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E-commerce showdown
As Amazon.com pushes into Southeast Asia with a new venture in Singapore, the US-based online retailer is facing some tough hurdles. Shopping in air-conditioned malls is practically a national sport, and e-commerce rivals moved in long ago.
Delivery delays also marred Amazon’s debut in July, when on-the-ground operations began with Prime Now two-hour deliveries. When accounting for orders placed on its main US website, Amazon lags behind the local web-store Lazada and its parent, Alibaba of China.
For the city-state’s consumers, a store or a shopping centre is usually just minutes away. In fact there are too many stores in Singapore, with mall operators scaling back operations after years of over-expansion. While retailers blame a weaker economy and increased web shopping, the country of 5.6 million trails most of the developed world when it comes to e-commerce. Just 4.6% of Singapore’s retail sales took place online last year, compared with 15% in the UK and 10% in the US, according to Euromonitor International.
“Singapore is a very small city-state, so shopping is one of the favourite pastimes for all Singaporeans,” said Chan Hock Fai, a fund manager at Amundi Asset Management. Because retailing is a more mature market in the country, compared with emerging retail and e-commerce markets, “growth rates are harder to come by”, he said.
At stake is a Southeast Asian e-commerce market that is projected to be worth US$88 billion by 2025, according to a report by Google and Temasek Holdings. While Amazon is firmly established in Japan, the web retailer has mostly ceded China to Alibaba and JD.com. India remains a top priority, with chief executive officer Jeff Bezos committing $5 billion to expand and vanquish local rival Flipkart. Australia could soon be another new market for Amazon.
“We’ve launched Prime Now in 50 cities across nine countries and Singapore is our biggest launch ever,” said Amanda Ip, a spokeswoman at Amazon Prime Now. “We are grateful for the exciting response from customers.”
Jin-Yan Ang, 29, is an Amazon Prime shopper who decided to use the service when he wanted to buy a Go-Pro action camera two days before going on vacation. After that, he also ordered chilled wine for a party and other daily necessities. “On the down side, Amazon Prime Now needs to improve the variety of offerings,” said Ang, a procurement manager.
In terms of scale, Lazada dwarfs Amazon locally, offering more than 30 million products compared with tens of thousands via Prime Now. The Asian online retailer, originally founded by Germany-based Rocket Internet in 2011, has more than 6.6 million unique visitors a month and has seen orders triple from 2016.
“There is huge potential for the e-commerce industry in Singapore,” said Alexis Lanternier, the CEO of Lazada Singapore. “Online shopping in this market is certainly gaining traction here with three out of five people shopping online, and we believe this is the direction forward for the retail industry in Singapore.”
Although Singapore-based online retailers are relatively new, consumers there have been shopping online for years, getting their merchandise shipped directly from the US, China and other places. That’s why the Lazada-Alibaba web stores had 988,000 unique visitors in August, followed by 698,000 for Amazon and 432,000 for Qoo10, according to ComScore. Because the numbers don’t account for mobile orders, Amazon Prime Now sales aren’t included and weren’t disclosed by the company.
“While online shopping is really convenient, I prefer to buy things in-store.” said Lisa Tan, 32, a small business owner. “I like the experience — sights and even sounds — of shopping in stores. It’s definitely more convenient in Singapore; everything is pretty much within reach. I only shop online for things I can’t easily buy in Singapore and on sites like Taobao and Amazon.”
Amazon’s decision to introduce Prime Now first in Singapore underscores the need to get merchandise into the hands of shoppers as soon as possible. Usually, the web retailer introduces the rapid-delivery service after a market matures, when it’s able to build up a fast logistics network.
In its limited free trial, consumers in Singapore can get tens of thousands of items delivered to their door with free delivery on orders of more than S$40. Previously, Singaporeans were only able to order selected items on Amazon’s website, with some products subject to costly international shipping fees.
For web retailers, the lure of opening a physical store to cater to Singaporean shoppers is proving hard to ignore. Vivre Activewear, an exercise clothing brand that was first launched online in April 2014, decided to open a store two years ago because customers prefer to see “the real things”, according to Kevin Chia, the apparel maker’s co-founder. Now, 80% of the brand’s total revenue is derived from store sales, he said.
“You just need to be present for your shopper whenever she feels like she’s ready to buy,” said Ali Potia, who runs the Asia Consumer Insights Center of the consultancy McKinsey & Co.
Lazada has already teamed up with the Singapore real-estate operator CapitaLand, letting people shop online and pick up merchandise at a nearby mall. “This closes the online-to-offline loop and gives customers the full shopping experience,” Lanternier said.
Amazon’s $13.7-billion purchase of Whole Foods in the United States shows that it’s increasingly open to having a physical presence. In India, Amazon recently took a 5% stake in Shoppers Stop Ltd with plans to open “experience centres” at the retailer’s stores for customers to try out products that are sold online.
“The main reason that shoppers continue to shop in a physical store is due to the in-store experience — something irreplaceable by e-commerce,” said Tan Kee Yong, managing director of AsiaMalls Management Pte, which operates six shopping centres in Singapore. The company’s Singapore malls attract a combined 7.2 million people each month, according to its website.
Source: https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/world/1347626/e-commerce-showdown