According to the statement of Oget Kantarci, the general manager of GittiGidiyor, director of eBay MENA and e-commerce chairperson of Turkish Union of Chambers and Exchange Commodities (TOBB), a lot of stores were temporarily shut down and many lockdowns were happened because of the pandemic and this led to an increase in the interest towards online platforms; hence e-commerce became one of the sectors that had the most increase in workload.
Kantarci stated that the results of the digitalization studies in commerce that have been ongoing for many years came forth in the pandemic period. He said:
‘’We have been telling brands and Small and Medium Scaled Enterprises (KOBI) that e-commerce is important for them for a long time. All businesses experienced the importance of digitalization in the pandemic period; they transferred their work into digital environment and used channels like GittiGidiyor more effectively. The number of the sellers newly participating in GittiGidiyor is increased by 73 percent in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period of 2019. There has been a significant digitalization especially in Anadolu area; in fact, sellers that joined GittiGidiyor the most are located in Konya, Sanliurfa, Batman, Kayseri, Adana, Edirne, Gaziantep, Kutahya, Aksaray and Sivas cities. We see that the ages of these new sellers usually range between 35-40 and their fields of operation are mostly personal care, home decoration, gardening, computer-tablet, construction market and supermarket.’’
Kantarci mentioned that GittiGidiyor continues supporting KOBIs. The company has increased the employees by 30 percent and customer services by 50 percent during the pandemic.
‘’We removed 80 sellers who insistently overcharged the customers.’’
Kantarci said: ‘’We are extremely careful about price gouging. We removed over 20 thousand products with fancy prices during the pandemic in order to protect the consumers. We deactivated 80 sellers who insistently overcharged the customers.
We also experienced hardships about cargo in the period; cargo companies had difficulties meeting the high demand. We need to learn from that experience, find ways to operate the cargo processes more smoothly and work more productively as a sector.’’
‘’7 out of 10 purchases were made from mobile phones.’’
Kantarci emphasized that GittiGidiyor was improved by 50 percent in the first half of 2020, he continued:
‘’The number of GittiGidiyor members reached 31 million and the number of our pageviews became 5.6 billion as from June 2020. A product is being sold per second in our platform. The most sales are happened in May 2020. We maintained our improvements also in our mobile application. The number of people who downloaded our mobile application reached 15.6 million in the first half of 2020; our mobile sales volume increased by 70 percent compared to the first half of 2019.
Seven out of ten purchases were made from mobile phones. The share of the mobile application was 63 percent, and it has become 81 percent. The cities that shopped the most in the first half of 2020 are Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, Antalya, Kocaeli, Konya, Adana, Mersin and Mugla.’’
‘’We are investigating how pandemic affected the customers’ demand.’’
The categories that improved the most in the first half of 2020 are construction market, computer-tablet, sports-outdoor, video gaming-consol and book-magazine. Kantarci said:
‘’We are investigating how pandemic affected the customers’ demand. The products sold the most in the first six months are masks, diaper, dog-cat food, mobile phone, sterilised gloves, rubber, antiseptic, sneakers, shaver, vacuum cleaner, airphones, TV and drillers. The lockdowns change the habits of the consumers; for example, online grocery shopping increased 3 times more in April compared to April 2019 and online shopping trend still continues.
There are seasonal changes; with the warm weather, the sales of the products like air conditioner and ventilator are increased. The demand towards garden and outdoor products are increased. For example, the sale of garden gloves was increased in July. The sales of home decoration products such as closet, drawer and wallpaper are increased. The sale of the sneakers is also increased by 200 percent.’’
‘’We expect 50 percent growth by the end of the year.’’
Kantarci emphasized that e-commerce has grown fast for the last few years and he predicted that their growth target of 40 percent for the end of the 2020 will be now be 50 percent. He said that specifically the retail part of the sector improves every year and it will continue to do so.
‘’8 out of 10 users reach out to GittiGidiyor via mobile channels.’’
Kantarci said: ‘’The factor that eases e-commerce is the prevalence of smart mobile devices. 8 out of 10 users reach out to GittiGidiyor via mobile channels and 70 percent of the users shop online via mobile channels.
Mobile channels reshape your time and place understandings by enabling you to shop everywhere, anytime and anything. Mobile shopping in the first half of 2020 is increased the most in Tunceli by 103 percent, Bayburt by 93 percent and Yalova by 92 percent. e-commerce makes it possible to reach services and productions all around Turkey.
GittiGidiyor has always been a human-based company. We value our customer’s demands and we keep developing projects that will ease our customers’ shopping experience.’’
Kantarci stated that projects developed within artificial intelligence and grand data analysis will come forth in the near future and said:
‘’ Users will clearly feel the effect of the customizing from site interface to order entry. We will observe the virtual and augmented realities’ usage in e-commerce sites. Chatbots and artificial intelligence operations are the results of modern needs.’’
source: AA / translated by Bazaar Team