Marketplace success isn't about discounts

Southeast Asia's platform GMV grew 22.8% in 2025 — the fastest pace in four years — and the sellers leading that growth weren't the ones cutting prices hardest. Here's what actually moved the needle.

Every marketplace playbook starts the same way: run a flash sale, drop the price, hope the algorithm notices. It's an easy lever, and on Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop discounting is baked into the culture — vouchers, coin cashback, mega-campaign price wars. But the sellers compounding growth right now aren't winning on price. They're winning on visibility, trust and content — and treating discounts as an occasional tool, not a strategy.

---

Cutting price buys a spike, not a customer. Shoppers learn a listing goes on sale and simply wait for it — a well-documented anchoring effect that permanently resets what they'll pay. Discount-trained buyers do come back, but for the next voucher, not the brand.

Meanwhile, TikTok Shop's own pricing data shows the ceiling on that strategy: average order values across the region sit far below traditional e-commerce, and heavier discounting compresses margin without lifting the metrics that actually determine long-term ranking — conversion rate, repeat purchase, and review velocity.

---

None of these require a lower price tag. They require the operational discipline most sellers skip.

---

---

Most sellers treat their marketplace storefronts as an afterthought to a "real" website — updated in a rush, priced on instinct. We treat marketplace presence as its own growth channel: listings engineered for search, content built for the feed, and retention flows that don't rely on the next voucher to bring buyers back.