Shopee Review

Shopee is an Asian startup based in Singapore, like most Asian unicorns. Shopee is what Amazon is in Western countries: one of the most popular e-commerce slash marketplaces online. The particularity of Shopee is the low prices you can get when ordering from the platform. Products from China are cheap, but in Europe, we don’t really know how cheap they truly are.

Even by Vietnamese standards, Shopee is a very cheap solution to buying products. Millennials are very fond of this addictive way to save money. It is so hooking that entire families with different accounts can be stuck to their phone screens before midnight to get some special discounts. That is how powerful the Shopee value proposition is.

Typology of products

Shopee is selling all kinds of products, from food to clothes to toys, and even cars and bikes! But 80% of Shopee’s products are regular or cheap amenities, the sort of goods that you can order multiple times a month, like baby diapers, or amenities that can be bought for little money, like bedsheets. Almost everything that you need can be found on Shopee.

Average prices

Shopee is famous for selling cheap products, meaning they are good at selling products under 400,000 vnd or 20 euros. In Asia, the culture is very different, since people don’t care much about the longevity of products; they just care that the product works and that it is not too expensive to acquire. If it breaks, just buy another cheap one. That’s why Shopee won’t be the place to buy your TV or your family’s refrigerator, for example.

Interface

What differentiates Shopee from other local e-commerce sites such as Lazada or Tiki is the user experience, or ease of use, if I may say so. It starts with an easy-to-use website from the front to the back end. followed by great customer support for both sellers and customers, and how easy it is to send back goods if they do not fit the description somehow.

Promotions

Shopee has tons of promotions; it’s almost a given that you can find a shop that has your product and free shipping, plus some form of discount that will make it impossible for a normal retailer to compete. The thing is, in Vietnam, most people were already used to making extra money by buying and selling products. It is almost part of the culture, so doing it online to make some extra money is just a continuation.

Special deals

Now, special deals are basically like charity. Tons of products in limited quantity can be bought for 1,000 vnd (4 cents of an euro). These are products that would normally cost maybe 5 to 10 euros in Europe. These are products like toilet paper, clothes, toys, etc. If you add free shipping on top of that, you can basically get free products delivered at your door. True story: sometimes the shipper won’t even bother collecting the money; they will just throw your package into their truck and drive to their next customer.

Verdict

10 out of 10

Shopee somehow brings more value than Amazon. If the strengths of Amazon are variety and speed with incredible logistics, the strengths of Shopee, in my opinion, are prices and experience.

Shopee, like many successful startups, uses dopamine and gambling psychology to hook their customers. There is a sense of randomness and surprise in what will be in the flash sale and if you’ll be able or not to get the promotion in time. You have to compete with other customers.

For buying regular goods, the reflex has become to check if you can get it for less money on Shopee, and 99% of the time you will.