The Indonesian Consumer Decision Journey

Marketing funnels assume a shape: awareness at the top, consideration in the middle, purchase at the bottom, with each stage owned by a different channel and measured against a different target. It is a useful model and it describes Indonesia badly.

The stages exist. What does not hold is the division of labour between them, because the channel that creates awareness is often the same one where research happens, and the channel where purchase closes may never have appeared in the plan at all.

This article walks the journey as it actually runs in Indonesia, stage by stage, with the platform and the evidence for each. It then identifies the stage where foreign brands lose the most, which is not the one most plans worry about.

Stage one: attention, and it is video first

Discovery in Indonesia begins in video more often than in search. TikTok reaches 180 million people, equivalent to 88.9 percent of adults aged 18 and over, and holds the highest daily time of any platform at 1 hour 53 minutes. YouTube reaches 151 million with the longest average session at 16 minutes 49 seconds.

The distinction between those two matters for planning. TikTok holds attention in short repeated bursts across the day. YouTube holds it in longer single sittings, which suits categories where a buyer needs to understand something before they can want it.

What this stage does not do is convince anyone. It creates the possibility of interest, and it does so for a buyer who was not looking for you.

Stage two: interest, and social does double duty

Here is where the imported funnel first breaks. In most markets, a buyer who becomes interested leaves the social platform to research elsewhere. In Indonesia a large share of research happens on the same surface where attention was created, because six in ten Indonesians use social media as their primary channel for researching brands.

The practical consequence is a content requirement most foreign brands do not plan for. Social content carrying only brand atmosphere, aspirational imagery and tone, leaves the research need unmet. A buyer looking for reasons finds mood instead, and goes looking elsewhere.

Content that works at this stage answers questions. What is in it, how does it compare, who is it for, what does it cost, what happens if it does not fit. Unglamorous, and it is the difference between a post that earns attention and a post that converts it.

Stage three: verification, and this is where foreign brands lose

This is the stage worth reading twice, because it is where the money already spent gets wasted.

A buyer encounters a product, becomes interested, and then does something that no amount of platform spend controls: they leave to check whether the brand is real. They search the name. Increasingly they ask an AI assistant, since more than a third of Indonesians now use ChatGPT every month and around 80 percent of Indonesian digital users interact with AI applications daily.

For a domestic brand this step is usually survivable. Something comes back. Reviews, coverage, a familiar name, other people discussing it.

For an unfamiliar foreign brand it frequently is not. Nothing credible returns, and the interest that the video paid for evaporates. The brand never learns this happened. The analytics show a video that performed well and a conversion rate that disappointed, and the two are recorded as separate facts.

Stage four: action, and the purchase may not wait

Conversion happens on the marketplace, and for video commerce it frequently happens during the broadcast rather than after it. Live commerce converts at 5 to 12 percent, roughly three times catalogue listings, and 60 percent of video commerce buyers purchase during a live session.

That compresses the journey in a way the classic funnel does not anticipate. Attention, interest and purchase can occur inside a single session, which means the verification step either happened earlier or does not happen at all.

Both possibilities have implications. If verification happened earlier, the visibility work that made it survivable was done weeks or months before the sale. If it did not happen, the buyer is relying entirely on the host's credibility, which is rented rather than owned and disappears when the campaign ends.

The scale here is not marginal. Video commerce reached 2.6 billion transactions in Indonesia in 2025, up 90 percent year on year, with around 800,000 sellers and roughly 20 percent of online GMV.

Stage five: sharing, and the loop closes where you cannot see it

The final stage feeds the first one for the next buyer. Social comments and posts account for 32.6 percent of brand discovery, which makes post purchase sharing a genuine acquisition channel rather than a satisfaction metric.

A significant portion of that sharing happens inside closed messaging groups. Family groups, neighbourhood groups, workplace groups. Recommendations circulate there carrying more weight than any advertisement, and standard listening tools see almost none of it.

