Singaporeans are big fans of western trends: study

Western influence hugely impacts the public’s purchasing behaviour.

Singaporeans have been paying a lot of attention to western influencers and serial entrepreneurs, as seen through their purchasing behaviour, according to iPrice Group.

iPrice Group conducted a study on how Hollywood brand ambassadors and western media shape Southeast Asians’ online interest in products. In Singapore and the Philippines, product interest was most influenced by celebrity and influencer endorsements.

The survey gave Crocs as an example, when western stars Questlove and Nicki Minaj wore them on the Oscar red carpet.

iPrice saw the search interest from Singapore surge to 243% in April 2021 compared to May 2019.

A similar trend can be seen in 2020 when the highest peak occurred in December 2020. Priyanka Chopra’s endorsement and Post Malone’s collaboration sent Google searches to skyrocket by 155% in Singapore and by 278% in the Philippines. Other high-end collaborations worth mentioning are Justin Bieber in October 2020 and rapper Bad Bunny in September 2020, amounting to a total of 373,770 searches in both countries.

The survey also showed that the western celebrity style influence wasn’t as huge in other Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand. Searches reached only over 37,000 in Indonesia, a country with more than eight times Singapore’s Google population.

Cryptocurrency has been making all the buzz. Numerous business and entertainment influencers have been publicly making statements about this.

When Kanye West talked about cryptocurrency in Joe Rogan’s podcast in October 2020 and Elon Musk tweeted about Dogecoin, the searches for cryptocurrency started to increase by 143% in Singapore.