We
obviously have seen branded products and high-end items being sold
online by large e-commerce providers in almost every part of the world
that can support acceptable Internet speed. Here in the Philippines, we
suffer from the two outstanding issues that hamper the otherwise
explosive growth of e-commerce namely, acceptance of payment from both
the buyer and the seller
and
the
expensive cost of shipping. The thing is, online products can be
lower compared to Mall or Store prices only if the delivery or shipping
cost is kept to a minimum. By buying a product with a higher price
value, translating to a bigger savings but having the weight or volume
literally light or preferably less than 2 kilos, is the sweetest spot in
e-commerce purchase for any buyer. An obvious example of this would be
electronic gadgets, which can give a buyer as much as several thousands
of pesos in savings while incurring only less than two hundred pesos in
delivery cost.
So
what if the product being offered has the opposite characteristics
meaning has a rather low price but very, very heavy in weight. This then
should not even be considered in e-commerce. So what happens then when
several Rice and
Cooking
gas dealers decided to go digital and offer their product online? The
catch is the dealer’s price doesn’t have huge savings for the customers,
are very heavy such that if delivered by standard courier provider will
be more expensive than the cost of the product itself and the customers
are used to paying via cash-on-delivery (COD). An interesting
discussion and problem solving exercise then comes to play.
To
give some context, these dealers are your ordinary merchants found in
various wet markets in Metro Manila. We have encountered such
entrepreneur in Pasig, the other in Paranaque and the most recent one
was from Las Pinas wet market. All of them wanted to increase their
sales and expand their market, but with the current product that they
have, geographical presence and reach is quite limited.
To
say the least, a customized approach was developed so that our dealers
of rice and cooking gas could open their own online store through www.bigbenta.com,
get confirmed transaction orders in selected areas, have their products
delivered and collect their payment via COD. At the time of writing, I
suspect that they could probably be the first online store of rice and
cooking gas in the history of the e-commerce in the Philippines. Talk
about taking digital entrepreneurship on the grass root level!
A blog written by Mr. Charlie Fong
BigBenta Marketplace
is the only e-commerce platform in the Philippines that features free
classified ads (buy and sell), online stores, and service bookings.
Through these platforms, it aims to help the Filipino entrepreneur and
MSMEs use the internet to grow their business
Picture Sources: Freepik.com
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