The Liberal Party has been releasing online ads lately promoting Noynoy Aquino merchandise. Obviously the money will be used to fund his campaign. Online fundraising was key in Barrack Obama’s win in the US. However the question is if it will really work in the Philippines? This post will analyze the current local e-commerce landscape and will end with a recommendation to politicians who want to ramp up funding from the internet in a more effective manner.
Noynoy Aquino Fund Raising Ad
Kudos to the Liberal Party
First, let me applaud the Liberal Party for being one of the few who seriously looked to the internet for fundraising. There are a lot of others who’ve tried but it obviously didn’t work as well since it’s not getting any traction from the media. Most of the time Internet Marketing is an afterthought for campaign teams which means it gets the least amount of budget (which is sad because they also have high expectations). For coming up with an online campaign that isn’t just about having the most number of friends, I tip my hat off to the New Media team of LP.
Reality Check
Based on various studies that you can find online or in print, the credit card penetration in the Philippines is less than 10%. Some even say that it’s around 5%. Regardless of the actual number the point is that the credit card users in the country is very low compared to the over-all population. Given also that Filipinos are generally terrible with handling personal finance, it’s safe to assume that a lot of that 5-10% aren’t able to properly control their debt and spending.
In terms of e-commerce, studies also show that only 4-6% of online Filipinos actually shop online. Majority of them also look to sites like Multiply, Sulit, and Ayos Dito. There’s no actual credit card transaction. Fulfillment is done via bank deposits or meet-ups (COD). You’re looking at a total market size of around 1M-1.5M online shoppers. How many of those 1M-1.5M are interested in politics?
Conclusion and Recommendations
The fact is that e-commerce is still at it’s infancy. Yes it would be good to be ahead of the curve but for the purpose of something as short term as campaign fund raising, politicians should come up with more integrated ways on how to sell merchandise. Online can be a factor but I think they should also have a physical store that actually distributes and sells the products. If this really isn’t possible, how about a caravan during sorties? It would be like a roving store which sells merchandise. This is good because you are selling to a captive market already. The people in the sorties are most probably fans already of the candidate. All that’s left is to convince them to shell out the cash to buy the merchandise (I don’t know how this impacts taxes though).
At this point in time, if they stick to just pure e-commerce, it won’t be enough to generate the kind of money that they need.
PS – Here’s an article I wrote on Internet Marketing advice for campaign teams. Check it out.
mobile commerce esp Gcash is getting stronger. Many of the sites in multiply and ebay phils accept smart money or gcash in their transactions. I would suppose there are a couple of millions which go through this channel.
There is a major reason why credit card penetration is very low in the phils and too long to discuss here but there is a silver lining and hopefully (kung di ma politika further and we get a better govt) this will improve in a year or two.
Thanks for the insight Maan!
Prevent from fraud !!!
Do not fall into their pool