Lazada: Saving more money in online

The Ecommerce industry in the country was challenging for most business opportunist during the early years. South East Asia including Philippines was slow in adapting to the Ecommerce penetration compared to the penetration it did on other regions. Although, we are aware of it for the longest time, it took a while for us to finally catch up with the rest. Finally, it finally happened in the country last year. The moment Lazada came into the online business picture, online competitors run by local businessmen showed up while online shopping continued its rise in the local online market. The growth of Ecommerce in the past was very slow a few years before they arrived in the country. Local online users initially looked down upon online shopping as an alternative option for addressing their shopping needs. Before, local online users prefer visiting local online classified websites when they want to buy something in second hand condition.

Conventionally, customers prefer to go on traditional mall when they want to purchase something brand new. Offline malls are actually part of our culture as we grew up visiting them when we want to buy something. With online shopping, local online consumers can actually save their time and money. How can online shopping really benefit us as a consumer? As for online shopping, local online consumers can do it wherever they go. Customers are no longer required to go to traditional offline malls saving them more money on the usual gas expense. It was an issue that was long endured by local customers that they wanted to solve for them. It was actually hard for any online mall to tap the untapped online community of the country. Probably because the majority of the Filipinos are not credit card owners or PayPal account users. Having a culture that doesn’t trust online transactions also has contributions to it. We are actually aware of the possibility of having online scams and frauds in online shopping.

Nowadays, the local Ecommerce is beginning to make some noise in the online space. It's quite amazing feat for the Philippines’ Online Shopping Mall to achieve what they achieved on Ecommerce in less than a year. For them to show their customers that they are real, they came out on TVC during primetime on top local channels. How the Ecommerce limitation was solved by them? A new alternative payment method in online was introduced by them called Cash on Delivery or C.O.D. It's a payment method that is not just offered typically by online malls. Actually, it's a payment method that is quite risky for any online business. With Cash on Delivery or C.O.D., customers don't need to pay right away unlike with other payment methods were it is required to pay right away. They only require customers to pay as their orders are handed over to them. Customers can keep the payment up until they have received their orders in real time. This is the way to show the local online customers that they won't be scammed.