Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 502

Proceedings of the International Conference of Innovation in Media and Visual Design (IMDES 2020)

Hyper-Localization Within Shopee Marketplace

Anwar Fikri Abdullah1*Azlan Zainal1 Hanafi Mohd Tahir1 Muhammad Fikri Saidi
Othman1 Ahmad Khairul Azizi1 Nor 'Azizull Hakim Bin Nothamdani2
1
Department of Graphic Design & Digital Media, Universiti Teknologi MARA Cawangan Perak
2
Havas Immerse Sdn Bhd
*
*Corresponding author. Email: anwar575@uitm.edu.my

ABSTRACT
This paper is a preliminary study within Shopee Malaysia (shopee.com.my), Shopee Indonesia (Shopee.co.id) and
Shopee Singapore (shopee.sg) marketplace regarding hyper-localization content used by Shopee to conquer the South
East Asia e-commerce marketplace. Hyper-localization is not a new thing in the marketing world, but the way Shopee
used it in their platform is obviously structured and autonomous. This preliminary study used literature review, basic
visual analysis, and user interaction study to gather the primary data. The localization approach used by Shopee in new
media integrated elements like gamification and omni-channel approach should be discussed so other marketplace
platforms can learn this big secret to share the market fairly.

Keywords: hyper-localization, omni-channel marketing, multi-channel marketing, Shopee, marketplace

1. INTRODUCTION by Shopee to conquer the South East Asia e-commerce

marketplace.
Post COVID-19 has shown a massive destructive
economy of income to the nation and everyone. Most 2. LOCALIZATION NEXT LEVEL –
people lose their income tragically as bad as losing their ‘HYPER-LOCALIZATION’
job. One of the great deals in facing this challenge is to
generate your own income by venturing into business. Comprehensive local business could cater the
People had to do it to survive even though they had never meaning of their business with local story (geo-story).
done any businesses before. Local business is This local business should understand how local people
fundamental to begin with. In the digital marketing era, shop, adapt with their culture, and their trend interest,
e-commerce marketplace is a great choice. In choosing routine and favours throughout the region or the city
the right platform, we may ask, “which e-commerce truly within a certain timeframe (the data is not valid forever).
supports local businesses?”. All this data is “the local content” that local businesses
By the way, this is not a post COVID-19 paperwork must formulate and use as soon as possible. The hype
on how to counter post COVID-19 issues. This issue has nickname for this local content is called “hyper-localize”.
been raised to brief some opportunities that doing Hyper-localize takes different localization information
business can facilitate new sources of income through into the next level by providing personalization with
next level of localization. certain conditions or segments.

Localization refers to focus on a small, targeted 2.1 Localization Offering

community or geographical area. This model works on
two primary factors, “geography” and “time” [1]. Localization offering here is not about what the
business offers to customers, instead it is about what the
This model belongs to the fastest delivery service
consumers want from your product or service.
(time) and liquidity targeted geography being the tabula
Localization is not meant to inject national identity or
rasa of successful localized models [1]. Next, this paper
story into your product or service. National injection can
will show some preliminary studies within Shopee
be done, but carefully offering the suitable demand. For
Malaysia (shopee.com.my), Shopee Indonesia
offline businesses, business owners can provide local
(Shopee.co.id) and Shopee Singapore (shopee.sg)
demand and trends by providing recommendations and
marketplace regarding hyper-localization content used
personalization. As an example, coupon codes can be

Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press SARL.

This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 248
 Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research, volume 502

applied for online stores. Combination of these two 3.1 Campaign

retailers could provide customers with custom
promotions directly, offering a personal touch. These Shopee campaign key is to celebrate the country
content and product offerings will give the brand a strong festivals accordingly by following the official national
competitive advantage. After all, people buy from celebration. Other than official country festivals, Shopee
people, and if the business is listening to them, they will campaign includes local social media trending, social
be more likely to convert into buyers. community favour request, local feedback and Shopee
original Series Campaign (monthly celebrating campaign
2.2 Localization Market segment 1.1, 2.2, 3.3, 4.4, 5.5 etc.). Up to the day of this article
write-up, Shopee is organizing their 10.10 Campaign for
It is most challenging to convert Gen-Z into buyers. the year of 2020.
This generation is widely open to global perception, trend
and identity. Most Gen-Z are attracted to things they
thought they knew about and localization is something
that can capture their attention. Even though the market
segment does not depend on Gen-Z, it is worth capturing
their interest as early as possible since they are the
potential repeating customers in the new era of online
marketing.

