Thailand is quickly rising to the top of the list of nations of interest as major companies increasingly enter the Southeast Asian marketplaces. E-commerce is one of the major markets expected to flourish.
According to a study by Global Web Index, there were over 48.59 million internet users in Thailand in January 2021.
Although the client base is vast, little money is spent online; for this reason, now is the ideal time to establish your business in Thailand’s burgeoning e-commerce market before any significant competitors do.
Best E-commerce Platforms
For newcomers, establishing a new business in Thailand can be overwhelming. However, it is simpler to contribute to the rising economy thanks to the straightforward and practical norms and regulations. Despite Thailand’s long history of market ups and downs, technological integration today makes it possible to reap significant rewards.
Finding reliable service providers will help you manage everything smoothly if you are a foreigner trying to register a company in Thailand. Online shopping is preferred by a large segment of the population in Thailand. But it is wise to learn more about Thailand’s top markets before opening your online store. The following information is provided regarding the best ones to assist you in choosing a platform:
Lazada Thailand
Lazada is undoubtedly the biggest name in Southeast Asia’s leading e-commerce platform. This platform has developed quite a reputation in the area. Lazada was founded in 2012 and had over 1,45,000 foreign and local sellers. Its popularity has multiplied after the introduction of its smartphone app. With 560 million clients and 3000 companies, it makes the marketplace more alluring for prospective vendors. Lazada is in Southeast Asia’s top six most populous nations—Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.
Shopee Thailand
Shopee was founded in 2015 but expanded quickly and established itself as a significant player in the Southeast Asian marketplace. The first year after inception generated approximately 1.8 billion USD in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV).
You can also infer the popularity of Shopee from the site’s approximately 51.24 million monthly visitors.
Additionally, it has a firm hold on the markets in Taiwan and Indonesia. It gives its vendors a broad market reach in this way. With the addition of Mexico and Brazil, Shopee now has a global presence in nine nations.
JIB
JIB is another powerful e-commerce platform in Thailand, with over 2.6 million monthly visitors. The website sells various IT items, including laptops, desktop PCs, and more.
While Lazada and Shopee are accessible in several Southeast Asian nations, practically all JIB’s earnings come from Thailand.
The website is similar to Lazada’s, though it has fewer product sections. However, you can take advantage of comparable promotions to other markets.
On JIB, selling globally is more complicated than on Lazada or Shopee. The few product categories mean that JIB won’t likely be the first choice for most foreign sellers.
Chilindo
Chilindo is a specialist online auction website. It enables users to bid for a product and pay the best price for various goods from many categories, such as clothing and accessories, house and garden goods, products for families and children, technology and electronics, sports, healthcare, and cosmetics.
Power Buy
Power Buy, a division of the family-owned conglomerate Central Group, began as a chain of electronics and home appliance-focused chain of stores in Thailand in 1996.
It gradually constructed 90 of these stores across the nation, but to meet the rising demand for online shopping, it finally joined e-commerce in 2015. The company progressively began lowering physical shop space from an estimated 4,000 sq m to 300-400 sq m to increase its internet presence and reduce investment costs.
Advice
The majority of the e-commerce market in Thailand belongs to tech-based firms. Advice has nearly 350 retail locations in Thailand and Laos, making it one of the top wholesalers of IT-related products and smartphones.
The advice established itself in the e-commerce market during the internet boom and has since reaped the rewards. Advice’s e-commerce site has 1.6 million visitors per month in addition to making money at its physical locations.
Central
Southeast Asia has seen a significant rise in health and vanity in the twenty-first century. That led to numerous players in the Thailand e-commerce industry who catered to the same.
One such business is Central, which transitioned from a chain of physical department shops to developing its website that catered to the vertical markets of fashion, cosmetics, and home décor.
JD Central
A Thai-run marketplace is run by JD Central, a joint project between Jingdong and Central Group. JD Central, one of the most critical players in the e-commerce industry, has a more than $783 million valuation.
It is renowned for both its many campaigns and top-notch shipping services. So, considering selling in Thailand, consider looking at this expanding market.
JD Central offers a variety of goods for sale, including apparel, food and drink, household and DIY supplies, healthcare and supplement products, etc.
AliExpress
The vast consumer retail division of Alibaba, known as AliExpress, rivals, if not exceeds, Lazada and Amazon regarding the variety of products offered and the number of suppliers. The product categories are children, fashion, health and beauty, watches, children, home decor, sports and outdoors, automobiles and home renovations, and electronics.
