Younger Shoppers Help Drive Indonesia's Ecommerce Boom

High percentage of young people online drives ecommerce

December 8, 2016 | Retail & Ecommerce

Digital commerce in Indonesia is having explosive growth. According eMarketer’s August 2016 forecast, the country’s audience of digital buyers will grow by 20% or more through 2019, eventually swelling to more than 60 million buyers. One of the biggest drivers of this strong growth in ecommerce is rising internet penetration among the country’s younger shoppers, who tend to be much more active online buyers than older users.

A 2016 study of Indonesian consumers’ online habits, conducted by telecommunications association Asosiasi Penyelenggara Jasa Internet Indonesia, highlights how internet penetration in the country is skewed toward younger consumers. The findings revealed that internet penetration is more than 75% among consumers in the 10- to-24- and 25- to-34-year-old age groups. In contrast, internet penetration among the next-oldest age group (those between 35 and 44) was 20 percentage points lower.

This skew in internet penetration among younger consumers is linked with digital shopping. The highest percentage of digital buyers in Indonesia are from Indonesia’s 18 to 34 age segment, according to a June 2015 Visa study of the demographic profile of digital buyers in the country.

As Indonesia’s online retailers think about how to boost their revenue among this growing audience of ecommerce shoppers , courting young consumers seems a vital component of a successful marketing strategy.