Thailand is among the stars set to lead this growth across the region.
COVID-19 epidemic has changed the ways we live, how we work and where we shop, to name a few. In the business world, one of the clear results has been in shopping behaviour: more people are online and shop online.
In fact, an additional 40 million people in Southeast Asia connected to the internet for the first time last year, compared to only 10 million in 2019. And those who purchased accounted for one third of the year’s online commerce.
As these new shoppers discover, shopping online has some clear benefits including convenience (more time to watch Netflix while stuck at home), the ability to better research the available products and general access to a much greater range of choice and variety of products and services. It is therefore no surprise that 9 out of 10 of these shoppers had the intention to re-purchase.
One of the drivers of this Southeast Asia growth is Thailand, where tech savvy shoppers are increasingly turning to online stores for their purchases. It was not always like this. Just five years ago, only 1.9% of online e-commerce was via online channels.
Read more here.