Lazada Philippines: Changes in online shopping overtime

Things have changed drastically for the past couple of year now in the online industry. The Ecommerce industry had started to move forward on its growth. I’m actually surprised that online shopping managed to drive local online users to try them out when it was just starting to get popular in the Philippines. Although it may sound like it’s no big deal that online shopping had become an option as an alternative for our online shopping needs. Looking back a couple of years ago, things were very different in the local online space. Online shopping is something not everyone will be open to consider. We have online frauds and scams that is no secret to anyone. This actually makes it tougher to decide whether a person will consider online shopping. Especially, there’s no online store that is very prominent and credible. Most of the online stores that we may consider trusting are International based online stores.

However, ordering from these kinds of non-local online stores makes you spend more on their International shipment rates. At the same time, it makes you wait little longer for the delivery time. A typical online order from an International store takes around 2-3 weeks of delivery time. But now that we have our local based online stores, delivery is made faster. In the end, the challenge for online stores when they were starting is not the convenience since it’s already given from an online store. What they banked is to build their credibility or brand to the local online consumers.

Website like Lazada Online Mall thrived in this brand building execution. Pretty much you’ve seen their online ads scattered everywhere. They ensure that their brand makes an impact and that everyone is aware that they exist. You see in the online world, regardless how pretty looking a website is, if no one knows it exist then it’s pretty much a waste. But Lazada didn’t only focused on their brand. Rather they made sure that they offer something that has never been offered from other online stores. They offered their now very popular Cash on Delivery or C.O.D. This allowed people to avail their service even if they don’t have their own credit cards, which is the conventional payment method online.

 Now, everyone can become their customers since most of the population is non-credit cardholder. By dong this, it allowed them to tapped the untapped market in the online industry. This was the reason Ecommerce had a hard time to grow in the past. Since Lazada arrived in the country last year. Local online stores flocked the competition as well. They showed the local businessmen the potential of online shopping businesses. Why not? It’s way cheaper as compared to having an offline-shopping store. In all, everyone is starting to recognize what online shopping can bring to our lives and make everything far convenient and easy. On top of their flexible online payment methods, they also allowed shipment fees to be waived as long as the value of the transaction exceeds one thousand pesos.