Online shopping taking off

Business » Telecommunications

MARKETING & TECHNOLOGY

Online shopping taking off

Published: 9/05/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Business

Online shopping has big potential in a downturn because it is easy to do and the number of buyers using the internet to shop in Thailand is growing steadily.

The number of online shoppers and trading volumes have grown by 30-40% during the past four years, said Veerawat Hongsitthiwong, vice-president for search and marketplace of Sanook Online, an affiliate of one of the country's largest Web portals.

The country has about 10 large online marketplaces including shopping.co.th, run by Sanook in association with eBay. The site attracts more than 60,000 visitors a day and the company expects the figure will double this year.

Trading value on the site now averages 10 million baht a month, up from 5-6 million a few years ago.

''Although many businesses have been affected by the economic recession, the online business is still doing well,'' Mr Veerawat said.

Today more people are starting online businesses because it is easy to do with a small investment. ''I believe that it is a real high-potential business in the future,'' he said.

Kasikorn Research Center said Thailand had 10.5 million internet users last year, up from 9.4 million the year before.

Mr Veerawat said the key to the growth of each online marketplace is the ability to find hot products for sale. Another factor is continuous marketing campaigns. Shopping.co.th is growing by more than 45% because it can attract some of the one million daily visitors to the Sanook website.

However, Mr Veerawat said a major obstacle to the online business in Thai land is consumers' lack of trust in payment and security.

''They feel they may not trust invisible business partners. Therefore, service providers or webmasters must introduce a good system to build trust,'' he said.

Sanook Online plans to charge some fees from new marketing tools and introduce new packages to customers in the second half of 2010 and expects to break even by 2011.

Today the company generates income from banner advertisements and optional feature fees.

Shopping.co.th has 27 categories and 186 sub-categories of products and services, with around 200,000 new items added per month. The most popular categories include clothes, accessories, mobile phones, and electrical and electronic goods. Some dealers sell as many as 3,000 items per month, he said.

About the author

Writer: CHADAMAS CHINMANEEVONG

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John in BKK

Discussion 4 : 10/05/2009 at 02:20 AM4
Its an entirely different culture in Thailand, where the internet is mostly useless in purchasing goods.

But in reality it won't improve much until:
1) The Thai post office stops causing packages to 'disappear' if the mailman isn't bribed occasionally.
2) Tariffs of imported goods are changed from the current 20%-200% rate to under 10%.
3) Consumer protection laws are enacted, and more importantly, enforced.
David Harrison

Discussion 3 : 09/05/2009 at 09:56 AM3
Your article "Online Shopping Taking Off" gives very little information to Readers and no examples except for Shopping.Co.th . Shopping is not a normal E-Tailer, but Ebay with a Thai overlay and as you should have pointed out an auction site. It is also Your duty to elaborate on the security aspects of buying online such as 128 bit SSL encription. Most of the items on Shopping are also being supplied by Vendors outside of Thailand and therefore Thai Consumer Protection laws do not apply.

There are serious issues here and your correspondent could have done much better than a 15 minute interview with this one Company.
Don John Aleman

Discussion 2 : 09/05/2009 at 09:16 AM2
As more Thais get credit cards and, are assured of their ssfety, Internet sales will double/triple in the next 5 years !
,which will further reduce Thailands sales tax income.

In the US I rarely left home to shop.The Internet had expert, accurate, ( every language ), technical data, lower cost, often free delivery, and usually no tax. Thailand seems to be praising Internet sales & may not realize it but they are staring a retailing "lion" in the mouth and nothing, for now, can be done about it.
This is now everywhere not just the US.

Traffic congestion will be the only beneficiary as people wll shop at home, 24 hours every day, not have to pay taxi's, nor try to get technical data from an untrained clerk. Were I an investor I would buy/lease a fleet of radio equipped delivery vehicles which, soon, should see a huge increase in home/office deliveries !

I do not know Sanook but there are hundreds of other sites selling thousands of products daily from Gucci to plastic toys shipped from all over the world.Sales tax may not be a large part ot Thailand's budget but it is headed downward so, once again, Kuhn Korn's budget figures will have to be readjusted.
Don John Aleman

Discussion 1 : 09/05/2009 at 09:15 AM1
As more Thais get credit cards and, are assured of their ssfety, Internet sales will double/triple in the next 5 years !
,which will further reduce Thailands sales tax income.

In the US I rarely left home to shop.The Internet had expert, accurate, ( every language ), technical data, lower cost, often free delivery, and usually no tax. Thailand seems to be praising Internet sales & may not realize it but they are staring a retailing "lion" in the mouth and nothing, for now, can be done about it.
This is now everywhere not just the US.

Traffic congestion will be the only beneficiary as people wll shop at home, 24 hours every day, not have to pay taxi's, nor try to get technical data from an untrained clerk. Were I an investor I would buy/lease a fleet of radio equipped delivery vehicles which, soon, should see a huge increase in home/office deliveries !

I do not know Sanook but there are hundreds of other sites selling thousands of products daily from Gucci to plastic toys shipped from all over the world.Sales tax may not be a large part ot Thailand's budget but it is headed downward so, once again, Kuhn Korn's budget figures will have to be readjusted.

Online shopping taking off