Emporia unlocks e-commerce success and 7 winning laws

Emporia Group recently conducted a webinar revealing insights from their extensive research on e-commerce leadership. CEO Arthur Policarpio presented seven laws of e-commerce leadership, emphasizing the importance of understanding platform-specific strategies. The study analyzed 17,424 data points from top brands, demonstrating that success in e-commerce requires a focus on demand creation, conversion, and fulfillment.

Nowadays, we order our daily necessities online from a trusted e-commerce platform. In the Philippines, a 2021 study by the International Trade Administration indicates that e-commerce market sales reached $17 billion, driven by 73 million online users. As of 2025, the e-commerce giants include Shopee, Lazada, and TikTok. But is the market changing now? Emporia, a company specializing in digital transformation solutions, shared its first research-backed benchmark study on e-commerce during a one-hour webinar held on October 8.

Leading the discussion was Arthur Policarpio, the CEO of Emporia Group, with over 20 years of experience in marketing, technology, and e-commerce. In this free webinar, Policarpio examined the behaviors of e-commerce leaders in the Philippines and identified the seven laws that differentiate them from underperformers.

Who wins the e-commerce game from the lens of Emporia?

The webinar, as Policarpio shared, is the culmination of six months of research, monitoring the stores and behaviors of the top platforms daily for 90 days, and compiling 17,424 data points. In the process, Emporia was able to extract seven winning principles of market leaders that they have shared with the public, which are planning to build or are already building their respective businesses online.

Policarpio posed an intriguing question: Who truly wins in e-commerce? While one might rationally conclude that large offline brands dominate the market, he argues.

“You may assume that offline leaders are the ones who win in e-commerce, but it’s not always the case,” he said. “In fact, you’ll be surprised to see some interesting case studies today on how offline global giants actually fell to local startups and got destroyed in terms of market share.”

To answer that question, Emporia developed a “Built to scale” framework that allows them to analyze the three main buckets for brands: demand creation, demand conversion, and demand fulfillment. According to Policarpio, one of the levers in creating demand is through paid media, such as share voice and search visibility, which involves elements like live selling frequency and follower counts, ultimately leading to demand conversion.

He said that in business, particularly in e-commerce, it’s not enough just to be discovered; converting people into purchasers of products is the next logical step and the primary purpose. Finally, all of these efforts fall short without demand fulfillment, because, as he pointed out, advertising, content creation, and marketing won’t be enough unless the product is available.

“These are the initial 12 factors. This is a working model. Also, over time, you will see more to be added here, so watch out for it. But more or less, if you look at e-commerce, this is your canvas,” Policarpio explained.

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Determining the winning factors for e-commerce success

“Now the big question is, how do the brands that win—the leaders—how do they differ in terms of using these tools or factors compared to the underperformers?” Policarpio asked. This is where their 90-day research steps in.

In Phase 1, the Emporia Group focused on leaders in smartphones, tablets, makeup, and hair care products. And they concluded that for smartphone brands, paid media share of voice is still the main factor in sales success. With this, they have arrived at an initial list of seven laws of e-commerce leadership.

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First law: Platform rules, rule the game

According to Emporia’s data, every platform—Lazada, Shopee, and TikTok—has its own set of rules and its own scoreboard. They claim that being a commerce leader offline doesn’t guarantee that the brand will also automatically dominate online. As Policarpio mentioned, there was no single brand that led across all three major e-commerce platforms—meaning “leadership is never universal.”

As a food for thought, Policarpio leaves with these questions: “Do you know your brand’s relative standing per platform? Are you a leader in Shopee, but a challenger in Lazada? Do you exist on TikTok? So what is your relative position in those platforms?”

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Second Law: Benchmark or be blind

Interestingly, according to data from Emporia, e-commerce leaders do not excel in all areas. In fact, some underperformers outperform market leaders in certain factors. The leaders tend to dominate in specific aspects, such as offering lower discounts. Policarpio emphasized to the audience the importance of assessing their position in relation to the 12 factors, stating that ignoring this would mean “you’re essentially flying in line.”

“So you have to ask yourself, where does your brand stand across the 12 factors? Where do you stand? From a pricing point of view, discounting point of view, [from a] live selling point of view, do you know with precise detail your brand’s position in those factors versus competition?” He asked. “It’s all about making good choices. You don’t necessarily have to do everything, but dominate in a few core factors.”

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Third Law: Availability is the new advertising

The third law is a more straightforward approach: the availability of products online is a priority factor to consider because if the product isn’t on hand or unavailable, then all the marketing strategies for success will be for nothing.

Citing an example of the virality of Magnolia pancake mix on TikTok, Policarpio says that the momentum was held back because, despite a surge in customers wanting to buy the product, it eventually went out of stock. Fortunately, they were able to fix the issue quickly, but Policarpio still emphasized that availability, both as a metric and as a percentage, is vital.

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Fourth: Lowest price rarely wins

Another stereotype that Emporia stressed is that not all brands that offer the lowest price win. “It’s true that the e-commerce shoppers are bargain hunters, but what’s not true is that they buy at the lowest prices all the time,” Policarpio explained.

Based on Emporia’s data, in 9 out of 12 cases, the brand that offers floor prices does not necessarily get all the customers.

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Fifth Law: Share of voice drives market share

The most significant point yet that Emporia found in their research is that leaders who dominate the space often lead the share of voice metric. As Policarpio explained, visibility in search for brands makes the product more accessible to customers. Appearing on specific keywords, setting clear SOV targets, and optimizing SEO should also be considered.

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Sixth Law: Content dominance converts

Unlike traditional e-commerce practices, consumers are more drawn to brands that create content around them. Policarpio noted that TikTok sets itself apart from Shopee and Lazada by serving as both a content platform and an e-commerce site.

“TikTok led a revolution in a way [here] in the Philippines,” he said. “TikTok is both a content platform and a commerce platform, so we all know intuitively that content is important.” However, the main question is how much content the competition is producing. Because, at least for TikTok, volume matters. Policarpio also pointed out the importance of focusing on content rather than advertising.

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Seventh Law: Leaders win by amplifying visibility on promo days

When users think about promo days like paydays and 12.12 days, the immediate thought is that it’s all about discounts. However, that’s not the case for brands, Policarpio expressed.

“Promo days are not actually discount wars; they’re more visibility battles. They are visibility wars, so the ones who win are the ones who are the most visible during that period,” he said.

Wrapping up the webinar, Policarpio briefly highlighted the seven implications for CMOs:

1. Build platform-specific plans
2. Overcompete in decisive levers
3. Track availability percentage as a marketing KPI
4. Engineer value, don’t race to the bottom
5. Plan budgets around share of voice
6. Scale native video and live content
7. Amplify visibility during promo days

While phase one of Emporia’s research is complete, phase two is currently ongoing and is expected to be completed by January next year. In the following research phase, the firm will explore technologies such as headphones, speakers, smartwatches, and earbuds, as well as two major categories: fitness and personal care, including skincare and food.

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