Indonesia e-commerce landscape: key players and trends

Let’s start with the scale of the retail market, in comparison to other selected Asia Pacific countries

total retail sales in 2018 in indonesia china japan india south korea australia thailand vietnam

Since this post was written in Jun 2019, I wrote another post with the latest information about Indonesia e-commerce landscape Jun 2020 here.

1. Indonesia retail e-commerce is still less than 5% of the country total retail sales

Retail e-commerce penetration in Indonesia and selected Asia Pacific countries 2018

Below is the actual size of retail e-commerce in Indonesia and selected Asia Pacific countries in 2018. China retail e-commerce sales ($1526 billions) is too big that I have to exclude it from the graph so that we can see other countries.

Retail e-commerce sales 2018 ($B) japan south korea india australia indonesia thailand malaysia vietnam

2. Given the much smaller base, Indonesia retail e-commerce is expected to grow at double digit in the next few years

Retail Ecommerce Sales and growth rate in Indonesia 2019 2022

Indonesia is amongst the fastest growing e-commerce market in APAC region.

e-commerce sales growth in 2018 in indonesia china india and other apac countries

3. More than 2/3 of the Indonesian retail e-commerce happens on mobile devices

Retail Mcommerce Sales indonesia 2018 2022

4. Digital buyer penetration in Indonesia is significantly lower than China, Australia, Japan and Korea

digital buyer penetration 2018 in japan australia china south korea indonesia and india

5. Similar to retail e-commerce, digital travel sales in Indonesia is expected to grow at double digit in the next 3 years

Digital Travel Sales and growth rate indonesia 2018 2022

6. Tokopedia, Bukalapak, and Lazada are the top 4 e-commerce sites/apps in Indonesia from traffic point of view

Data is from iprice

top 8 e-commerce sites in indonesia jan 2019 v2

7. Similar to other Asian countries, social commerce is big in Indonesia

Data from Asia social commerce report from PayPal is below:

More than 80% of merchants surveyed in Indonesia stated that they are selling through platforms, mainly through Facebook/Instagram.

merchants selling through social platforms in asia 2018 v2
merchant social commerce platforms 2018 v2

Many more merchants (83%) are hoping to use social platforms to sell and hope that more consumers will see social commerce as legitimate businesses.

potential adoption amongst current non users
social commerce as legitimate business

8. Digital purchases from consumers in Indonesia are more influenced by digital ads than in many other countries

internet user in selected countries whoes digital purchases influenced by digital ads

Thanks,

Chandler

5 comments

  1. Hi I am Kwon from Korea.
    I am interested in e-commers of Asian countries
    and your article helped me a lot. Nice article and Thanks a lot.

  2. Hi chandler, thanks for writing this article. I’m researching Indonesia’s ecommerce landscape and this has helped alot. Thanks, Antonia

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