Priceza spots Chinese tsunami
Surge brought by foreign e-commerce
Intense competition from foreign e-commerce players has sparked a tsunami of cross-border products from China, making up nearly half of the local online market, says Priceza, a Southeast Asia price comparison website.
Priceza expects Thailand’s e-commerce market will be mature by 2025, with value forecast at US$11 billion (365 billion baht). Online retail is projected to account for 8 percent of total retail in seven years, increasing from 2% in 2018. During 20182025, local e-commerce will continue to grow 20-30% per year.
“We foresaw earlier this year that cross-border products are overflowing in local markets. In Thailand, those goods accounted for 47% of the total listed database of Priceza,” said Thanawat Malabuppha, chief executive and co-founder.
In the first half of this year, there were 36 million items in its database, of which 17 million are imported. The number of product lists increased by 28% from the same period last year due to growing cross border products, and 80% of them from China, especially via Lazada’s
website, owned by Alibaba.
Even more intense competition is expected this half, in part because of the entrance of new players like Central JD as well as the reintroduction of old ones with new investors.
“Leading players that previously earned commission fees or listed products fees from merchants have waived them to attract online merchants,” said Mr Thanawat.
Priceza has also seen an uptick in visitors and sales conversion rate as consumer trust in online shopping grows.
In the first half, there were 70 million visits through Priceza’s website, with a sales conversion rate of 2.98% over the past six months, higher than 2.81% for all of last year and 1.72% in 2016.
“Our conversion rate has doubled over the last two years, signifying that users like to compare products and are buying more,” he said.
The average basket size in Thailand was 1,702 baht in the first half.
Consumers buy more expensive items online via desktop, spending 2,309 baht per basket on average, while mobile web browser purchases averaged 1,266 and mobile apps purchases averaged 1,497.
In terms of transaction volume, mobiles accounted for 81% of total orders and desktops generated the rest. For traffic, 73% of visitors use mobiles or smartphones to access Priceza.