P&G and Shopee’s ‘Show Me My Home’ aims to make e-commerce more natural

Kim Dong Hyun, regional director, e-commerce for APAC Middle East and Africa at P&G says the concept originated from insights into the way people think and act when they are shopping.

“This campaign is designed to help consumers by making a digital platform more realistic. Our setup of different rooms creates an experience that enables shoppers to find what they need faster and easier. These rooms act as more natural categories that trigger remembering forgotten items and encourage a better shopping experience,” he says.

“For example, when a shopper browses the laundry aisle, they may pick up detergent and proceed to think about getting a fabric enhancer because of a natural association made within the laundry category. Facilitating these category adjacencies or associations makes the shopping experience more natural. We use this strategy in brick-and-mortar stores. We wanted to execute this strategy on an e-commerce platform,” adds Kim.

Shopee has built the P&G shop onto its platform specifically for P&G, but says that this more experiential approach to e-commerce is a trend it was already investing in, noting its Shopee Live and Shopee Feed functionalities.

Ian Ho, regional managing director at Shopee, says: “Even before the Covid-19 situation, we have observed that people want to do more than just shop online. Users are demanding greater engagement and social interaction while they shop on the platform. In light of the recent lockdowns in some of our markets, we have also observed an accelerated demand for greater engagement and social interaction on our platform.”

For P&G, speed-to-market is always a concern, with or without lockdown, but these innovations meet a customer need.

“The e-commerce industry continues to evolve quickly, especially while people are on lockdown. At P&G, we are continually trying new ways to personalize and engage our consumers online. Through Show Me My Home campaign, we entertain them with games, live stream and a live feed from Shopee. We also provide educational content to make it a more engaging experience. This trend came from our consumers’ evolving habits and practices. Everything we do starts and ends with our consumers. We understand their needs and wants so that we can continually evolve what she sees and how she shops. When we are in touch with our consumers, we build trust and strengthen our relationship,” adds Kim.

The merging of entertainment and commerce is something that e-commerce brands in Asia Pacific are leading the charge on. Driven by trends originally identified in China, major brands such as Alibaba, JD.com, Lazada, Shopee, Pomelo and Zalora are all using technology such as live streams to fuse entertainment with transactions.

Shopee’s Ho says: “We foresee that this trend is here to stay as more online shoppers see e-commerce platforms not as a purely transactional experience but as a source of entertainment.

“Therefore, our focus in 2020 is to continue to make online shopping more engaging and social. We will continue to innovate our collection of in-app games to bring users more fun and entertainment as well as foster deeper social interaction on Shopee Feed. Similarly, we will also continue to work closely with leading brands such as P&G who share the same vision to innovate the online shopping experience for all,” he adds.

The partnership aspect of this is key as many brands that are seeking to innovate may not be in a position to build projects like this, and scale quickly, without the help of e-commerce platforms. As many businesses look to quickly shift experiences and services online, partnerships like this could become more commonplace.