The honest position is that this stage cannot be measured properly and should not be simulated. What can be influenced is what someone finds when a group member asks whether your brand is any good, which routes back to the same public record that stage three depends on.

How the journey changes by basket size

The five stages hold across categories, but the time spent in each one does not, and basket size is the variable that moves it most.

For a low ticket consumable, stages two and three compress almost to nothing. Video commerce average order value runs between Rp 70,000 and Rp 93,000, and at that price a buyer does not conduct research. The host's credibility and the price are enough, which is why live selling works so well in that band and why 60 percent of video commerce buyers purchase during the session rather than after it.

For a considered purchase the pattern inverts. Stage three expands until it dominates the journey, and it may run for weeks across multiple sessions and devices. The buyer searches, reads reviews, asks in a group, asks an AI assistant, returns to compare, and only then acts. Every one of those touchpoints is an opportunity to lose the sale, and most of them happen where no platform reports on them.

Which produces a practical rule that is easy to state and frequently ignored. The higher the basket, the more of the outcome is decided outside any channel you can buy. A brand selling something considered cannot buy its way through stage three, because stage three is not an advertising surface. It is a verification surface, and the only thing that works there is having something credible to find.

This is also why a strategy that succeeds for a consumable often fails when the same brand extends into a premium line. The channel mix that worked was matched to a journey shape that no longer applies, and the failure gets attributed to the product rather than to the journey.

What this means for budget

Three allocations follow from the journey rather than from the funnel.

The stage nobody owns

Worth ending on, because it explains why this gap persists inside otherwise competent organisations.

Stage three sits between two teams. Social owns attention and interest. Commerce owns action. Verification happens in between, off platform, in search results and AI answers, and it belongs to neither.

Which means it is measured by neither, funded by neither, and defended by neither. The social team reports strong engagement. The commerce team reports weak conversion. Both are accurate, and the explanation sits in the space between their dashboards.

For a foreign brand in Indonesia this is the single most expensive organisational gap, because it is precisely the stage where being unfamiliar costs the most.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the Indonesian consumer decision journey differ from a standard funnel?

The stages exist but the division of labour does not hold. Social creates attention and also serves as a research surface, since six in ten Indonesians use it as their primary brand research channel. Verification then happens off platform in search and AI answers. And purchase may compress into a single live session, collapsing three stages at once.

Where do foreign brands lose the most?

At verification, stage three. A buyer who becomes interested leaves the platform to check whether the brand is real, by searching or asking an AI assistant. For an unfamiliar foreign brand nothing credible comes back, and the interest paid for by the video evaporates. The brand never learns it happened, because reporting shows strong video performance and weak conversion as separate facts.

Why is social content that only builds brand atmosphere a problem?

Because a large share of research happens on the same surface where attention was created. A buyer looking for reasons finds mood instead and goes elsewhere. Content that works at this stage answers questions: what is in it, how it compares, who it is for, what happens if it does not fit.

How significant is live commerce in the journey?

Significant enough to compress it. Live conversion runs 5 to 12 percent, roughly three times catalogue listings, and 60 percent of video commerce buyers purchase during a live session. Video commerce reached 2.6 billion transactions in 2025, up 90 percent year on year, at around 20 percent of online GMV.

Can the sharing stage be measured?

Only partly. Social comments and posts account for 32.6 percent of brand discovery, but a significant share of sharing happens inside closed messaging groups that listening tools cannot see. The honest position is that it is influential and unmeasurable, and what can be influenced is what someone finds when a group member asks about your brand.

Why does the verification gap persist in well run companies?

Because stage three sits between teams. Social owns attention and interest, commerce owns action, and verification happens off platform in between. It is measured by neither, funded by neither and defended by neither. The social team reports strong engagement, the commerce team reports weak conversion, and both are accurate.

What should a foreign brand fix first?

The verification stage, because it is where being unfamiliar costs most and because it makes every other stage's spend convert. Attention without verifiable presence buys interest that dissipates at the moment a buyer tries to confirm the brand exists.

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