The millennial generation is Indonesia’s largest consumer segment and it will stay this way for more than a decade, a recent report by Indonesian research firm Alvara says, citing demographic data.
By 2020, the millennial generation—those who were born between 1981 to 1997—will account for 34% of Indonesia’s population and will continue to be the majority until 2035.
Alvara recommends brands understand the millennial mindset to better market to them and conducted more than 1,000 face-to-face interviews in major cities across Indonesia to shed light on the preferences of urban millennials, specifically with regards to their online behavior.
The survey checked for various parameters, including brand awareness, behavior, as well as satisfaction levels.
The most frequently used mobile apps are transportation apps at 96.4%, followed by online food delivery (87.8%), and shopping apps (76.9%).
At the other end of the scale, the use of digital payment apps was considerably lower at 30%. Hotel booking apps are only used by 11.7% of the respondents of the survey.
By-and-large, the results showed, Indonesian millennials lean towards local players, except in the shopping apps category.
Go-Jek as the pioneer of on-demand services in the country was the most-used app in the ride-hailing, food delivery, and digital payment segments among respondents.
In the area of ride-sharing, the study showed that 70.4% of respondents used Go-Jek while only 45.7% of respondents used its competitor, Grab. Respondents were allowed to pick more than one app in their answers.
The majority of respondents who used both applications considered Go-Jek to be more reliable and convenient, as it provided more comprehensive services.
The survey also used the net promoter score (NPS), an index ranging -100 to 100 that measures the willingness of customers to recommend a company’s products or services to others. Among all of the respondents, users recommended Go-Jek more than its competitor with an NPS of 18.9, surpassing Grab’s NPS of 10.1.
Go-Jek also leads the food delivery segment where 71.7% of respondents opted for Go-Food while only 39.9% of them used GrabFood.
In digital payments, Go-Pay’s brand awareness reached 100% among respondents. This far outstripped other platforms with Grab’s e-wallet partner OVO close at 96.2%. Alibaba-backed Dana had 50.3% awareness, PayTren was at 47%, and State-owned platform LinkAja at merely 35%. The latter just recently launched.
In the e-ticketing segment, Indonesian travel tech unicorn Traveloka seems most top-of-mind among respondents.
It’s the most-known app in its segment with 79% of respondents claiming to be aware of it, while its closest competitor, Tiket.com was only recognized by 8.9% of respondents.
Besides these two, 5.6% of respondents know e-commerce platform Blibli as a site where they could buy tickets, and a further 3.2% of them said they knew the state-owned KAI Access app as a transportation ticket booking tool. In terms of future intention to use any of these tools, the ranking was roughly the same, with more than 70% expressing interest in giving Traveloka a try for booking trips in the future.
When it comes to e-commerce platforms, regional brands Lazada and Shopee had more brand awareness than the local options.
Lazada was the shopping app that most Indonesian millennials instantly referenced when asked about which apps they knew, followed by Shopee, Tokopedia, and Bukalapak.
Nonetheless, survey results should not be seen as the gospel truth as results can vary according to its methods and metrics.
For example, brand awareness does not necessarily correspond to actual use. In a study from iPrice that included Monthly Active User (MAU) data, Tokopedia had the highest MAU in Indonesia during the first quarter of 2019 while Lazada fell to the fourth position after Bukalapak and Shopee.
Alvara’s survey was conducted from April 3-30 2019. It involved 1.204 respondents in Greater Jakarta, Bali, Padang, Yogyakarta, and Manado and used a cluster random sampling method.