Due to the COVID-19 pandemic that we find ourselves in the midst of, online shopping is no longer a choice but a necessity. Be it clothes, WFH furniture, cooking utensils, or groceries, anything and everything can be purchased online.
The two most popular e-commerce websites in Thailand are undoubtedly Lazada and Shopee. Both of them seem to be going neck to neck in competition with each other to attract the most in-demand brands to sell on their platforms. Each have also managed to attain exclusive rights with certain prominent shops. BananaIT, the best for IT products, though having their own website, have also joined Shopee to sell their offerings. Beauty brands like Boots, and certain popular clothing brands from China like Zanzea have joined hands with Lazada to gain access to the latter's huge user-base.
Browsing for certain product categories on both shopping sites/apps, one cannot but help notice the similarities in the variety and price structures, with little to no differentiation.
Another e-commerce platform jostling for space in the online shopping sphere is JD Central, which has aggressive marketing and pricing strategies but a defined products scope.
While these sites do fulfill the needs of online shoppers in Thailand, they still miss that magic essence of Amazon.com which has ignored the Thai market probably due to its small size. It remains to be seen if the rapid and significant rise of Lazada and Shopee spreads across the region to ultimately threaten Amazon in other larger markets and unravel the shortcomings of their strategy.
