The iPrice Group has published a research report on three similar e-commerce markets, including Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, in the third quarter of 2021. This study aimed to find differences in online shopping trends in these Southeast Asian countries.
Research shows that according to data for the third quarter of 2021 from iPrice and SimilarWeb, the e-commerce platform owned by Singapore-based technology group Sea, Shopee is a multi-industry e-commerce platform with high market share in terms of visits in Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia.
Specifically, in Malaysia, the Shopee website visits account for 71% of the total visits on all multi-industry e-commerce platforms in Malaysia’s e-commerce map, followed by Lazada Malaysia with 18% and PG Mall with 9%.
In Thailand, Shopee Thailand and Lazada Thailand account for 57% and 35% of total visits, respectively, followed by Central Online platform with only 2%.
In Vietnam, Shopee still accounts for 57% of the total visits on all multi-industry e-commerce platforms, followed by Lazada Vietnam and Tiki with 16% and 13%, respectively. Other platforms equally share the remaining 14%.
Notably, according to iPrice's research on user engagement in social media activities on the top 3 multi-industry Facebook e-commerce sites in each country, Vietnamese people interact more often than Thais but less than Malaysians.
Vietnam accounts for 36% of users interacting on Facebook e-commerce pages. The data shows that users tend to “like”, “love” and “haha” when interacting. Malaysia has the highest engagement rate of 44% and the lowest is Thailand with only 20%.
iPrice Group added that according to a report by Napoleon Cat, 81% of the entire population of Vietnam are Facebook users (as of October 2021). This shows that Facebook still plays an essential role in helping businesses advertise effectively in Vietnam.
Data from iPrice Group also shows that the average total visits to the top 10 Vietnamese e-commerce sites was twice that of Thailand and nearly three times that of Malaysia in the third quarter of this year.
The e-Conomy SEA 2021 report published by Temasek, Google and Bain & Company in October shows that Vietnam's e-commerce market will reach 13 billion USD in 2021. The market is estimated to continue to grow by 32%, estimated at 39 billion USD in 2025 and is expected to become the second largest e-commerce market in Southeast Asia, after Indonesia.
Meanwhile, Malaysia is forecast to increase by 8% and reach 19 billion USD. Thailand will reach 35 billion USD with a 14% increase from 21 billion USD in 2025.
Vietnam has become one of the “stars” in the Southeast Asian e-commerce market. Entering the post-Covid-19 era, when digital consumption has become a new way of life and the number of digital sellers is increasing, the size of the country's e-commerce market has been positively affected, iPrice experts said.
