Lazada: Facing the digital era of online shopping in the Philippines

It’s quite obvious that the online activity is now reaching an all time high nowadays. Things have changed drastically over the years. Going back, it’s quite funny that before we only visit the Internet only when we need to conduct a research or just get information. Beyond that, it’s all offline activities and endeavor. But ever since most of our offline activities translated to online, people slowly started to pick up the Internet trend. At this period of time, we are now more available online than offline. Pretty much we can connect to everyone we know thru online. Perhaps the rise of smartphone usage paved way for people to make online as part of their lifestyle already.

Thanks to social media websites, it made Internet even more popular and useful. What makes Internet more interesting is the business side of it. No longer we need to rely only on traditional offline malls just to address our needs and every luxurious shopping demands. Actually the Ecommerce industry had just started to enter the mainstream scene in the country only last year. Thanks to Internet Giant, Rocket Internet, who brought ventures like Lazada to the country. Lazada is an actual online mall, one of the first online malls to offer huge selections and Cash on Delivery as an alternative payment method to the local online consumers.  Penetration in the local online scene was no joke. A lot of Ecommerce companies failed or never pursued in establishing an online mall in the country. Prior to Lazada, there’s no notable online mall that thrived in the local Ecommerce industry.

In my own opinion, the local online communities weren’t prepared at that time. Not everyone had smartphones or laptops. Affordable netbooks and local brand smartphones wasn’t available yet. Hence, the number of people online before is very low. But now that we have adapted to the digital era, it was perfect timing for website like Lazada to infiltrate the local Ecommerce industry. So before the ideal audience wasn’t there, but now that it exists, it made Lazada’s launch only realistic and logical from a business standpoint. However, the only obstacle they were facing at that time was the fact that most of the population are non-credit cardholders or Paypal users. Both of which are the most popular conventional payment method. So what they did in order to make an impact to the local market is that they offered Cash on Delivery to their customers. The name is pretty much how it sounds. Yes! People can order on their website and pay in cash as their order package is delivered to them. So in essence, anyone can order anything from their website online and just leave their shipment address. No need to pay up front like how typical online stores is setup to their customers. Lazada will take the orders and processed it right away even no payment has been done yet. This led people to easily try their service out since no commitments or initial loss that is at stake for them when they order at Lazada Online Shopping Mall.