Electric dealer Lazada tries to occupy Southeast Asia market, maintain pure electricity website

German electric business incubator Rocket Internet in 2012 in Southeast Asian countries to set up Lazada, and tried to use Lazada to occupy the Southeast Asian market.

Southeast Asia's electricity market is immature, unlike other e-commerce sites with its own exclusive advantages, such as Amazon, Alibaba, or India's Flipkart, Southeast Asia lags behind other regions in the maturity of the e-commerce industry.

But according to Lazada's CEO, Maximilian Bittner, the main reasons for Lazada's dominance are two: one is more and more familiar with the Internet, and mobile phones have penetrated into people's lives more deeply, and the second is that Southeast Asian countries have strong developing economies, Their economic growth is not only in major cities but also nationally.

These countries have many offline retailing operations that are moving to two or three-line cities, and Lazada is also taking advantage of the opportunity to deliver those resources to people with more disposable income. ”

Bittner also said Lazada's goal is to build an integrated commodity platform, a platform that includes consumer electronics, fashion, home appliances, books and anything that customers need. This goal is the same idea as other rocket of internet investment: Zalando in Europe, Linio in Central America and Zalora in Asia-Pacific.

Earlier, the company realised that it needed to be innovative and take advantage of and market opportunities to become a regional e-business leader.

Bittner explains that this is a big challenge, but Lazada is constantly learning. They are trying to solve some of the key issues, including logistical challenges (being able to deliver parcels to anyone across the country in a timely fashion), finding the right mix of products in specific markets and arranging a reasonable price for them, as well as supporting Third-party sellers using the platform.

Bittner also revealed that every market in Lazada-Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines-has its own advantages. Indonesia, for example, has the largest population of about 300 million, and Malaysia and Thailand are more developed in terms of GDP and people have more disposable income; Vietnam's GDP is growing fast and the Vietnamese population is geographically dispersed, making it a good online retail market The Philippines also has a large population.

Lazada initially focused on consumer electronics: mobile phones, tablet computers, digital cameras, etc. For the past 6-12 months, the focus has been on life products, from home appliances to fashion to sporting goods. In the Philippines, Lazada sells more small appliances, which are beauty products in Thailand and focus on electronics in Malaysia.

Layout social Media Marketing

Meanwhile, Lazada's CFO and CMO Stein Jakob Oeie also said that South-East Asia is a Facebook-led region, and Lazada has made great efforts in social media. ”

Oeie revealed that Lazada not only uses Facebook, but also uses social media as a whole to attract new customers and retain customers. Initially from the participants, communicate with the customer and get feedback. This is a very cost-effective approach or feedback to make it easier for people to get involved.

With more than 6 million fans, Facebook has become a lazada advantage because of its territorial dominance, and Oeie says Facebook has become its main customer acquisition platform.

At present, its advertising and customer involvement is already high: 90% of Internet users in the Philippines, 80% in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, and 60 times times a year of fan growth.

The social media marketing strategy has three great benefits for Lazada: Almost all Southeast Asian residents have Facebook, most of them online, Lazada can tailor private messages to them, which has an unintended effect on sales, Oeie said.

Capture markets in remote areas

Another strategy for Lazada to occupy South-east Asia is to shift the focus from big cities to remote areas, so that consumers in remote areas find the products they want nearby.

Industry analysis, when the United States, Europe, and even the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries in the development curve of E-commerce, Southeast Asia market has a lot of development potential and space.

Lazada's CEO, Maximilian Bittner, said the Southeast Asian market was young and we were helping to open up the market. People here have a high degree of familiarity with technology and are willing to try new things. So Lazada is trying to provide tools that give them a better online shopping experience, win their trust by providing secure payment methods, and promote mobile apps so they can access them from any device.

Although Lazada was successful online, Bittner said they did not plan to build any physical stores. Lazada will maintain a purely e-commerce site, and this strategy has its own advantages.