Parenting in Indonesia is becoming an increasingly online activity.

From getting pregnancy tips and inspiration for baby names to buying diapers and looking for advice on how to handle children’s temper tantrums, more and more households are taking to the internet to manage their children’s needs.

Due to the increasing availability of affordable smartphones and data packages, the number of Indonesians with access to the internet is growing steadily. In 2017, that number reached 143 million, which is just over half the total population of the country, according to data from the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association.

When it comes to shopping for baby care products, these internet users will dig up as much information as possible before clicking the buy button. A survey on connected baby care consumers, recently published by Google Indonesia, revealed that 69 percent of online users researched baby care products before purchasing them.

 According to the survey, one in four avid internet users in Indonesia are mothers. Prior to buying a product, they would go online to look for discounts or promotions, check the quality of the product and read the product reviews.  

A small but growing group of parents now buy products for their children online. Of the Indonesians with access to the internet, about 12 percent have made purchases online in the baby care category.

Rosa, for example, may occasionally visit shopping malls with her baby, but she is not there to do a lot of shopping because she now prefers to buy baby products online.

“Online shopping is simple. I can do that from my home,” she said, adding that she would need transportation to go to malls and battle with traffic jams.  

Ariyani Dwijayanti, the insights specialist at Google Indonesia, said in comparison to other consumable goods, baby care products were actually one of the top sellers.

“I think some of the key reasons, for example, are that moms are so very busy they probably want to avoid standing in line at the supermarket. And they would rather have the products delivered to their house. A lot of it is about convenience,” she said.  

Lani Rahayu, the senior marketing communications and PR manager of major e-commerce platform Blibli.com, said there was a difference between the shopping behavior of mothers and other clients.

“For moms, the quantity of their shopping cart is really big, but the value of the transaction is smaller than that of men’s. For example, men buy gadgets that are really high-value items. Moms buy things like lotion, shampoo and groceries […],” she added.

Although some people still shop at brick and mortal retailers, the number of customers shopping online is set to grow in the near future.

Ariyani said one of the reasons behind the outlook was that the Indonesian e-commerce space was still in its infancy stage.

“If we compare it to, for example, other countries like China, which is much more developed in terms of online commerce, I think Indonesia has a very big potential in terms of online purchases,” she added.

One thing that enables the current growth of online purchases is the innovation in the financial technology sector. Jason Tedjasukmana, the head of communications at Google Indonesia, said this innovation was necessary because the country still had a poor penetration of credit cards and a low percentage of residents with bank accounts.

“Indonesia is still very much a cash economy. That’s why fintech is so huge now. They are trying to find ways to deal with the unbanked,” he added.  
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The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post

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