Sanook targets e-commerce leadership
Sanook aims to be the No-1 e-commerce player in Thailand by the end of the year, doubling its revenue from last year's level in the process.
Tiwa York, managing director of Sanook E-Commerce, said that this year’s Thai B2C (business to consumer) e-commerce market is projected to be Bt6.7 billion, which would represent an annual increase of between 40 and 50 per cent.
The company’s revenue this year is expected to at least double 2011 income, driving Sanook to market leadership by year-end, he said.
Sanook E-Commerce aims to drive both of its two key major services of Shopping.co.th and Dealfish.co.th to be No 1 in the online shopping and classified business markets, respectively.
"Both of them are the company’s long-term investment and revenue sources and will form the majority of Sanook’s investment throughout this year. But we cannot disclose the level of this investment. This year, we are focused on the e-commerce market and both our core e-commerce businesses of Shopping.co.th and Dealfish.co.th," said Tiwa.
The key driver of the growth of e-commerce in Thailand this year is the behavior of consumers, who are now more familiar with have more trust in online commerce. The company changed the branding of its Sanook Classified to Dealfish last September. The operation provides an online classified service with the unique feature of offering locally relevant products, and it will also be using the "freemuim" business model, he said.
"The freemium model means that we offer the service for free on condition that if listing owners want to extend or add services, they then have to pay. We have not yet started the model, but plan to do so in the near future. The freemium model is the right direction that we believe will help us generate more revenue," said Tiwa.
Since last September, Dealfish.co.th has had about 80,000 listings, 58 per cent of them from Bangkok. With up to 4,000 active members, the service covers 10 main listing categories and 107 sub-categories.
"DealFish.co.th now has 50,000 to 55,000 unique visitors [UIP: unique Internet protocol] and 250,000 page views. According to TrueHits, Dealfish.co.th is now No 2 in terms of page views and be No 3 for UIPs," said the MD.
Online classifieds is the more profitable business, while online shopping is the larger business, therefore the company is concentrating on both these market areas.
Sanook’s e-commerce business also contains a daily-deal service called Coupon.Sanook.com, which is positioned as a value-added service for Sanook visitors. "Dealfish revenue will be recognised by the end of the third quarter, but we expect the six-month revenue will be 100 per cent more than Sanook Classified’s six-month revenue last year," said Tiwa.
Shopping.co.th, Dealfish.co.th and Coupon.Sanook.com together have some 2 million unique visitors.
"Interestingly, last year, about 6 per cent of this traffic came from mobile access, which was a rapid increase from only 1.5 per cent the previous year. For this year, it is expected that mobile access to the e-commerce websites will continue to experience a huge increase," he added.