2.3 Hyper-Localization Marketing

Figure 1 Shopee Malaysia current Campaign can be
According to [2] Singh and Keating (2018), hyper- seen in the big carousel header under the product search
localization identifies and localizes the data from the bar. Retrieved October 1, 2020, from
consumer pre-experience. This is reverse engineering of https://shopee.com.my/. Screenshot by author.
tabula rasa of experience. Hyper-localization marketer
acted as a strategist to create new experience without
allowing the local to feel the difference. Provided the
content is filled up with ordinary experience so customers
feel like they already knew it, while it being a new,
comfortable experience.

3. SHOPEE AND HYPER-LOCALIZATION

In 2020, you cannot reject online marketplace for
your business. Marketplace is a must have online
platform to grow and market your product thoroughly to Figure 2 Shopee Singapore current Campaign can be
customers. Shopee is one of the fastest growing online seen in the big carousel header under the product search
marketplaces in South East Asia [3]. bar. Retrieved October 1, 2020, from https://shopee.sg/.
Shopee has been in the market since 2015 and Screenshot by author.
launched into 7 different countries. They keep on
growing and penetrating each market with expandable Shopee campaigns are not standardized to every
hyper-localization through new culture, native language, country. Figure 1 and Figure 2 show us how the company
and different technology progression [3]. Shopee is like uses different campaign content based on geo target
a giant supermarket but has no physical store. Shopee is market trend.
an online marketplace selling physical and digital
products from all over the place by local or global 3.2 Logistic
independent sellers or authentic brand sellers (Shopee
Mall). Shopee localization setup is tremendously curated Shopee integrates local delivery service into their
for every country they venture in. Shopee has very great system with ‘Shopee Supported Logistic’ to ease the
support supplies for all their localization needs, either an delivery process on the seller’s end. No awkward
autonomous technology support using artificial decision needs to be made in terms of choosing a trusted
technology or people (manual) support team. Online delivery service for every country.
marketplace is a way to build seller trustworthiness
reputation and build up the company name and product
brand. Shopee hyper-localization injected segments can
be separated into five sections: Campaign, Logistic,
Products, Engagement and Partners.

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Table 1 Localization of Shopee Supported Logistic

with local delivery service.

Malaysia Shopee Supported Singapore Shopee

Logistic Supported
Logistic

Figure 5 Shopee Singapore Homepage showing nice

luxury or premium real image of product categories.
Retrieved October 1, 2020, from https://shopee.sg.
Screenshot by author.
3.3 Products
Products are listed by the local seller themselves While most e-commerce providers apply standard
where most products are made locally, and some are category icons on their platform in every country, Shopee
shipped from overseas. The localization can be seen in does it differently by appreciating local interest,
their product category and product image design. popularity item, language, and visual item.

3.4 Engagement
Shopee wants their potential customer to keep on
browsing the ‘Shopee Product Catalogue’ for a very long
time (better engagement). Shopee leverages engagement
with ‘Shopee Reward Gamification’. For each country,
Shopee rebranded and redesigned the game by
exclusively adapting the local native language and
visuals.

Figure 3 Shopee Malaysia Homepage showing standard Table 2 Localization of Shopee Rewards Gamification
product image with mono colour for their product image with local essence.
categories. Retrieved October 1, 2020, from
Malaysia Shopee Game Indonesia Shopee Game
https://shopee.com.my/. Screenshot by author.

Both games are identical in terms of gameplay, but each

game has local priority on graphic and language.

3.5 Partners
Figure 4 Shopee Indonesia Homepage showing
standard product image with native language for their Shopee officially partners with local prominent
product categories. Retrieved October 1, 2020, companies that feature authentic brands and are top
from https://shopee.co.id/. Screenshot by author. sellers in Shopee Mall. Shopee highlights the most
trending brand on the Shopee Mall Homepage. Shopee
also has logistic official partners (Shopee Supported
Logistics) in their integrated pickup-delivery system.

