Lazada: Ecommerce expansion in the Philippines

The shopping craze in online is exploding in the local online community. More people are now accepting Ecommerce. With the rise of smartphone and Internet usage of the local population, it helped the penetration of Ecommerce somewhat plausible. Compared to the old days, it was a struggling industry were majority of us didn’t think of it highly than what it deserves. I believe the bad reputation that it has play as big part on our judgment on its industry. But with the arrival of Lazada in the country, local online competitors showed up while the online shopping popularity started to rise. Ecommerce was a very unpopular online industry in the Philippines before they arrived in the country. Local online users initially looked down upon online shopping as an alternative option for addressing their shopping needs. Second hand local online users usually prefer items on local online classified websites when they want to buy something.

As for local consumers who want to buy something new, they usually visit traditional offline malls. We were actually raised that way wherein we go to traditional offline malls when we need to buy something. With online shopping, local online consumers can actually save their time and money. So what can we get from online shopping? Online shopping can be done anywhere the local customer is located. Money spends on usual travel expense going to the location of traditional malls can now be saved by customers. The Philippines' Online Shopping Mall wanted to fix this for the local online customers in the country. It was also a challenge for them on how they can tap the untapped market in online. It was simply hard due to the fact the only the minority of the population owns their own credit card, which is the main payment method when it comes to online. We can't just rely on trusting online transactions right away. With Internet, online frauds and scams will always be present in online transactions.

Nowadays, the local Ecommerce is beginning to make some noise in the online space. It's quite a amazing feat for Lazada to achieve what they achieved on Ecommerce in less than a year. In order for them to make a big statement that they can be trusted as a legit business, they even had a TVC that run on top local channels during primetime. They formulated a method in order to break the Ecommerce wall in the country. They called Cash on Delivery or C.O.D. It’s very rare for an online store to actually offer this kind of alternative payment method offered an alternative payment method. It is actually very risky for a business to offer that kind of payment method. With Cash on Delivery they are not required to pay right away online. Once orders are delivered at the customer's address, that's the only time they will need to pay in cash. This enables customers to keep their money up until their orders are handed over to them in real time. This is the way to show the local online customers that they won't be scammed.