Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Lazada: Expansion of Ecommerce in the Philippines

It’s almost hard to imagine living a life without Internet connection nowadays. It has become integral in our daily activities no matter what age you are on. Even the young ones are starting to explore it at a very ripe age in this modern digital era. One particular activity in online that is rising at a high rate in the country specifically is online shopping. It used to be a dead weight in the online industry. Ecommerce was really struggling to capture the hearts of the local online users for various reasonable reasons. It actually happened just last year were it expanded like a wildfire. Online shopping started to spread and competitors came out from nowhere after Lazada Online Mall was launched in the country. Ecommerce was actually slow in growth a year before they have arrived in the Philippines. To most online users, shopping online was never choice or option to them back then. When local online users want to buy something, they prefer cheaper second hand items on local classified websites.

Customers who want to buy brand new items often visit traditional malls. This should be no surprise to us as we were raised by our parents going to traditional offline malls when we need to shop. Choosing online shopping can save the local online customers some time and money. How do online shopping benefit us? Local customers can actually shop anywhere you want with online shopping. Usual extra-spent cash on visiting traditional malls will now be saved with online shopping. This is a shopping woe that Lazada wanted to solve for the local online customers in the country. It's actually hard for any online mall to tap the currently untapped market in online of the Philippines. A lot of the reasons is because of majority of the population don't possess their own credit card. It's obvious that we are not comfortable or very trusting in online transactions. Probably it is because we are aware of the existence of online frauds and scams. The local Ecommerce in the Philippines is now starting to grow. They contributed dearly to the Ecommerce industry in less than two years of existence in the country.

To prove that they are legit online mall, they were seen on TVC on top local channels at primetime. What solution did they come up with in the usual Ecommerce woes in the country? A newly then alternative payment method called Cash on Delivery or C.O.D. was introduced to their online customers. It's a online payment option that is not offered by online stores usually. Any online business finds this payment method very risky from their end. Online customers can pay later after they receive their orders with this alternative payment method. Once orders are delivered, that's the only time customers are required to pay in cash. Customers can hold unto their money up until their orders arrived at their address. This is to eradicate the way of thinking of local online users about online malls as scams.

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