Lazada Philippines: The modern digital era of shopping

I’m pretty sure most of us must have realized that we are living in the modern digital era. A lot of the activities we do are now somewhat connected online. It can’t be helped since most of our tedious offline activities become instantly easier once translated into online. A good example is just plain conducting research. Imagine the days were we rely on libraries and encyclopedia just to squeeze a tiny detail per book. Where as to online, it’s just a matter of typing what you are looking for in search engines. With the arrival of Lazada in the country, local online competitors showed up while the online shopping popularity started to rise.

The industry of Ecommerce in the Philippines was quite low before they arrived in the country. Online shopping was just not a popular option for most local online users in the past.  Before, local online users prefer visiting local online classified websites when they want to buy something in second hand condition. Traditional malls are often visited by customers who want to buy brand new items. Offline malls are actually part of our culture as we grew up visiting them when we want to buy something. Thinking of online shopping, we can actually save more time and energy if we choose it over traditional shopping. What are the benefits we can get if we avail online shopping? They can do online shopping wherever they find most suiting for them.

Expenses can go down since local consumers won't need to spend travel expense on going to traditional offline malls. This is the issue that Lazada wanted to address when they were launched in the Philippines. They are also facing an issue on how they can tap the untapped local online market in the country. Credit cardholders in the country are quite few, which makes it almost impossible for some customers to pay online. There's also a factor that most of us don't trust online transactions. With Internet, online frauds and scams will always be present in online transactions. We are actually on the verge of Ecommerce rise in the country. It is almost over a year now that Lazada started its operation in the country yet they already achieved so much becoming one of the leading online malls in the country.

To showcase that they are legitimate as they can be, they had some TVC slots during primetime on top local channels. How were they able to come up with a solution to break the Ecommerce limitation in the Philippines? They first introduced Cash on Delivery or C.O.D. as an alternative payment method. Typically, this is not offered in online by online stores. It's actually a very risky payment method that not all online stores are willing to gamble. This particular payment method doesn't require online customers to pay right away. What make this convenient is that customers can pay Lazada after their orders are actually handed over to them. This enables customers to keep their money up until their orders are handed over to them in real time. The intention is to give their customers the impression that they won't be scammed.