I WAS a panelist during the 18th Franchise Conference yesterday and we talked about how a business can be grown using non-traditional ways.
During the question and answer portion, one participant asked what hinders electronic commerce adoption by consumers in the country.
According to the Yahoo – ACNielsen Net Index 2009 and 2010 studies, e-commerce in the country is pegged as an activity only of three percent of Internet users.
If one pegs at the low side of things, that three percent can just be no more than one million Filipinos. However, I would like to believe that the question needs to be qualified further.
When you ask people whether they have done e-commerce transactions, the first thing that comes to mind is online transaction using a credit card.
They may have not considered their shopping in sites like AyosDito or Sulit.com.ph, where most payments are done in person. They may also not have considered transactions through email such as signing up in events or seminars. These transactions can also be qualified as e-commerce activities.
Lately, I noticed that some Facebook friends started selling items using the photo album feature, uploading images of products into the site and tagging friends to alert them of the items.
This option will be more popular as Facebook has already reached 93 penetration penetration among Internet users in the country, according to comScore. This is also the highest penetration for the social network in any market worldwide.
Facebook has become more masa too. I was caught by surprise earlier this week when I saw celebrity Vice Ganda’s Facebook page as having the highest number of fans in the Philippines.
Following him is President Noynoy Aquino while Sen. Manuel Villar is in third place.
If you ask me, I’d like to believe that e-commerce in the country is higher than three percent of the Internet population. Hopefully, future studies will take these into account to give us a better grasp of how the activity is growing in the country.
Tomorrow, I will be one of the speakers in the Philippine Association of Administrative Secretaries – Cebu Chapter Conference and will give a talk on “Making Technology Work for You.” I definitely look forward to this and hope to catch up with more Sun.Star Cebu readers.
(http://digitalfilipino.com)