It’s evident that Southeast Asia’s e-commerce landscape has been on a steady growth, indicating how the pandemic vastly contributed to the accelerated digital adoption and the expansion of the industry in the region.
The e-commerce industry in the Southeast Asian markets is set to continue growing as it will likely reach US$234 billion in value in 2025, according to Google, Temasek, and Bain company.
In Q3 2021, e-commerce aggregator iPrice Group analysed the performance of the top e-commerce companies in Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam to determine the changes in online shopping trends.
Shopee Is Still the Most Popular Multi-Vendor E-Commerce Site Across the Three Countries
According to the iPrice study with data from SimilarWeb, a Singapore-based company, Shopee still takes hold of most of the market share in terms of website traffic across three countries Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.
In Malaysia, Shopee holds 71% of the region’s overall multi-vendor e-commerce website traffic, followed by Lazada with 18%, and PGMall with 9%.
In Thailand, however, the market share is shared between Shopee and Lazada. In particular, the two platforms account for 57% and 35% of the total website traffic respectively. According to the Map of E-Commerce Thailand, the Central Online got only 2% of the total.
In Vietnam, Shopee obtained 57% of the website traffic from all multi-vendor e-commerce sites in Q3 2021. Meanwhile, Tiki and Lazada Vietnam took 16% and 13% of the market respectively. The remaining 14% of the rankings were evenly accounted for by the other platforms.
An interesting trend seen in all three countries is that local sites rank in the top three. Tiki (Vietnam), PGMall (Malaysia) and Central Online (Thailand) have relatively done quite well in establishing themselves in their respective markets.
Malaysians and Vietnamese Have the Most Social Engagements Relating to E-commerce Sites
Recognizing Facebook’s huge role in modern-day advertising and publicity for e-commerce events, iPrice Group also tracked Facebook users’ social sentiments on the top 3 multi-vendor e-commerce platforms.
Based on Facebook reactions, Vietnamese are the second-most engaged with e-commerce sites on social media, accounting for 36% of total social engagements recorded by iPrice. The data shows that users tend to drop “likes”, “loves” and “hahas” in posts related to e-commerce.
Malaysians are the most active on social media when it comes to e-commerce sites, accounting for 44%, while Thai users only account for 20%. When Thai users engage in e-commerce Facebook pages, “like,” “share”, and “love” are their most recorded types of engagements. Somewhat similarly, Malaysians “like”, “share”, and “comment”.
A Napoleon Cat report states that 81% of the entire Vietnamese population are Facebook users (as of October 2021). This goes to show that Facebook plays an essential role in effectively reaching the Malaysian market for any e-commerce announcements or events.
Vietnam Is Expected to Become the Second Largest E-commerce Market in Southeast Asia by 2025
According to iPrice Group’s data, the overall website traffic of the top 10 in Vietnam was twice as much as Thailand’s and nearly three times as much as Malaysia’s in the third quarter of 2021.
According to Google’s SEA e-Conomy report in 2021, Vietnam’s e-commerce market will reach US$13 billion in 2021. It is expected to grow by 32% in the coming years, reaching US$39 billion in 2025, making it the second largest e-commerce market in Southeast Asia after Indonesia.
Meanwhile, Malaysia is forecasted to increase by 8% and reach US$19 billion. Thailand would reach US$35 billion with an increase of 14% from US$21 billion in 2025.
Thus, Vietnam has been and is becoming one of the rising markets in the e-commerce industry in Southeast Asia. The post-COVID-19 era — when digital consumption has become a new way of life and digital merchants continue to rise — has most certainly positively impacted the size of the country’s e-commerce market.
By Nhat Duy Nguyen