Lazada: Before and after in Ecommerce Philippines

Lazada has been around for a year now in the Philippines. I’m pretty sure most of you have seen their ads at one point when you were browsing the Internet. They came a long way. If some of you may not know, Lazada is actually a venture launched across South East Asia last April of 2012. They are also present in other countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia. Looking back, its pretty clear that since their arrival in Asia, online shopping took off very fast. From a sleeping Ecommerce industry, Asia became a strong online market. After their arrival in South East Asia, a lot of local business jumped in the online shopping mall bandwagon. I’m sure most of you found Lazada as a very familiar service during their infant stage of early last year. It’s no secret that they are the clone of the Amazon website which is a successful online store in the United States and later on ventured out to Mexico. Actually, when we come to think of it, online shopping has been around for quite some time now. Just happened that prior to their arrival, Asia wasn’t known for having huge online market. In Philippines’ case, most of us are not credit cardholders or Paypal users. This made online transaction a challenge for local customers. Sadly, credit cards and Paypal are the standard or conventional payment method that is accepted online. For some online stores, not having these payment options won’t complete the transaction with them. It’s actually normal for an online store to charge their customers in advance before they ship out the order.

However, this make customers very cautious since they may get scammed where the product they paid for won’t be delivered at all. With these two main issues, it made online shopping in Philippines tough for online business owners planning to put up their online business in the country. But when Lazada arrived in the sun, in just one introduced alternative payment method. This payment method is what they called “Cash on Delivery”. This allows any customers from their website to order on their online shopping mall and not worry about paying it upfront. They can simply order from the website and just surrender their shipment address and name of the recipient. No payment will be done at that moment. Lazada only requires their customers who opt for Cash on Delivery to pay in cash as it is delivered in their very homes. This payment method eliminates the idea for Filipinos that they can get scammed online since they get to keep their money up until their order arrives. As for Filipinos who are only capable or comfortable to pay in cash, they can still manage to experience online shopping.  Yes, Lazada truly came a long way. I remember when they were just starting, the number one issue that customers had where to have smooth delivery process with the Philippines’ Online Shopping Mall. In fairness to them, they drastically improved on their overall service mainly in their delivery service. Personally, I even hot mine just today. Online bought it yesterday as well.