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1.2 Case Selection: Shopee
Shopee, which was first launched in Singapore by its parent company Sea, has make a break-through with 15 million downloads and become the lead in the field of e-commerce since it made its appearance in Taiwan back in 2015 (Ciou, 2018). As the survey from MIC shows, the top-three of most downloaded shopping apps in Taiwan are Shopee for 48.7%, momo for 26.7%, and PChome 24h for 18.6% (“The Survey of Online Shopping II,” 2019). Despite of the good performance, Shopee believes that the next step is to include features such as social networking, original contents, gaming experiences, and interactions so as to create users’ stickiness toward the platform (Xiao, 2019). With the increasing popularity of the internet usage nowadays, users’ stickiness is to describe the total amount of time a person would spend on an online platform:
overall, the longer a user stays on the platform, the stickier it is (Lin, 2018). Although prevailing all the competitors, the results of two hundred million minutes of total weekly usage for each member means that a mobile user would only spend 11 minutes every day in average on Shopee (Huang, 2019). In comparison, according to Global Web Index, Taiwanese averagely spend 112 minutes on social media every day (“The Internet Use in Each Country,” 2019). And the reason why Shopee hope to improve users’ stickiness is they found out that the longer consumers stayed on the platform, the better chances that they would make more orders. Shopee claims that their data suggest consumers whom spend over an hour on the platform a day will make a lot more purchases than the ones whom stay for less than 15 minutes (Chen, 2019).
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Moreover, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence and deep-learning technologies, Shopee is attempting to provide each consumer with different recommended items and homepage information based on the needs and preferences (“The Trend of E-Commerce,” 2019). According to Joyce Yang, the Commercial Director of Shopee Taiwan, e-commerce in 2019 is not just an app for online shopping but a new media platform with features of social media that can satisfy the needs of their consumers and also increase stickiness toward the app (Xiao, 2019). Also, Chris Feng, the Chief Executive Officer of Shopee Taiwan, had claimed that Shopee has always been focusing on the social aspect of shopping (Cher, 2015). As stated in the official YouTube channel of SHOPEE Singapore (2016), “Shopee is a mobile-app-first social marketplace where everyone can browse, shop, and sell.” And, to be exact, social marketplaces are the e-commerce platforms with social media features which can attract more consumers and lead to users’ stickiness (Chaney, 2014; “What Major Benefits a Social Marketplace Can Offer To An E-Business,” 2019; “Why You Should Consider Building A Social Marketplace For Your E-Business,” 2019).
Some examples of the newly developed social marketplace features on the Shopee Taiwan app are: subscriptions, chats, posts, games, quizzes, and live streams.
First, the subscription systems encourage users to follow their friends, families, and the shops they are interested in to keep up with the latest promotions and products (Xiao, 2019) (see Figure 1). Second, the chatrooms allow consumers to have conversations with the shop owners to learn more about products or solve their problems as soon as possible (Wang, 2019) (see Figure 2). Third, the posts on the new feature “Shopee Feed”
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help users to gain more information of the subscribed shops, promotion deals, and current trends (Cheng, 2019) (see Figure 3 and 4). Forth, with the small games on the app such as “Shopee Shake” and “Shopee Catch,” users can easily receive Shopee Coins or voucher codes to use in their next orders (Xiao, 2019) (see Figure 5). Fifth, the quiz of “Shopee Golden Mind” invites all users to participate at the same time every weekday and has reached the scale of a mid-size mobile game (Ciou, 2019) (see Figure 6). Lastly, consumers can directly interact with shop owners or internet celebrities and place orders of the products they see on the live stream videos on “Shopee LIVE” (Ciou, 2019) (see Figure 7).
Fig. 1. Subscriptions Fig. 2. Chats
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Fig. 3. Posts Fig. 4. Game 1 Fig. 5. Game 2
Fig. 6. Quizzes Fig. 7. Live Streams
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Additionally, the navigation app Google Maps has been considered to be turning into a type of social media since it released its new features of creating and sharing lists of favorite places (Yang, 2017). Google Maps users can also comment and upload pictures of stores to share their experiences and opinions just like what people do on any other regular social media (“Eight New Functions of Google Maps,” 2019). The American sportswear brand Nike has also integrated social media features into its app, Nike+ Run Club, and encouraged users to check-in in different places all around the world and share their mileages, photos, and running routes (Zhao, 2017; Zheng, 2018).
Moreover, a technology company called Escapex has been assisting celebrities to create their own social app to interact with their fans outside of traditional social media (Cheng, 2019). Apparently, more and more app related business, including Shopee Taiwan, have been trying to integrate more social media related features on their platforms and turn themselves into social marketplaces in order to engage their consumers.
Furthermore, social media features which could meet consumers’ expectations are especially being put into consideration by shopping apps nowadays.