Facebook Thailand aims to offer financial support, including advertising credit, for local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as part of the social media giant's US$100-million programme to help small businesses in 30 countries in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
Facebook said live shopping, group community and conversational commerce are rising trends during the outbreak.
"We are in the process of finalising details on how to support SMEs with grants, including money and advertising credit," Chawadee Wongphyat, country manager for growth businesses at Facebook Thailand, said during a live press briefing.
Thailand is one of the 30 countries where Facebook would provide support for business continuity with $100 million in assistance. Some 30,000 SMEs worldwide are targeted through the project.
Ms Chawadee said the outbreak is taking a heavy toll on small businesses everywhere, so Facebook plans to lend a hand to support SMEs to survive and recover.
In this quarter, more than 58 million people in Thailand used Facebook on their mobile devices each month. Some 43 million access the platform daily.
As the pandemic takes hold, groups have been increasingly set up on Facebook, including product sales communities and alumni.
More than 45 million users engage in over 6 million Facebook groups, which have been active over the past month.
Ms Chawadee said live shopping via both Facebook and Instagram has been on the rise.
Conversational commerce is also gathering steam, such as the use of Facebook Messenger to close sales.
Facebook has embarked on its #SupportSmallBusiness initiative, as part of its ongoing efforts to assist Thailand's small business communities and encourage consumers to support local SMEs during this difficult time.
As part of the programme, Instagram, acquired by Facebook in 2012, announced Food Order features, where businesses IG account can now share food order stickers in Instagram Stories and as a button on their profiles, which will direct users to the business' food delivery platform (currently Foodpanda and Grab) to complete their purchase.
Facebook also rolled out a Support Small Business sticker on Instagram and a #SupportSmallBusiness hashtag on Facebook for users to show their support for small businesses. When people use the Support Small Business sticker on Instagram, it will also be added to a multi-author Instagram story so followers can see it.
"This enables users to help promote the local SMEs," Ms Chawadee said.
According to a recent YouGov study, over 32% of 1,000 Thai respondents have increased their online shopping during the Covid-19 crisis, over 39% ordered food deliveries more often and over 44% of those surveyed have spent more time watching online content. This shows consumers are shifting towards online activities during the outbreak.
Facebook reported that 78% of small businesses on the app in Thailand said they used it to showcase products and services to customers, with 94% saying promoting products and services digitally is important to their business. The platform did not reveal the number of businesses running on Facebook in Thailand.