According to a recent study conducted by Polling Indonesia in collaboration with the Indonesian Internet Providers Association (APJII), 56% of internet users in the country have never made e-commerce transactions and 53.4% of them never visited any e-commerce sites or platforms.
Meanwhile, according to APJII, internet adoption in Indonesia had reached 64.8% of the total population of 264 million last year. This number represents a 10.12% increase from 54.8% penetration recorded in 2017.
According to the study, 18% of internet users who have never shopped online prefer to shop at the store because they can get the products directly. Meanwhile, 12.2% of them didn’t know how to use e-commerce apps, 9.5% of them worry that the items they purchased wouldn’t be delivered and 9% of the respondents felt that payment transfers are too difficult for them.
The survey was conducted from March to April 2019, involving 5.900 people across the country and using a probability multistage random sampling technique.
On the flipside, with 171 million people already connected to the internet, Indonesia represents one of the largest online populations in the world. And 75 million of them have already made e-commerce transactions.
The survey also showed the four e-commerce sites with the most visits are Shopee (11.2%), Bukalapak (8.4%), Lazada (6.7%) and Tokopedia (4.3%). Clothing is the type of item most often purchased online (14.6%) followed by books (4%), accessories and electronic goods (3%), and bags (2.9%), according to this survey.
However, survey results have to be taken with a grain of salt, because results can vary and sometimes are at odds with other metrics.
If you look at website visits and app rank statistics from sites like Similarweb or App Annie, Tokopedia and Lazada often score above Shopee and Bukalapak in Indonesia.
The degree of e-commerce adoption in Indonesia is also reported differently by different institutions.
Eshopworld’s Indonesia e-commerce insight report from 2018 suggests there were only 31.65 million e-commerce users in Indonesia in 2018. It expects the number to increase to reach 43.89 million in 2022, a much more conservative figure. One difference can be in how the scope of e-commerce is defined. The conservative figure cited by Eshopworld defines e-commerce as only applying to physical goods sold B2C whereas the consumer survey by APJII may include a broader scope.