Asia Pacific will lead the world in e-commerce over the next five years, MasterCard predicts, urging
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THE ASIA-PACIFIC region will lead the world in e-commerce over the next five years, MasterCard predicts, urging merchants to prepare for the changes in technology and in consumer behaviour.
Sam Ahmed, MasterCard’s head of marketing for Asia-Pacific, said the region had become the largest e-commerce region in the world, turning over US$567 billion (Bt20.6 trillion) in such transactions last year.
With 60 per cent of the world’s population, the region has a growing consumer base that is twice as likely to buy online than any other group in the world.
“Asia-Pacific’s e-commerce will set the agenda for the next five years,” he said.
The Asia-Pacific middle class is projected to expand to more than| 1.7 billion people within three years, and China, India and Indonesia |will be the top three countries |for e-commerce growth during the period.
Furthermore, China is expected to exceed $1 trillion in e-commerce transactions, accounting for more than 40 per cent of global total, by 2018.
The e-commerce industry has also evolved to include m-commerce (mobile-device transactions) and retail through social networks.
MasterCard says it has maintained a central vantage point from which to observe the growing importance of the Asia-Pacific region as an e-commerce hub.
“Our expertise in payment systems, processing over 43 billion transactions each year, gives us first-hand knowledge of how consumers prefer to shop and pay,” Ahmed said.
Messages as never before
“This has enabled us to create new products that help e-commerce businesses operate more efficiently, develop technology to protect consumers and retailers from fraud, and help build the merchant experience for online consumers.”
He said the average consumer was now inundated with offers and messages as never before, so driving people from engagement to transaction has never been so hard. This is why MasterCard pioneered the “e-commerce engine”.
This is an operating model made up of technology, people and processes to enable greater efficiency and effectiveness in the way marketers intelligently use data to drive transaction velocity.
The deal with the growth of ecommerce, MasterCard has released a white paper to help merchants navigate the changes. Ten transformations have been identified as the drivers of e-commerce evolution over the next three years as well as its impacts.
Consumer beha viour will be based on preferences and the best deals offered through phones and other mobile devices, the white paper says. Service and rewards will be the killers of apps as comparison shopping gainsimportance.
Ari Sarker, co-president for Asia-Pacific at MasterCard, said the Internet would change the connectivity landscape greatly over the next 10 years, and emerging countries would engage the changes.
Sarker said the challenge that lies ahead was that more and more extremely active online users would be shifting online from more traditional transactions through automated teller machines and cash payments.
This trend, however, will be faster or slower in different countries depending on regulations and consumers’ engagement.
