Today’s consumers are spending more on things meaningful to their ‘life, health and happiness’, says Siam Piwat CEO Chadatip Chutrakul
Consumers are spending more on things “that are meaningful to their life, health, and happiness,” Chadatip Chutrakul, CEO of Bangkok-based retail mall developer Siam Piwat, said at Fortune ’s Southeast Asia 500 Summit in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Key points
- “It’s not so much about whether you have more products or technology… customers are looking for a brand that they trust.” Online, social media and influencers are pushing consumers to develop relationships with brands faster.
- Retailers across Asia are trying to find new ways to boost sales, whether it’s by giving shoppers more reasons to visit a retail location, or by using new technologies to reduce friction for customers, shortening the gap between attention and sales.
- “[In the past], consumers built a relationship with a brand over [a span of] five years, but that cycle has been cut down to a couple of months now, because people start to adhere to a brand identity very quickly,” Saemin Ahn, managing partner at Rakuten Capital, the venture capital arm of Japanese conglomerate Rakuten Group, said.
“So besides shopping, we [also try to] offer everything else.” Malina Ngai, CEO of global drug and beauty chain AS Watson, agreed that today’s consumers need a reason to choose one particular retailer over another.
Additional details
- Scheduled to open in 2029, the project will include green spaces and health and wellness facilities alongside shops, residences, offices and hotels.
- In February, Rakuten Ichiba—the company’s online marketplace—partnered with Google via the YouTube Shopping affiliate program, which allows viewers to tap ‘View Products’ during YouTube videos and navigate straight to Rakuten Ichiba’s webpage to make a purchase.
- “If we know that they spend about 56 seconds on this aisle, and they couldn’t find the product they need, we would have to improve how we arrange our products, put up signages, and work with our suppliers to make it easier for customers to make decisions,” she said.
- “Shopping malls in Thailand—and I think in Asia—are like a second home to customers,” Chutrakul explained.
- “In Rakuten Ichiba, there’s about 40,000 to 50,000 merchants that we have to keep happy, and those happy merchants keep the users happy,” Ahn explained.
How this summary was made: extractive summary — built from the sources' own reporting. It is drawn only from the reporting of the sources listed below — read the originals for full detail. How we summarize →
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