Can the Thai cross-border market win in 2020?

According to Creden.co, three Thai e-commerce market companies, JSL (JD Central, Shopee, Lazada), suffered significant losses in 2018.

The former chairman of the Thai E-Commerce Association said that large e-commerce operators plan to increase their efforts in 2020 to explore more sources of income, including loan services. Over the years, they have invested huge amounts of money in promotional activities, but they have not been profitable.

Pawoot Pongvitayapanu, CEO of Thai e-commerce site Tarad.com, said: 'This year, JSL (JD Central, Shopee, Lazada) aims to get more revenue because they have spent a lot of money on marketing and promotion in the past few years. To attract customers and businesses to their platform. '

Although Lazada's revenue was 8.1 billion baht, it lost 2.6 billion baht. Shopee Thailand had revenue of 165 million baht and lost 4.1 billion baht, while Central JD had revenue of 458 million baht and a loss of 944 million baht.

WooPawoot said that major operators have begun to collect commissions from online merchants that operate high-end shopping malls on their platforms and seek other sources of income.

WooPawoot said that they also get data from the platform, which can be used to consider providing loans to e-commerce sellers.

Thailand Bank is now seeking to cooperate with these e-commerce platforms and ride-hailing service operators to provide loan services.

Mr. Pawoot said that by 2020, more brands will focus on online retail and adopt an omni-channel strategy to integrate online and offline activities to enhance the customer experience.

Thailand's e-wallet market will become more competitive this year.

In the first quarter of 2019, there were 473 million electronic money transactions with a total value of 67 billion baht.

Throughout 2018, 1.5 billion electronic currency transactions were recorded, worth 209 billion baht, a sharp increase from 1.2 million transactions a year ago, worth 126 billion baht.

WooPawoot said that with the emergence of new participants, the logistics business catering to e-commerce will continue to grow.

From January to December 17, 2019, Thailand Post had the highest express delivery revenue of 24 billion baht, followed by Thailand's Kerry Express (12 billion baht) and Thailand's DHL International Express (7 billion baht).

At the same time, Thailand's cross-border e-commerce trade will also gradually heat up this year, and more Chinese products will flow into Thailand, partly due to the establishment of a free trade e-commerce zone in the Eastern Economic Corridor, shortening distribution time, and reducing the price of products Demand.

According to the price comparison website Priceza, 77% of sales in the three major electronic markets come from 81,000 cross-border merchants, and the remaining 1 million come from Thai sellers.

WooPawoot said: 'The popularity of online sales, especially Chinese products, will affect distributors and SMEs in Thailand.'

Thailand's foreign trade will also increase with the promotion of major global electronic trading platforms such as Alibaba, Amazon, eBay, Wish and Rakuten.

Facebook As Facebook, Instagram, and Line attract sellers to their platforms, social commerce will grow exponentially, and sellers on these platforms can showcase their products through live chat.