TEMU, the good and the bad.
By: Melisa Agundez
The constant appearance of ads for the already popular TEMU on the internet has captured the attention of users around the world. Originally from China, this platform has emerged rapidly, challenging e-commerce giants like Amazon and Walmart. In the first quarter of 2023 alone, its profits rose by an impressive 58.17%, exceeding 5,400 mdd and positioning it as the marketplace where you can get practically anything at rock-bottom prices. But how did it manage to do that?
We can see TEMU's successful foundation on different fronts:
1. The variety of products, with over 100 categories, ranging from clothing and toys to appliances and furniture.
2. All products are located at Extremely low prices, which are difficult to compete with.
3. Relatively fast shipping, compared to its predecessors AliExpress or Alibaba, which could take months to reach their destination, or not arrive at all. TEMU offers shipping express as well as regular shipments that take two to three weeks at most.
Now, these characteristics could belong to any other marketplace, there's nothing exceptional about having a variety of products, low prices, and fast shipping. This trifecta could be achievable with good suppliers as well as logistics services. But, there's one last ingredient that has made TEMU what it is, and that's all the techniques of gamification that they have implemented. Their discounts of up to 90%, free gifts, store credit, and free shipping attract users and keep them shopping, since “unlocking” these benefits requires making a purchase to make them valid for the next one. The more you buy, the more you earn.
However, the platform has also faced criticism regarding its strategy of User experience. which has primarily focused on showing users benefits and promotions at all costs, which has created problems with user freedom to explore the platform and “forced” them to see these pop-ups.
Furthermore, TEMU uses «dark patterns,» intricately designed digital experiences that exploit human psychology, such as false scarcity to motivate purchases and removing products only to reintroduce them later. This not only generates frustration and confusion for users but can also infringe on legal and ethical boundaries by coercing consumers into unwanted transactions.
To counteract the influence of dark patterns, it is crucial to commit to user privacy protection and cultivate a transparent, user-centric digital environment. This entails comprehensive privacy policies, robust cookie consent mechanisms, and user-friendly preference management tools.
With this learning, it is clear to us that in a market where transparency and ethics are increasingly valued, any business or project has the opportunity to consolidate itself not only as a force in its sector, but also as an ethical and trustworthy player in the digital lives of its users. In the current scenario, the true test of any brand is to balance growth with integrity in the user experience.
And you, have you already shopped on TEMU?
