Why Lazada remains ahead in PH e-commerce race

Fi l i p i n o consumers in today’s in-yourfingertips society tend to trust and try the dominant force in e-commerce. The runners up in the business can always compete, but it’s hard to topple a household name established by clear-cut identity and word-of-mouth popularity.

In the case of Lazada, its domi-

ranking, and social media followers, Lazada is way ahead of its competitors.

The data collected this month of April shows the online shopping portal garnering a staggering 67,679,800 monthly visits as compared to its nearest pursuer Shopee which gets 9,165,600 visits per month. Third-running Zalora is farther down with 3,072,300, while ebay and Beauty MNL take in 1,826,000 and 1,121,300 visits, respectively.

Lazada’s numbers of social media followers also lorded over

- ter, 239,200 on Instagram, and 22,768,400 on Facebook. Lazada Philippines operations (Photo from Lazada PH website)

The Lazada Group, founded by German startup Rocket Internet in 2011, now operates sites in Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore where its headquarter is located, and of course the Philippines.

In June last year, the Alibaba Group increased its investment in Lazada by an additional $ 1 billion, significantly raising its stake from 51% to 83%. The same group invested $2 billion more into Lazada just last month.

Lazada is also a recipient of the iPrice E-Commerce Merchant

Awards (iEMA), Southeast Asia’s preeminent awards voted and judged by online consumers.

For its popularity among Filipino consumers, it helps that Lazada, which sells fashion apparel, electronics, car accessories, and home appliances, has agreed long to allow retail giant SM Investments to use the store to sell its merchandise.

Though the Malaysian iPrice Group research recently concluded that Shopee, which formally launched its celebrity Pinay ambassador Anne Curtis, is fastemerging as Lazada’s competitor by the last quarter of 2017, and that it also “generates programs and government partnership to reach out to MSME’s,” Lazada is still way ahead of the competition.

to- mind is proof that Lazada is in the consciousness of the online- buying Filipinos like an embedded chip in the head. Online shoppers were said to be “consistently searching for the term Lazada over other ecommerce brands.” Practically the site’s name is synonymous to the fundamental meaning of online shopping.

Proper marketing can also be attributed to its success as Lazada experienced “notable peaks” during its various online sales, including the “Birthday Sale” in March and the “Online Revolution” campaign that ran at the end of the year.

Traditionally, Filipinos believe in the strength of what is the most popular and most established brand name or entity out there. Bandwagon is a Filipino thing, so it’s a no-brainer that some shoppers visit the Lazada site to join the hordes of online shoppers who already got into the parade.