International Business News – An international e-commerce conference held in Singapore recently unanimously predicted that Vietnam will overtake Thailand to become the second largest e-commerce market in Southeast Asia in the next few years, after Indonesia. The latest report shows that more than 50% of Southeast Asian users have searched for products directly on e-commerce platforms without intermediaries since the New Crown Pneumonia outbreak, showing the growing popularity of this channel. The trend of going online for large companies and brands continues, with more than 32,000 brands registered on one platform in the region.
The development of e-commerce has increasingly facilitated the use of technology. For example, the use of augmented reality in online shopping for cosmetics has helped one platform record a more than threefold increase in conversion rates and a more than 10% increase in average order value. By 2025, Statista predicts that e-commerce user penetration in Southeast Asia will reach more than 60%, a 10 percentage point increase from today, relative to the 410 million people who shop online. According to Metric forecasts, Vietnam’s retail e-commerce market will reach nearly $40 billion in 2025, the second largest in the region after Indonesia.
Currently, the share of e-commerce in the retail sector is still very low. James Dong, CEO of Lazada Group, expressed his belief that Vietnam’s e-commerce market will grow rapidly in the coming years.
Although the general view is optimistic, analysts say that the retail industry in general, and e-commerce in particular, companies need to be more elaborate in their risk contingency plans.