MBK wades into booming e-commerce marketplace
SET-listed MBK Plc is making a foray into e-commerce to increase the group’s competitiveness in retail, hotels and lifestyle business.
The group this year established MBK Digital, a wholly-owned subsidiary, to operate its e-commerce business.
Yotsan Srisuchat, managing director of MBK Digital, said the company in August launched a new website, MBKgo.com, offering an online e-exhibition format, to test the market response.
The website aims to cash in on Thailand’s continuously growing e-commerce market.
The e-exhibition format features over 400 exhibitors in the travel, lifestyle and dining categories, rotating the focus on the mbkgo.com site.
The company aims to arrange 100 exhibitions via its website next year, with more than 1,500 booths expected to be featured at MBKgo.com.
MBK projects 500,000 people will visit each of its online exhibitions. The company aims to have 250 million baht in trade generated between exhibitors and shoppers.
The revenue stream for MBK Digital will stem from transaction fees.
The company has invested 80 million baht to develop this platform, as well as on marketing and a working support system.
With one click, visitors can take advantage of discounts on hotels and resorts, restaurants and other activities at major landmarks around Thailand, said Mr Yotsan.
He said Thailand’s e-commerce business is expected to grow by 9.8% this year to 2.81 trillion baht, and expand by 11.4% to 3.13 trillion in 2018.
“We’ve entered the e-commerce business because the market has been growing rapidly, particularly for leisure products, which are forecast to reach 740 billion baht in value in 2018, or 9% growth over this year,” said Mr Yotsan.
The market size of leisure business in the e-commerce channel is second after the retail and wholesale category.
He said the entry into e-commerce business will augment MBK’s physical business from retail, hotels, golf courses and restaurants. Some 10% of products via MBKgo. com come from MBK group.
In the future, products from MBK’s tenants will be made available at MBKgo.com.
Mr Yotsan said the company will launch its first online exhibition, “Go go go …! Deals around Thailand #1,” featuring travel, dining, and lifestyle deals from Nov 27 until Dec 8, 2017. Customers can register for discount codes from now until Nov 26.
“We’ve been running a soft launch of our e-commerce business since August this year, and have received positive feedback from customers. More than 40% of regular customers make repeat purchases, which is higher than the average repurchase rate of 20-30% in the overall e-commerce industry,’’ he said, adding that the monthly visitor growth rate is over 100%.