They already have a Thai-specific and global English-language website to deliver to Thailand. Accordingly, AliExpress is a great place to start if you’re looking for the nearest thing to an “Amazon Replacement,” as many ex-pats do. It offers a wide variety of goods.
With time, it rose to the top of the Thai e-commerce sector for selling books, periodicals, and other novelty items in many categories.
HomePro
Five years ago, the online furniture retail industry had a boom. From a market size of $26.7 billion in 2015 to a staggering $258 billion by the end of 2018, the industry experienced tremendous growth.
HomePro is one of the most established companies in this sector in Thailand. The brand, which debuted in 1995 as a website, successfully changed with time and became a robust e-commerce platform. Furniture, equipment, tools, and other basic household necessities are all provided for by HomePro for the average person.
Interestingly, the following three competitors don’t provide much to select from, each receiving an average of 1.2 million monthly visits.
Best for Sales Features
One of the biggest e-commerce platforms in Southeast Asia, Lazada, is owned by the international company Alibaba Group. (The marketplace was started by Rocket Internet in 2012 and eventually purchased by Alibaba.) It wants to become the Amazon of the area.
It provides a seller platform where thousands of Thai businesses advertise their products. Lazada sells a vast selection of goods straight from its Bangkok warehouses. It has one of the broadest product selections and is renowned for its cutting-edge cross-border delivery alternatives.
With products in the areas of technology, fashion, home goods, children, wellness and beauty, vehicles, sports, and tourism, to mention a few, there isn’t much that you can’t find here. You can browse by category or brand; they frequently change their sales and highlight reels.
They allow clients to pay with cash on delivery, debit or credit cards, Paypal, cash at the counter, ATMs, LINE, K-Bank installments, and internet banking. They also offer 100 percent purchase protection. In addition, they provide quick, standard, and economical shipping.
The main benefits of selling on this platform are as follows:
- It is the most well-known and reliable online shopping site in Thailand.
- There are more than a thousand different shopping sections.
- It is the biggest internet retailer with the best products.
- On Lazada, thousands of Thai businesses sell their products, improving pricing competitiveness and item availability.
- Cash on delivery (COD), MasterCard, Visa, JCB, and PayPal are all accepted forms of payment.
- There is support for Thai and English languages.
- Free shipping is often provided, although it is not shared. However, courier delivery is relatively inexpensive.
Best for SEO and marketing
SEO is crucial for amplifying the number of customers who visit your e-commerce site. Where else do consumers go when they are searching the web for something? Search engines. You, therefore, require as much search engine visibility as you can garner.
Lazada was one of the innovators that helped online shopping become popular in Thailand. Many locals consider the platform a terrific platform to find what they want and require because of its large selection of low-rise products.
Although Lazada is one of the major competitors in the Thai e-commerce market, Shopee is a serious rival.
Best for Multichannel Selling
In addition to rebranding, Lazada Logistics also launched the multichannel logistics (MCL) solutions, which offer a unified stock fulfillment solution to assist businesses and e-commerce enablers in seamlessly completing orders across all e-commerce channels.
Whether a customer places an order through Lazada or another e-commerce platform, Lazada logistics will process and deliver each order, making it the best multichannel selling platform in Thailand.
This arrangement allows Lazada to handle efficiently and ship orders using its fleets, 3PL distributors, or channel-nominated fleet by storing the online goods of merchants and partner organizations.
Best Value for Money
While both Lazada and Shopee online stores provide fantastic deals, Shopee typically has lower costs than its rivals, especially regarding accessories like bags, shirts, and toys. Shopee has gained a good reputation among online shoppers for offering cheaper goods. Since Shopee merchants only pay a small commission fee, they can lower their pricing.
Best for Ease of Use
Lazada and Shopee are figuratively the two best platforms when it comes to ease of use. The user-friendly Lazada and Shopee online shopping platforms have easy-to-search and diverse shopping sections and parameters (based on the price range, brand, color, ratings, etc.) that assist customers in finding the specific item they require.
However, there is a clear distinction between Lazada and Shopee’s home pages. The homepage of Shopee is very overpowering. Although Lazada’s website is less crowded and more bearable, it is still packed with information.
Each of these e-commerce websites offers a Help Center component that presents information about using the site in the form of questions and answers. Additionally, they have a built-in chat feature that enables users to communicate with merchants directly.
Conclusion
The e-commerce sector in Thailand is expected to continue growing, which is consistent with the overall good outlook. New competitors should invest as soon as they can because the environment surrounding this business will steadily evolve in the years to come.
