Online Shopping Will This Be The End of Shopping Malls in the Philippines

Online shopping becomes more and more popular among Filipinos, especially among young adults. The two biggest E-commerce platforms Shoppee and Lazada cater to the online shopping needs of all class types in the Philippines whether you are from class A or class D. 

Whatever items you think to buy just head to their website or by using their mobile app, type it in the search bar. Most probably you will get the item that you're looking for.

These e-commerce platforms provide convenience and safety in exchange for a little amount of delivery fee. They are also accepting payments using digital wallets like GCash.

The majority of sellers shift to online platforms to cater to their clients during the pandemic because everyone is locked in their own homes.  The fear of contracting Covid19 is attributed to the success of online shopping in the Philippines. Seller ditches their brick-and-mortar store due to government policy in the Philippines with regards to the capacity of the store resulting in lower sales and inability to pay rent of their stall. 

There are several advantages when it comes to online shopping, and here at Shoppiverse PH, we collated some of them to help you consider shopping online.

1. Convenience

In Metro Manila, people are so busy with everything from work to home activities. A whole day end in just a blink of an eye.  We can say that time flies so fast. One of the benefits that bring by online shopping is convenience, why go to shopping malls and grocery stores if you can buy them online?  When you shop online you don't need to spend money on fares. Avoid traffic jams and most especially the never-ending long lines when paying for the items you bought.

2. Time-Saving

The daily commute is quite not good in Metro Manila, you will spend a lot of time traveling than buying the items in malls themselves. And this is a complete waste of time, instead of doing something more valuable you are wasting your time commuting and being caught in traffic jams. While shopping online you can do it anywhere and anytime without these hassles.

The rise of gasoline, it impacts the cost of travel necessary just going into the malls as compared to the much cheaper delivery fee added when you purchase online.

3. Better Deals

We Filipinos loved to hunt for discounted items. Cheaper but with good quality items. I remember when I was a child we go to Divisoria just to buy gifts when the Christmas season is arriving. Before the opening of classes, my mother also rushes there to buy notebooks and other school supplies.   

Who loves better deals? online shopping platforms can provide you with that. All you need to do is used some filters and voila you will now see what are better deals available. A simple click of a button can help you compare each item to which one is far better in terms of quality and price.

4. Safety

The covid19 pandemic has changed our behavior of people towards shopping. We prioritize our safety over the urge to go out just to buy our needs.  Delivery and Courier service application also grows so every item will be delivered to our doorstep. This changes everything and it comes to the realization that it is possible to shop and be safe at the same time. 

5. Online Payment

Since there is widespread use of digital wallets that enable anyone with a mobile phone to pay for anything online. It becomes easier for the shopper to buy anything online instead of going to the bank and setting up their online account they use these digital wallets instead. This also gives confidence to shoppers when it comes to the security of paying online.

In summary:

In the post-pandemic era, there will be an absolute decline in mall-goers. Even though the government has lowered the alert level to 1 there is still an observable significant drop in mall goers. For reason that they already experienced the benefits and advantages of shopping online.  

But there are also people who would still prefer to do the traditional methods of shopping. Whatever the reason is it all boils down to the confidence of the shopper on buying online or buying in the store itself.

Shopping Malls will not die today or in the future instead what will happen is they will add additional channels to sell their products online. Some of the stores might include a digital store with online payment to cater to much broader customers.