Priceza, Wisesight and the Digital Economy Promotion Agency (Depa) have partnered to equip local online sellers with data insights to enable them to understand consumer shopping behaviour trends and improve their sales.
The move aims to empower local vendors to compete with cross-border products on foreign platforms.
Price comparison site Priceza, social listening platform Wisesight and Depa jointly set up a startup platform called "Etailligence" with registered capital of 1 million baht.
The service offers local vendors data on the top sellers in each product category from many e-commerce platforms. This enables vendors to learn how well their products sell in categories compared with rivals.
They can use the data to improve their sales, customise marketing strategies and optimise operational efficiency in the supply chain, according to Etailligence.
The data also includes fast-rising new products.
The platform has data on 5 million items, which will increase to 10 million before the platform goes live in 2024, said Thanawat Malabuppha, founder of Priceza and honorary president of the Thai E-commerce Association.
"The revenue model will be determined later," said Mr Thanawat.
E-commerce market data gained through advanced data analysis techniques and tools is important, he said.
The partners plan to use this data to drive the platform's services, said Mr Thanawat.
The platform can also gather data on products that sell via live channels.
"Our tools will enable trading via e-marketplaces to be more transparent by showing an overview of the competition," he said.
"Overseas markets including China have such tools for their entrepreneurs. The government needs to support local small and medium-sized enterprises in using these tools for product planning and to improve competitiveness."
Mr Thanawat said Thailand's e-commerce market continues to grow and is expected to reach 1.6 trillion baht by 2027, up from an anticipated 932 billion baht this year.
However, the market is dominated by foreign e-marketplaces such as Shopee and Lazada, while social commerce on Facebook, Line and TikTok is gaining ground, he said.
Mr Thanawat cited an Electronic Transactions Development Agency report that 66.8% of online sellers prefer to use social commerce channels such as Facebook. E-marketplaces ranked second at 55.2%, while Line My Shop was preferred by 32%.
All data on user behaviour is owned by those platforms, which have recorded an increasing number of cross-border products, particularly from China, the past few years, he said.
Chinese sellers also use live-streams to sell their products via the major platforms.
Mr Thanawat cited a recent Priceza Insights report that sampled 80 million cross-border products on Shopee Thailand, finding 20.6% are from China, 4.7% from Indonesia and the rest from Thailand, of which 30% are from Bangkok.