C Small Solutions bases marketing and communications insights on hard data. This article expores holiday shopping in the Philippines, including customer behaviour and preferences. More detailed analysis is available to inform project strategies. For a free consultation, email: info@csmall.co.uk
By Alana Li
Holiday shopping in the Philippines is a time of bargain hunting and product discovery, increasingly involving shopping on mobile devices.
Of the 110 million people in the Philippines, at least 92% are Christian (mainly Roman Catholics), and over 5% are Muslims. Both Christian and Muslim holidays are celebrated in the Philippines, including Good Friday, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, and Christmas. There are also several end-of-the-year season sale days, from 11/11 Singles’ Day to Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Pricing and holiday mega-sales
According to Facebook data, the top five factors that shoppers in the Philippines say they care about when making holiday shopping decisions are: price (81%), discount offers (73%), product availability (72%), free shipping (72%), and product choices (72%). The importance of price when holiday shopping is also a top factor for shoppers globally.
73% of holiday shoppers in the Philippines agree that the holidays are a time to find the best deals. With unemployment in the Philippines rising to 17.7% in the second quarter of 2020, many consumers are likely to remain price-conscious. Deals, promotions, and sales will likely be required to support demand.
Almost two-thirds of holiday shoppers surveyed in the Philippines bought something during a mega-sales event in 2019, including on Black Friday and Singles’ Day. In 2018, Singles’ Day generated 4.9 times more online transactions than the season’s average. Similarly, popular sales day December 12th generated 4 times more online transactions. This further highlights the significance of price to consumers.
Communications SolutionsIn-store, online and mobile compatible holiday shopping
The Filipino population is becoming more digitally and socially connected – both the internet penetration rate and the social media penetration rate in the Philippines in 2020 is 67%, and the social media penetration rate increased by 8.6% from 2019 to 2020.
With increased mobile phone connections (28% growth from 2019 to 2020), mobile shopping is becoming more popular. While the majority of holiday shoppers in the Philippines say that their experiences with in-store shopping has remained about the same, 73% say mobile shopping has become easier. During the 2018 holiday season in the Philippines, 89% of all transactions visible to Facebook and Instagram were on mobile devices.
As shoppers may look to spend less time in physical stores due to the pandemic, convenience and mobile compatibility issues will remain important. The top problems experienced by shoppers in the Philippines when using mobile devices for shopping during the 2018 holiday season were: the app or website took too long to load (45%), images were not clear enough (38%), the product information was difficult to review (35%), the content did not fit on the mobile screen (25%), and the font size was too small (26%). It is essential for businesses to address such problems to enable a positive mobile experience for their consumers, not only during the holiday season.
Exploring new products
The holiday season is a good time for presenting new products, as 78% of holiday shoppers in the Philippines say that they explore new products more during the holiday season compared with the rest of the year. In addition, in 2018, the Philippines had the fifth highest number of global users of all countries participating in holiday-shopping conversations on Facebook.
Discovery of new products has also become increasingly digitized – in 2018, the majority of people in the Philippines went online (85%) to discover gift ideas or browse for inspiration during the holiday season, followed by going in-store for inspiration (72%).
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