The Philippines' top brands for customer experience | Milieu x Campaign Asia

This article was written and first featured in Campaign Asia

Consumers in the Philippines have clicked with Shopee, selecting the ecommerce major as their top brand for customer experience. Shopee not only offers Filipino consumers convenience, but is also easy on their digital wallets with frequent sales, promos, vouchers, cashback, no minimum spend and free delivery offers to buy everything for daily life more easily, from clothing to electronics to beauty supplies to Shopee Supermarket groceries.  The ranking stems from Campaign's authoritative list of Southeast Asia's top 50 brands for consumer experience, recently revealed at Campaign360 in partnership with research firm Milieu Insight.

Six markets were involved in the survey (Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and Philippines), whereby recognised brands with minimum awareness levels across 11 sectors were ranked across five CX metrics: quality, buying experience, customer service, brand touchpoints (ease of use across all digital and offline brand interactions) and advocacy (degree of recommendation) to form their customer

Similarly to Singapore, Filipinos over-indexed on food and food delivery brands, with nearly one-third of their top 30 brands falling in this category. Online retailers and digital wallet brands, best-placed to deliver seamless and effortless buying experiences scored highest, with Lazada and GCash joining Shopee to form three of the top four brands. Otherwise, the Philippines' top 30 was generally well-rounded with a solid mix of retailers (3), apparel brands (3), FMCG (3) and mobile or streaming service providers (4).

While Filipino consumers deferred to international brands when it came to mass market goods like FMCG, apparel and electronics, a third of their top 30 choices were local brands. These tended to be from categories like restaurants (Jollibee, Chowking, Greenwich Pizza, Max's Restaurant), retail (Bench, Penshoppe) and broadband providers (Globe, Smart).

The Philippines' top 10  

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1. Shopee

While Shopee was named the number two CX brand and the top online retailer across Southeast Asia, it was only named tops overall in the Philippines. Filipino shoppers chose it as the brand that was best optimised for customer experience across all its online and offline touchpoints, a category which has tended to separate the top CX brands from their competititon. Although it fell out of the top 10 in quality and buying experience, it was the second-most recommended brand for CX.  

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2. Lazada

Close behind Shopee is rival Lazada, which in the Philippines also scores higher that its fourth place finish in Southeast Asia overall. Like Shopee, it too faired less well in the buying experience and quality categories, but was held up by its CX across touchpoints (5th) and recommendation (4th) scores, but not quite as strong as Shopee.

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3. Jollibee

The top Filipino brand and the top food brand in the ranking, Jollibee actually finished tops in CX in the market on an individual brand basis. It only slid to third when related group subsidiary brands were all combined. Having invested in its digital operations, Jollibee fared better than any other QSR brand in pleasing customers across all touchpoints (finishing third overall), and was the Philippines' third top recommended brand, competing well with Lazada and Shopee in buying experience and quality.  

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4. GCash

As the Philippines' top digital wallet brand, consumers look to GCash to enable most daily onlines purchases. It scored extremely well across all categories, is the market's most recommended brand, tied for number one in quality of service with Louis Vuitton and ranked second behind Shopee in its experience across touchpoints.

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5. Watsons

The drug store retailer's fifth-place showing in the Philippines is in line with its sixth place showing in Southeast Asia overall, where it excels at brand awareness and overall in-store customer experience. It is not a  leader in any single CX category, but it did finish in the top 10 on buying experience and finished 7th in the all-important touchpoints category.  

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6. Samsung

Similarly to Watsons, Samsung's number one finish across Southeast Asia is helped by its impressive brand awareness scores. But it slides to 6th overall in the Phlippines. Consumers appreciate the high quality of Samsung's products (4th in quality) and are very likely to recommend it to others (6th). It also finished 8th for its brand optimisation across all consumer touchpoints.  

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7. Foodpanda

Foodpanda's 7th place ranking is exactly where the broader region places it over all, and isn't suprising in a food-fixated market like the Philippines. Its scores are strong across the board on touchpoints (5th), recommendation (5th) and quality (tied for 6th). One might however, expect a higher buying experience score, given the ease at which users can use the delivery app to order their favourite meals, but Foodpanda landed outside the top 10 in this category, where all brands tended to place relatively well.  

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8. Chowking

This Filipino-Chinese food favourite had a strong recommendation score and ranked well in quality. But the overall seamlessness of its buying experience and still needs work as it was a laggard in this category. There appears to be room for improvement on its digital development too, as its score across all touchpoints was only average.  

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9. Bench

The local apparel retailer does not impress Filipino shoppers with quality, where it scores lower than average. But with solid customer experience across all its touchpoints and favourable discount offers, it has a better than average recommendation score, even if its buying experience fails to stand out.  

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10. McDonald's  

In the Phlippines, McDonald's lags behind its 5th place ranking in Southeast Asia, which isn't surprising since Jollibee has always taken the lead as the market's fast-food favourite. When it comes to customer experience, McDonald's has a pretty seamless and consistent quality and buying experience, and scores fairly well in all categories. It's just a matter of degree - Filipino customers simply feel more comfortable with Jollibee which beats McDonald's in every customer experience category.

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Methodology