I want to talk about Temu
I want to talk about Temu, Te what you say, yes Temu
A few months ago I watched CNBC’s Online shopping feature where they discussed this new company making waves in America called Temu. They captured American consumer interest by featuring ads during the 2023 Super Bowl. Big Brands like Uber Eats, Doritos, Budweiser, and even Google have also leveraged this massive audience. A typical 30-second spot costs a reported $7 million to capture a potential 115.1 million viewers.
I then googled Temu and found that they are not in South Africa yet, I kept checking and checking and finally, it happened. Temu was available in South Africa, I could not finally experience why Temu was causing such massive waves.
So what is Temu — It is an e-commerce store, similar to many others, but what makes them different?
Differentiators
1-Inventory: Thanks to infinite scrolling you get the impression that there is infinite inventory, every time you refresh there are new products.
2-Pricing: Their products start from R8(Some might be even lower), that’s less than a loaf of bread or a can of cold-drink in South Africa.
3-Recommendations: In most apps, you have to enter some details about yourself then recommendations are spewed out based on that. Think of your first time using Spotify, you select genres and musicians you like, now imagine Spotify just knowing what music you like without you having entered a single thing. Temu’s recommendation engine reminds me of Tik-Toks’s, the algos they are using are cooking with gas.
4-Product Design: From what I have seen there doesn’t appear to be a wishlist or favorites, if you like it then put it in the shopping cart. This reduces the wishlist to cart drop-off. The cart shows the Total cart value, discount, and then the final amount so you can feel that you are getting a bargain. There are also “coupons, price drops, limited time only, others have bought, 10 items left” that can get overwhelming but do drive the sale home.
4-Gamification: Most of the design choices are derived from gamification, they do add referrals, and incentives just to drive the point home.
If you add all these elements together then you have the ingredients for an Addictive app. What are the three ingredients for creating an addictive experience? — Repeatable, Variable, Incentive**
You will keep logging on to check new deals from their infinite catalog that are tailored for you.
For Temu to succeed in South Africa they need a few things
Internet Penetration + Smartphone Penetration + Population with disposable Income + Advertising.
South Africa has one of the highest screen time hours in the globe and a fair bit of disposable income. If Temu can up the advertising/referral programme then they will win the market.
*Temu probably uses your location and clipboard to determine some of your interests
*There was a book I read about slot machines and what makes them so effective for gambling institutions, I will find it and reference it
