Price.com.hk highlights difficulties for retail outlets and distributors

With Hongkongers leveraging price comparison websites to find the best deals before making purchases, brands have been facing fierce competition, especially with the COVID-19 pandemic having impacted Hong Kong’s economy significantly this year. Price.com.hk has highlighted some difficulties that retail outlets and distributors are now facing.

There have been persistent difficulties over the years for retail outlets and distributors. For example, they have been facing high expenditure on rental and human resources, along with a lack of manpower to handle the heavy customer services and logistics workload.

However, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has put more pressure on retail outlets and distributors. The unstable economy, failure to afford traditional advertising, insufficient knowledge in acquiring quality traffic of an online shop, and high monthly and transaction fees of certain platforms are some common difficulties for them. 

Although these retail outlets and distributors may hope to start their online business, plenty of them do not have adequate knowledge to kick-off their online business. 

Price.com.hk has also examined solutions and resources to help retail outlets and distributors through this difficult time. For example, they are looking for ways to optimise operational costs, boost promotions to create awareness and drive traffic and purchases, and create a user-friendly and a one-stop online platform to do business.

The platform has also highlighted several types of products with an increase in sales. As Hongkongers performed social distancing and were advised to stay at home as much as they can, the number of sales of air purifiers between February and April had increased by 419% year-over-year; while the number of sales of Nintendo Switch had recorded a 282% surge year-over-year within the same period as well. 

However, cameras and related products were the losers during this period as the number of sales of these products had fallen by up to 34% year-over-year. 

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