Your Questions Answered- Live Commerce in Southeast Asia – Part 2

A few weeks back, we hosted our Unveiling Live Commerce in Southeast Asia event, which received great feedback. Led by our own Crystal, we distilled insights from our Live Commerce report into a fun session where we shared the market logic of the Live Commerce ecosystem along with insights into the different regions and key players.

In a poll, we asked participants why Jd.id was doing live commerce on TikTok. Interestingly, 41% of participants voted that Jd.id was doing it for cheap traffic, while 36% felt that it was to increase sales! You can read a quick recap of the event here.

We had a very interesting and heated discussion in the chat group, which was quite entertaining. We also received more than 20 questions during the event, all of which we did not have enough time to answer during the one-hour session. We took the time to go through all the questions and answer them for you.

The first part of the Q&A is here.

KOLs, Influencers, MCNs

13. Are KOLs in Southeast Asia open to finally using the revenue sharing model, or are they still very adamant to be paid as endorsers only?

We think revenue sharing is attractive when the revenue is significant enough. Not far from the difference between TikTok and Facebook – one is very committed to live commerce, while one is sticking with advertising.

14. What is your take for MCNs in Southeast Asia?

We have seen MCNs emerging in Southeast Asia too as a lot of Chinese companies use their experience in China to incubate KOLs. We think the key success factor for MCNs in Southeast Asia is not that different from China – the product sourcing ability like where they can get really good deals from really good brands.

15. Do you see MCNs from China trying to replicate their model in Southeast Asia?

Yes

16. KOLs in Southeast Asia are very dependent on video editing and pre-planning. I am still not sure KOLs will excel when they have to think on their feet without any script. Can you provide insights on this?

In live commerce, you will still need scripts for the products that you introduce. It is not like you can go live unprepared. Pre-planning is necessary and key to the success of live commerce. Don’t underestimate the hours top streamers spend on preparing before their live streams. 

Platforms 

17. What’s Shopee Live’s strategy? Decentralized like Douyin or centralized Taobao which led to a highly unbalanced ecosystem?

They are probably focusing on building their capabilities first in terms of videos as a product and recommendation algorithm. At the same time, they will wait and see which model works better in Southeast Asia and adjust. This is how Shopee did with ecommerce, payment, and even food delivery.

18. Do you think in the next few years, TikTok will take over Shopee in the e-commerce field?  How much of a threat is TikTok to Shopee, especially since Shopee also skews towards categories like fashion, beauty, etc.

This is a very interesting question which we think senior management at Shopee also spend a lot of time pondering 🙂

19. Biggest challenges and opportunities for TikTok Shop?

Opportunity is that if they can prove live commerce on TikTok works outside China, it will be a huge boost to their evaluation.

Challenge is that the ecosystems in different countries are at different stages. They need to figure out the strategy, organization structure, and the right talent to tackle these different markets differently. Bear in mind to succeed in ecommerce, you need a lot of local operations.

20. Would we know what conversion these platforms see ? Is it higher/lower/at par with traditional e-commerce?

In a natural state, the conversion should probably be higher. The problem is we are not in a natural state in this region as far as large platforms are concerned – traditional e-commerce runs on shopping festivals while live commerce is a series of flash sales. The Facebook ecosystem is very interesting though nobody has an industry wide understanding on the conversion.

21. Can you elaborate a bit about IG Live, not just Facebook.. and why it is not being explored here in the report? 

Because Instagram is part of Facebook(Meta), and we don’t see a difference in their strategies.

22. How do you see TikTok expanding into e-commerce in Southeast Asia? Do you see them as a competitor against more established e-commerce players like Lazada and Shopee?

Yes, they are a competitor. We definitely thinkmore investments from different platforms will push the ecosystem in the region to evolve.

23. What are the different strategies of key players in their approach to live commerce in Southeast Asia?

Refer to our Live Commerce report. You can get a copy here.

Demand End – consumers 

24. What demographic does live streaming work better on? What is the user profile like? Is there an age distribution?

Platforms like Shopee and TikTok work better with young audiences regardless of live or not. Facebook works with older audiences. We can always conduct detailed studies to figure out the exact numbers.