It’s no secret that the outbreak of COVID-19 and the start of Singapore’s “stay-at-home” order caused many residents to change the way they operate, by replacing in-person activities with virtual ones. As a result, many e-commerce websites have seen an increase in customers, as more Singaporeans switch to online shopping.
While brick-and-mortar stores have their benefits, online shopping comes with its own perks of cheaper prices due to lower operational costs and overhead. However, do all e-commerce sites provide the same great deals to their customers?
To find out, we explored how four of Singapore’s largest e-commerce platforms compare on price across 73 everyday products.
We collected the best selling products across different categories that were available on the top four e-commerce platforms in Singapore. The products included in this study were limited to items that were mutually available on all four sites.
We then refined our list of data so that each product shared the same quantity, weight, and/or model number to ensure that the data was being accurately compared. This process left us with 73 products spanning over seven different shopping categories.
Once the data was collected and sorted, we analysed who had the cheapest prices based on item and overall product category.
Key Findings
- Qoo10 and Amazon consistently have the lowest prices across categories, costing 10.97 per cent and 4.55 per cent less on average than their competitors
- Amazon dominates the household and food and drink categories, while Qoo10 dominates the electronics, games and puzzles, health, and literature categories.
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Smaller contenders seem to be the cost leaders
While Shopee and Lazada are the most popular e-commerce sites in Singapore, we found that they don’t actually offer the cheapest prices. Instead, our data suggests that the less prominent e-commerce sites, Qoo10 and new entrant Amazon, provide some of the best deals to customers.
Overall, Qoo10 had the cheapest prices on average out of all the e-commerce platforms we analysed, with 35 out of the 73 items being the cheapest. Prices were typically 10.97 per cent cheaper than average.
Amazon was the second cheapest platform, with 30 items that averaged 4.55 per cent cheaper than average. In contrast, Singapore’s most popular e-commerce site, Lazada, was 15.97 per cent more expensive on average for the categories we analysed.
Different platforms dominate different categories
While Qoo10 is generally the cheapest e-commerce site, there are still instances where you can find cheaper products on other platforms.
For instance, while Qoo10 was the price leader in the electronics, health, games and puzzles and literature category, with prices ranging from 14.23 to 28.42 per cent below average, Amazon specifically controlled the household and food & drink categories, with prices 10.14 to 11.08 per cent below average.
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Price comparison of popular items
| Item | Category | Amazon | Qoo10 | Shopee | Lazada |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dasani Drinking Water, 1.5L (Pack of 12) | Food & Drink | S$7.20 | S$10.16 | S$8.80 | S$7.60 |
| Kleenex Ultra Soft Bath Tissue, 200ct (Pack of 20) | Household | S$13.44 | S$14.72 | S$13.95 | S$13.44 |
| Monopoly Classic Game | Games & Puzzles | S$39.99 | S$29.16 | S$49.90 | S$39.80 |
| Philips 4200 32PHT4233/98 32-Inch Slim LED TV | Electronics | S$178.00 | S$135.19 | S$189.00 | S$160.00 |
| Blackmores Odourless Fish Oil, 400ct | Health | S$26.48 | S$14.54 | S$23.90 | S$47.99 |
| The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (Book) | Literature | S$25.73 | S$17.14 | S$25.80 | S$23.73 |
| Listerine Mouthwash Total Care, 1000ml | Self-Care | S$8.57 | S$11.08 | S$11.90 | S$11.90 |
Singapore’s e-commerce landscape
Looking forward, e-commerce platforms in Singapore will be looking to capitalise on this increase in online shopping activity.
While the current market leader seems to be Lazada and Shopee, boasting an average of 8,241,667 and 10,150,000 visitors per month respectively, Amazon’s rapid traffic growth may be an indicator that the global e-commerce giant may cause a shake-up as consumers move towards platforms that provide the same goods for less.
For instance, despite being the most recent entrant in Singapore’s e-commerce space, Amazon has aggressively climbed the ranks with a 61.02 per cent increase in traffic since March 2020. Not only that, as we noted earlier last year, Amazon also provides superior consumer experience in not just price but also in its Prime subscription (i.e. faster delivery and Amazon Prime Video).
Since Amazon is using Singapore as its foothold to jump deeper into the wider Southeast Asian (SEA) region, the fact that it is growing successfully while providing superior prices and delivery is an encouraging sign for the company’s future.
On the other hand, both Lazada and Shopee may need to find new ways to pass down savings to their customers or to provide different value-adding elements.
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Image credit: Bermix Studio on Unsplash
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