Why Do Online Sellers Ask Customers to Inbox for the Price?

Right now, selling new online sales channel is a very popular way of doing business. It has spread not only through websites and big e-commerce platforms such as lazada, Sendo and Shopee, but mostly on social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Zalo. Which social network to use depends on the product and the customers the seller wants to reach. What customers care about most when buying online is price. To tell customers the price, shops have two main options: show the price publicly or have them inbox for it. Showing prices publicly is quite normal. But many customers get "angry" and unhappy at having to inbox for the price to a shop, even though a great many online shops choose it today. So why ask for an inbox for the price when selling online??

Benefits of showing prices publicly

First, let's look at the benefits when shops sell online show prices publicly in the product ad post. This has quite a few benefits for both buyers and sellers. The main ones are:

1. Attract customers' attention:

Any customer buying anything puts price first. Of course everyone wants both good quality and a fair price. But when shopping, the buyer's instinct is still to "ask the price". Buyers spend a lot of time comparing prices of similar goods first, and only then look at quality before deciding. This is a big advantage for shops with the lowest prices.

2. Remove buyers' doubts about the online shop:

Many customers are always suspicious when a shop does not show its prices publicly.

In fact, social media there are some bad cases where people with bad intentions set up fake sales pages, approach buyers, hack their accounts, break into personal accounts and run scams or similar bad acts. Social network users therefore always keep a certain doubt and stay on guard. So if the fanpage of that online shop shows full prices, origin, source and uses of the product, along with praise in the comments, it builds solid trust with customers. Buyers will not have doubts like: "Why does this shop hide the price? Are they going to scam me for my information by making me inbox? It must cost more than elsewhere, so they hide it…" They then switch to buying in person at a supermarket or store instead of mua online because in reality, many online products look very different in the ads from the real thing. That also worries many customers.

3. Look professional:

When customers click on your selling fanpage and can freely see the information and prices, and read the comments below to judge your shop, they see your shop as more professional. From there they weigh their budget and decide whether to buy.

4. Save time and staff:

When prices are public, you do not spend time answering comments or inbox from customers asking for the price. Many fanpages have auto-reply, but that is only a first step to reach the customer. Public prices also stop other sellers from quoting high prices or dumping prices to attract customers, which helps balance the online market.

Overall, showing prices publicly has quite a few benefits for both sellers and buyers. But on the whole the benefit leans toward buyers, because they have more choice and can weigh different sellers against each other. In particular they have the right to compare and judge the shop online based on prices and products.

Benefits of asking customers to inbox for the price

Benefits of asking customers to inbox for the price.

If public prices give buyers many benefits and more choice of goods, then what are the benefits of asking for the price by inbox when selling online? What are the benefits?

1. Prevent customer poaching:

Many online shop owners are surprised when the shipper returns an item because "the customer already received the goods earlier". Or a shop has only just taken the order but already gets feedback from the customer like "the shop delivered very fast and even gave a discount, thank you", while the item the customer received is not the same quality as the shop's and does not look like it. Worse, the shop has not even shipped anything. What is the cause?

In fact, when customers see that the price and product information are complete and ready on the page, many will comment right away below: "send me one A to house number X, street Y, district Z… phone number…". Because buyers themselves make this recipient information public, rival sellers jump in and poach the customer. Within seconds of the customer's comment going up, some person X proactively inboxes them as if they were the admin or the shop owner and arranges delivery right away. This is customer poaching, and the buyer unknowingly sets up the conditions for it. The poacher spends nothing on ads and still gets the customer.

2. Protect customers from buying fake or poor-quality goods:

Alongside the poaching above, thanks to the "opening" that buyers unwittingly create, many buyers end up with bitter results. If the buyer gets good goods from the shop that poached them, that is lucky. In reality, many find out only after receiving the goods that they were cheated and what arrived is completely different from what they ordered. Some order a dress costing a million dong or more and get a bundle of rags.

So this protects customers' rights. Having customers inbox for the price inbox the shop keeps their information private and protects them from scams with poor-quality goods, so they do not save a few dong on shipping and lose a million in the end. Also, when quoting the price directly by inbox, customers get more specific advice about the product and detailed answers on quality and origin, and so feel more at ease about product quality.

3. Protect the seller's reputation:

After being sold poor-quality goods as above, many customers do not understand what happened and turn to criticize the shop, using rude language and leaving bad reviews, which damages the shop's image and reputation. Although this is the buyer's unintentional doing, the consequences are quite heavy for many shops sell online.

4. Let the fanpage send messages:

Customers who have messaged the shop about price or asked for advice on how to use the product are its most promising customers. The reason is that selling fanpages cannot inbox directly each person. With hundreds of millions of social network users, filtering out the people interested in your product to send information to is also a hard problem. But a fanpage can interact with customers already in its inbox, and people who have messaged directly have shown some interest in the product. So whenever the shop has a promotion or launches a new collection, the information is automatically sent by inbox to customers at their old message address. This gives online shops a sizeable pool of potential customers.

5. Raise fanpage engagement with users:

A fanpage can raise user engagement thanks to its existing inbox.

You may notice that on your news feed, besides posts from your friends, there are posts from other fanpages. These are fanpages you have liked or messaged, meaning you have interacted with them or clicked on their homepage to find out more. Facebook and other social networks can filter, by the amount and timing of your interactions, the fanpages you interact with most and show them on your news feed. This lets shops reach more people, creating room for more potential customers and a bigger sales scale.

The biggest weakness of asking customers to inbox for prices is reply speed. If a customer messages at 11 pm and nobody reads it until the next morning, most have already bought elsewhere. That is why many shops put an AI chatbot that answers messages on the front line: it quotes prices from the approved price list, records what the customer needs and hands over to sales to close the next morning.

Comparing the advantages of the two ways of quoting prices

Overall, each format has its own benefits, affecting both seller and buyer. Both public pricing and inbox for the price are chosen by many online shops, and naturally they choose based on the benefits they see.

For direct quotes, the benefit leans toward customers, the buyers, because they can choose, compare different online shops and rate the product and the shop. For inbox for the price, the benefit leans more toward the seller, since it protects reputation, builds a ready pool of potential customers and raises engagement with customers. As a result reach is also higher.

In short, depending on the product, online shop owners will either show prices publicly or ask for an inbox for the price. However, compared with inbox pricing, public pricing is preferred by customers. We hope this article helps buyers understand why many shops keep inbox pricing instead of showing prices, and understand the sellers' point of view so they do not doubt them or judge them badly. For those of you who sell online, we hope you pick the right format to grow your online business model smoothly.

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