Prashant Kala, Country Head, ShopBack Philippines
Prior to joining the ShopBack family in 2018, Prashant was heading the Sales & Operations team for Zomato for 7 years, including 2 years in India and 5 years in The Philippines where he worked with over 1,200 restaurants and hotels across the region on issues related to business communications, marketing strategy & feedback improvisation for the partners. Prashant a mathematics graduate also holds an MBA degree from India and is currently heading the ShopBack Philippine team on a mission to empower Filipinos towards a smarter way to shop.
We sat down with Prashant Kala to get his insights into the following:
How is mobile making an impact in the affiliate marketing industry? In your opinion, why is it important for brands to have mobile-friendly user experiences on their sites?
The majority of users are concentrated on mobiles; that's where the consumption of data & content is happening. We as affiliate marketers also have to concentrate efforts on this platform - users want everything quick and they need options so we as marketers should be ready to provide them with these. For brands the ease of access is very important, consumers are mostly on the go and if the app experience is not smooth, they are bound to move to the ones with easy access and quality. Today we need to focus on quality while working on the quantity and that's where affiliate marketing is focussed on.
What can you tell us about ShopBack? How does Shopback benefit brands and customers?
ShopBack is Southeast Asia's number one E-commerce marketing platform, present across seven countries. We provide customers with an avenue to get a good percentage of their money back whenever they shop online. For our partners, ShopBack is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach out to customer behaviour as we have one of the lowest cost per acquisition across markets. For customers, we give a way to get up to 35% of their online shopping amount back as cash (not reward points) in their hands
What is the online shopping behaviour of Asian customers?
Speaking majorly of the Philippine consumer, it is driven heavily by female customers and a very mobile-heavy market. Fashion, daily grocery shopping (FMCGs) & travel tend to be the fastest moving SKUs in the Philippines. Cash on delivery is still very dominant as opposed to online payments.
How can brands leverage on mobile advertising?
The world is connected and is in the palm of your hand - 55% of the population is using mobile services and 62 million accounts on social media are active through phones, Mobile is where the entire user (consumer) concentration is and is steadily growing. Companies need to leverage the content consumption habit of mobile users including the heavy social media penetration. Mobile marketing is the avenue to target the 18-35-year-old population as they are heavily connected through their phones.
What do you think will be some of the major takeaways from ACE 2019?
ACE is an outstanding initiative that hasn't been done before now in the Philippines. It will give us great insights into the Asian market including the best practises as well as improvising on things that are already being done. I am very excited to get tips on the effective use of social media and how to make it more cost-effective. Personally I am looking forward to sharing and receiving insights from experts on how organisations can and should follow the Mobile-first approach as I believe it's the key to success now.
