Live commerce is the ‘secret sauce’ for brands and businesses to succeed online, said Ganesh Kumar Bangah (right in pic) who is Executive Chairman of two growth business groups: Australian Securities Exchange-listed Netccentric Limited and Commerce.Asia.
“In recent years, consumers have been gravitating towards social media which now plays an important part within their lives, whether it’s Facebook, Instagram or TikTok,” said Ganesh. “Hence, the formula for online success is for brands and businesses to sell products on these platforms through live commerce, a trend that has and continues to accelerate due to the pandemic.”
In Malaysia and elsewhere throughout the world, live commerce continues to transform the retail industry. It is the powerful combination of video streaming and e-commerce to shape consumer shopping habits from the comfort of their homes and devices.
At the forefront of this consumer trend in this part of the world are Ganesh’s two growth business groups. Netccentric is today synonymous with being ‘Asia’s Pioneering Digital Growth Ecosystem’, while Commerce.Asia is Southeast Asia’s ‘All-in-One e-Commerce Ecosystem’ for businesses to succeed in selling online. These two groups combined have over 15,000 influencers with more than 100,000 e-commerce sellers that transacted over USD850millin in gross sales volume in 2020.
Ganesh was speaking at the RESHAPE Leadership and Experience Summit 2021 held recently and organised by Insider, a global company with 25 offices across five continents known for helping marketers “deepen brand love with individualised customer experiences”.
The event’s keynote speaker was former President of the United States Barack Obama, with the support of leading global brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Booking.Com, PepsiCo, IKEAN, Unilever, GSK, Puma, HSBC and Singapore Airlines.
At Ganesh’s end, his group’s Nuffnang Live Commerce has been an overwhelming success since its launch last year in turning engagements between influencers and followers into revenue and sales. Essentially fusing e-commerce with livestreaming creates a powerful network effect when showcasing influencers promoting products and services.
He cited a case of a bedding company customer whose sales soared from RM50,000 per month to RM2 million per month after 18 months, first by outsourcing its e-commerce operations, before Commerce.Asia charted and executed on the live commerce roadmap for consumers to know and become more emotionally engaged with the brand and its products.
“In the new normal, it’s not enough for getting consumers to you through performance marketing alone. Brands now need to go to where the consumers are,” emphasised Ganesh. “Live commerce is an effective way to sell and it’s for everybody and not just the big brands.”
He cited the case of AEON Retail (Malaysia) which recently ran a campaign with Nuffnang Live Commerce for the upcoming Mooncake Festival.
AEON Retail consists of two retails players namely AEON Co. (M) Bhd. and AEON BIG (M) Sdn Bhd. The former is a leading General Merchandise Stores (GMS) cum Supermarket chain in Malaysia, with 28 AEON MALLs, 34 AEON Outlets, 10 MaxValu Prime Supermarkets across the country. AEON BIG, meanwhile, currently operates 21 hypermarkets throughout Malaysia. Guided by its “customer first” philosophy, the group’s acute understanding of the target market needs and aided by optimal product-mix, continuously surpasses consumer expectations while delighting them with memorable experiences.
In this case, AEON wanted to take its marketing activities and customer experience few notches higher and succeeded tremendously: The combination of AEON and Nuffnang Live Commerce has turned out to be an extremely powerful one. Hosted by Nuffnang’s influencers, AEON further delighted consumers with enticing promotions such as exclusive live prices, free shipping, giveaways and also gifts with purchase.
At the time of writing, the live commerce campaign has been a huge success with thousands of Malaysians viewing and placing their orders through AEON Malaysia’s Retail Facebook page.
“To cut a long story short, we have developed a system to enable these sellers to automate the process from the point of purchase. If they want to buy a product, they just click ‘+1’ to purchase, or ‘+2’ for two products. Before Nuffnang Live Commerce, it was a manual process with private messages to make transactions,” said Ganesh.
“Now with Nuffnang Live Commerce, the brands and businesses are empowered to take advantage of a system that captures all orders while integrating them right down to the warehouse so that deliveries can be made seamlessly and efficiently,” he concluded.
Note: This article was contributed by SGM Consulting for Malaysiakini.
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