Latest update: September 2023 | by Lili
All you need to know about Wish
Table of contents
- How does it work
- How to shop on Wish
- The Blitz Buy
- How can Wish offer products so cheaply?
- What should brands expect from Wish?
Founded in 2010 in San Francisco, Wish has been offering cheap consumer goods online for over a decade. The marketplace is accessible both on desktop computers and via smartphone apps, and currently has ca. 26 million monthly active users.
Wish is currently ranked as the 34th most popular website in the US in its category (e-Commerce) and has an annual revenue of more than $1 billion.
How does it work
Wish uses the tile format made popular by social media platforms. The sign-up process is quick and painless, which contributes to an easy shopping experience preferred by many consumers.
People can opt to sign up through their social media accounts, making the process even easier. After signup, shoppers can already access Wish’s discount deals and sales incentive games (see below).
Screenshot of Wish.com’s homepage
Wish is well-known for offering cheap goods in various categories like electronics, fashion, sports gear, toys and gadgets, cosmetics and baby care products. However, it’s also well-known that the overwhelming majority of these items is not exactly top quality.
We’ve conducted several test purchases to find out more about the treatment of brands on the platform, the personal experience of customers, as well as the products available and sellers active on Wish.
Unfortunately, we’ve encountered a relatively high number of counterfeit, grey market, and bad quality products on Wish, corresponding to the platform’s less-than-stellar reputation.
How to shop on Wish
You can either download the Wish app to your smartphone or access the site on your desktop device. Based on your customer account and interests, the algorithm starts to give product recommendations to shoppers right after signup.
Placing an item in the cart and paying is easy and straightforward, which helps customers enjoy a positive shopping experience. Wish accepts all the major payment options, including credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Despite the already quite low price of most products, Wish often uses further discounts, games like Blitz Buy or other sales incentives to encourage customers to reach into their wallets.
The Blitz Buy
Screenshot of the Blitz Buy wheel on Wish.com
The Blitz Buy tab allows customers to get further discounts every day on various products offered by one of their top sellers. Spinning the wheel gives shoppers a timeframe in which they have to finish their shopping for the discounts to be valid. A countdown at the top of the page urges customers to lock in their savings fast before the time runs out.
Screenshot of wish.com displaying the countdown of Blitz Buy
How can Wish offer products so cheaply?
The simple answer to that lies in the bad quality of the products offered, as well as their origin: most of these items are directly sold and shipped from China.
Product, seller and brand information is often scarce. Sellers are only required to display a business address, while product information usually consists of a few lines and pictures.
Screenshot of a random seller’s information on wish.com
Screenshots of a random product listing on wish.com
Screenshot of a few lines of product description for a random product listing on wish.com
Delivery times vary and can be anything between a few business days to at least three weeks. Reaching customer service is often difficult, especially during peak hours, but in general, most customer complaints eventually get a reply.
What should brands expect from Wish?
Considering Wish’s shady reputation and its large array of bad quality products, being associated with the marketplace may not be the best idea for brands that want to be taken seriously.
Nevertheless, fraudsters may sell replicas or fake versions of your products on the platform. This means that completely ignoring Wish is not a good strategy either, since the sale of IP infringing products will lead to significant losses of revenue and reputation for your brand.
If you don’t want to keep regularly checking the marketplace, setting up a marketplace monitoring program with globaleyez is your best chance to discover fake, grey market and lookalike products on Wish.
Contact us if you have concerns about Wish or any other marketplace.