Amid this shrinking consumer confidence, people tend to focus on fulfilling their primary needs, but this does not necessarily mean that they no longer want to spend money on tertiary lifestyle needs.

Various promotional campaigns organized by e-commerce platforms have served to fill this gap on tertiary spending. These campaigns, offering various promos, become a chance for people to fulfill their wants, comprising tertiary spending for digital gadgets, fashion items and electronic goods, among other items, while still making sure that they can still meet their needs during the pandemic.

Take Indonesian e-commerce platform Blibli’s recent promotional program Bagi-Bagi Hepi (Joyful Sharing) to mark its ninth operational anniversary as an example.

Blibli recorded a threefold increase in customer’s tertiary spending for lifestyle products during its week-long celebration in July from sales figures of such products in June.

“This shows that our customers feel increasingly more comfortable doing online shopping, making use of the anniversary promotions to fulfil their lifestyle needs after postponing their purchases in waiting for such promotions to happen,” said Blibli business development vice president Cindy Kalensang, who also leads the Bagi-Bagi Hepi anniversary program.

“Therefore, we collaborated with so many lifestyle and gadget brands, as well as electronic products that have a strong appeal with our customers.”

In terms of home appliances, customers also look for high-quality domestic products like room-cleaning robots, cooking utensils and cupboards.

During the pandemic, with a lot of people looking to exercise to maintain their physical and mental health, Blibli also recorded an increase in bicycle and bike accessories sales.

The significant increase in the sales of lifestyle items during a shorter period of time proves that customers wait for the right opportunities, such as Blibli’s promotional program, to buy the lifestyle goods they want to conduct their leisure activities.

Customers, however, do not only benefit from the promotional program to buy lifestyle products but also their household needs to stockpile on these items for the next two months or so.

The evidence for this lies in the BlibliMart category, comprising mainly fast-moving customer goods, which also showed a threefold increase in staple needs during the weeklong program compared to the sales in June.

The BlibliMart category sold more than 50,000 bags of soybean sauce, 70,000 cans of milk as well as 30,000 1-liter cartons of milk during the event.

Products from the health and beauty category as well as child care category have also recorded a threefold sales increase within the week from the entire month before.

Apparently, even without such promotional programs, e-commerce platforms in Indonesia are enjoying positive growth during the pandemic, a time when people are avoiding going out of their houses, which prompts them to shop online.

About 30 percent of respondents in a survey by management consulting company Redseer said in May that they were new to online marketplaces, while 40 percent said they would keep using e-commerce platforms after the pandemic was over.

The report further projected that Indonesia’s e-commerce would sustain positive growth, with an expected 50 percent year-on-year growth to reach US$35 billion this year from $23 billion in 2019.

All the statistics mentioned above demonstrates that Indonesian customers have continued their primary and tertiary spending even amid financial austerity measures taken amid the pandemic. They have also increasingly been conducting their shopping activities online.

Moving forward, Blibli commits itself to continuously innovating and expanding its services within its ecosystem to give customers a more comprehensive shopping experience.

Blibli will continue to present its innovations and services as concrete actions to turn its primary corporation business strategy, which is to put customer satisfaction first, into reality.

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