, 76% of adults from the country shop online and the
ecommerce revenue in the country now reached $960.1 billion in 2021 according to web
analytics, this is an astonishing number compared to 2019 and 2020, mainly because the
influences of Covid 19 pandemic.
We can see that the trend is booming in every developed country on this planet, some even says
that the market is an international online retail. The e-commerce business and online shopping
have practically covered all internet purchases. With shops migrating to online platform, third-
party marketplaces, and increased internet connectivity throughout the world, online transactions
are now worth trillions of dollars each year.
Zone 6: Opportunities
There are many service opportunities for retail industries to develop in this global trend for the
long term. In about 2 to 5 more years, online shoppers would be more complicated and demand
more features and conveniences from retailers, for example: customer services will have to
improve like fulfilling orders within 48 hours or less, instant shipping when finishing
transactions or providing on – demand support through automations and agents.
A long-term service opportunity that I find interesting is “live shopping”, just like TikTok’s
shopify, we can watch the livestream and at the same time buying their product with instant
shipping when they get our buying notifications, Facebook and Instagram doesn’t have this
feature yet. In my opinion, this service can only be applied to social media platforms because
social media platforms are the place where people interact with each other the most, the feature
can engage with consumer in a more interactive way. This service surely will last over 10 years
according to my prediction mainly because it is the era of the internet, people nowadays live and
communication with each other through internet and social media platforms.
Conclusion
The paper has analyzed the online shopping trend thoroughly, I have detailed the customer
behavior, people engaging with this trend, where the trend located and what drives people to hop
on the trend, the statistics of this online shopping trend and reasons why people prefer to go
online to shops rather than go to shopping centers or stores. With the rapid growth of technology,
it is predicted that online shopping will overtake traditional shopping, the trend opened many
opportunities for people to better communicate with each other and at the end, it can be
considered that the trend is a win – win situation for both the buyers and the sellers.
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