Lazada sees high potential for online shopping here

Riccardo Basile, chief executive of Lazada Thailand, said this country had high potential for e-commerce and online transactions as the use of mobile devices was growing rapidly, and the upcoming expansion of fourth-generation wireless broadband would encourage more shopping through smartphones.

 

He said Lazada had created an end-to-end ecosystem. Across the region, more than 8.4 million mobile users have downloaded the Lazada app, about 5.9 million of them on the Android platform and more than 2.5 million on iOS.

 

Lazada Thailand received 20.3 million visits on its website in December 2014, about half of them using mobile devices. It also has around 6.5 million Line friends and about 2 million Facebook fans.

 

To remain the No 1 e-commerce shopping mall in the region, the firm has four areas of focus - logistics, payment, expertise, and culture.

 

For the logistics aspect, the firm now has eight warehouses, more than 50 delivery hubs covering 80 cities, and partnerships with 60 express courier and transport companies throughout the region.

 

For the payment element, the firm boasts HelloPay, which it says will revolutionise the way payments and money transfers are made through the Internet once it is launched in Thailand.

 

As for expertise, the firm provides a fully integrated platform for small and medium-sized enterprises and online businesses to manage product assortment, pricing, promotions and delivery.

 

In terms of culture, Lazada operates its business with a global mindset and local expertise. Lazada Thailand now has more than 600 employees.

 

"I think that Thailand is a great country for e-commerce markets," Basile said. "Mobile phones and the 4G network will have important roles to drive e-commerce in the country, since mobile-phone users now and in the future will spend much more money to purchase products via their phones.

 

"Customers and merchants are very important to us, and we will try to provide services to support them so that they will be with us and stay with us." He said that to celebrate the third anniversary of Lazada in Thailand, the firm would offer a special campaign from Tuesday to Thursday next week providing flash sales, hot deals by category and private sales to customers.

 

Lazada now has offices in six Southeast Asian countries, including the head office in Singapore. The other five are in Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines.

 

Basile said the number of Internet users in Thailand had grown by 22 per cent in three years.

 

Pornthip Kongchun, Thailand marketing manager at Google, said purchases here via mobile phones were increasing.

 

She said Thais were also spending much more time accessing information and entertainment via mobile devices. In the fourth quarter last year, 40 per cent of Thais accessing YouTube did so on their mobiles.