Personal Care and Beauty: Indonesia's Top-Selling FMCG Category in E-commerce 2023

Total sales value of the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector in Indonesian e-commerce throughout 2023 reached Rp 57.6 trillion. This is based on the latest research by Compas.co.id, titled *Indonesian FMCG Report 2023*.

Compas.co.id's research was conducted on three e-commerce platforms: Shopee, Tokopedia, and Blibli, using the online crawling method from January 1 to December 31, 2023. A total of four main categories were recorded in Compas' dashboard, comprising 270 subcategories, 38,185 brands, and 10,712,117 product listings.

Compas.co.id Co-Founder & CEO Hanindia Narendrata (Drata) stated that the sales value of the FMCG sector in 2023 increased slightly by 1.03% or Rp 576 billion compared to the 2022 period, which reached Rp 57.02 trillion.

Drata said that personal care and beauty was the best-selling category with a value of Rp 28.2 trillion, or 49% of the total sales value of the FMCG sector in Indonesia in 2023.

This was followed by food and beverages at Rp 11.8 trillion (20.4%), health at Rp 10.7 trillion (18.7%), and mother and baby at Rp 6.8 trillion (11.9%).

Drata stated that the transaction value of the beauty and personal care category increased by 16% or Rp 3.8 trillion compared to the previous year, and the food and beverage category increased by 9% or Rp 932 million compared to the previous year.

"The beauty and personal care category is supported by perfume products, whose sales value reached Rp 2.6 trillion, or increased by 9% compared to the previous year," said Drata, as quoted from a press release on Wednesday (10/1/2024).

Meanwhile, she continued, in the food and beverage category, frozen food was the most popular product with sales reaching Rp 1.1 trillion, or an increase of 9% from the previous year.

According to Drata, this phenomenon is potentially a result of several factors that occurred in 2022 and 2023, such as the significant growth of perfumes in 2023, indicated by the emergence of local brands that can compete with global brands.

Meanwhile, in the food and beverage category, the growth of frozen food is estimated to be due to changes in consumer behavior during the pandemic, where consumers stored a significant amount of food in cold storage in a single transaction for later consumption.

"It seems that this is still a trend even though Indonesia officially entered the endemic phase in mid-2023," said Drata.

Drata said that the mother and child category experienced a 2% decrease, or Rp 81 million, compared to the previous year. This, according to her, is suspected to be due to the significant impact of a product boycott.

On the other hand, a more significant decrease was felt in the health category, which decreased by 12% or Rp 1.2 trillion. Drata said that the announcement regarding the endemic is estimated to be the cause of the decrease in awareness of the use of health support tools in 2023.

Drata continued, the FMCG sector generated the largest FMCG sales value from the fourth quarter, reaching Rp 16.2 trillion, followed by sales in the first quarter at Rp 14.8 trillion, the second quarter at Rp 13.5 trillion, and the third quarter at Rp 13 trillion.

In addition, the number of transactions in the FMCG sector reached 1.56 million transactions throughout 2023, an increase of 2.75% or approximately 42 million transactions compared to the previous year.