A few months ago, a friend of mine, who worked as a vintage clothing seller contacted me. First, I think it's just a usual catch up, but he wants more. He asked my service to conduct a small research about potential customer behaviour in Indonesia. He needs it because, for years, his customers mostly come from developed countries like the USA, Japan, and UK. Now, as his eye turned closer to home, he wanted to dig deeper into the rhyme of his potential customer.
He wanted to understand a communication strategy that can resonate with the Indonesian vintage clothing market. The result is already in our hands. I have presented it and we’ve discussed it at length. Through that discussion, we came to a shared agreement: that part of the insights drawn from this research deserves to be opened up and shared with a wider audience.
“These are good and relevant findings. If there’s anything that can be shared with the (seller) community, that would be valuable,” he said.
In other words only a small portion of the research will be made public. What will be shared are the collective barriers faced by nearly all online sellers.
Research Method and Result
In this research, I interviewed 6 potential customers whose profiles are defined and agreed between me and my friend as a client. I engaged in an in-depth interview with them to know their behavior-pattern, aspiration, trigger, pain point, and pricing preferences.
Based on my findings, there is a collective barrier that should be faced by Indonesian online sellers. The core issue that emerged from this research is trust.
Indonesian customers do not easily trust the online sellers. Before deciding to purchase anything, they tend to require intermediaries and greater visibility
There are four key channels through which a seller can earn trust. The first is recommendations from friends who are perceived to have good taste. The second is validation from relevant communities. The third is endorsement by niche key opinion leaders (KOLs). The fourth is a live session by the seller.
In practical terms, building trust with Indonesian potential customers often requires mediation by others whose carry height opinion. Beyond third-party validation, trust can also be established through live sessions, where sellers present their products in real time. These live interactions help potential customers feel more confident about the quality of the items. This means that online ads aimed solely at boosting engagement are not sufficient in Indonesia.
The Differences with Foreign Customers
These findings resonated strongly with my friend. Throughout his experience as an online seller, one of the most difficult things to secure from Indonesian customers has been trust. This is precisely why selling through platforms such as Shopee feels easier for sellers: the platform functions as a third party that customers perceive as a guardian of product quality and transaction security.
This, however, is not something he commonly encounters with overseas customers. Buyers from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan are, in his experience, more willing to extend trust from the outset. As a result, the approaches required for each market must differ: because the barriers themselves are fundamentally different.
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