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Logistic

Engagement

Partners

Figure 6 Trending Brands in Shopee Malaysia are Omni channel approach is to deliver shopping
mainly brands of non-luxury products. Retrieved experiences across different channels to customers. It is
October 1, 2020, from https://shopee.com.my/. different from a multi-channel approach at least in terms
Screenshot by author. of subject and focus. Omni channel approach mainly
focuses on customer experience with different channels
but unified as one [5]. Meanwhile, multi-channel
approach focuses on product persuasion, unique selling
point, and value proposition and value added to increase
online presence with different channels that are treated as
separate businesses, so consumers can choose which
channel they prefer [4].
Shopee marketing team are expert in both
approaches. They practice both marketing approaches
seamlessly. Multi-channel approach and omni approach
Figure 7 Trending Brands in Shopee Indonesia with are systematically plugged in by the Shopee marketing
half of them are local brands. Retrieved October 1, team. They know how to integrate omni approach in their
2020, from https://shopee.co.id. Screenshot by marketing while injecting hyper-localization in the
author. marketing content. Hyper-localization in Shopee are
distributed along with the Shopee Omni Channel across
Different countries have different favourable brands; multiple platforms such as Shopee Website and Shopee
thus, sales trending is different for each country. Hyper- Mobile Apps to increase sales. They are also having
localization approach by Shopee cannot be done through internal channel like Shopee Game, and Shopee Ads to
manual guess. Some of the localization setup is increase engagement and loyalty. Nowadays, omni-
autonomous, and others are curated (graphic design) channel approach is an ordinary way for big companies
based on the data compiled through the way customers to collect more sales and collect user data in one shot for
make their choice (preferences), duration of customers their business. These data are gathered and studied by the
using the Shopee interface (engagement), data from company to improve their sales & services. However,
previous campaigns, and customers’ complaints and Shopee does it differently where they provide seamless
requests . These hyper-localization data are gathered experience to consumers by injecting hyper-localized
based on customer behaviour study [3]. content into different sections like campaign, products,
logistic, engagement and partners within the Shopee
4. HYPER-LOCALIZATION AND OMNI omni-channel platform. This approach makes consumers
CHANNEL APPROACH IN SHOPEE. feel like they are not being controlled, instead they feel
free to browse as if the site has already known their
Unified customer centric business model but have expectations [6]. Below are the summarized discussions
different channel to distribute the experience is called for each platform in Shopee omni-channel approach.
“omni channel approach [4].
4.1 Shopee Mobile App
Table 3: Selected Shopee Omni Channel Approach
Shopee mobile app and Shopee website are the main
Injected Shopee Shopee Shopee Shopee
Website Mobile Ads Game core. They are identical, but Shopee app is not a
Hyper- responsive mobile web version of the Shopee website, it
Apps
localization is a different platform with identical user experience but
Campaign different levels of management. Shopee puts their layman
(ordinary consumer) user experience as mobile first then
desktop, thus the app version has more interactive
Products features for layman than the web version. User may
purchase products through this platform and get

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notification about shipping. Seller may update products separate purposes to leverage the Shopee platform.
and received sale notification. Shopee multi-channel marketing is purposely used to
attract new customers and new sellers, while the Shopee
4.2 Shopee Website omni channel marketing is curated for existing customers
and sellers to keep on engaging in the Shopee loop.
By default, Shopee Website shows a basic consumer
marketplace. Users can search for a product, add the AUTHORS’ CONTRIBUTIONS
product to cart and make final payment seamlessly. It is
similar with every other marketplace. However, Shopee This paper is contributed to the understanding of
website has a great feature called ‘Seller Centre’. Seller successful marketing approach by Shopee (an
Centre is a dashboard for sellers to manage their business. outstanding online marketplace in South East Asia).
In short, the Shopee website facilitates both consumers in Simple explanation about localization and omni-channel
purchasing a product and sellers in managing product approach available in this paper. This successful
availability, sales, and business insight. Although approach report could contribute others online marketer;
everything you can do on the Shopee website can also be thus, they can prepare to consider this next-level
done on the Shopee app, the web version is advantageous approach in their online marketing.
with the advanced features for advanced sellers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
4.3 Shopee Ads
I want to acknowledge that website screenshot in this
Shopee ads is an in-house advertising scheme paper is basically publish to public by Shopee
provided for sellers; it is built in the mind that the seller marketplace through respective access date, while logo in
needs something to boost their sales among other this paper is the copyright of respective owner by Shopee
competitors in house. This is where Shopee ’reads’ the Partner. I do not own this graphic material. The
local content data provided by the seller to boost the sales screenshot and logo are for education purpose only.
of their product locally. Shopee ads is different than other
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