“Philippines B2C E-Commerce Market 2017” is the title of a new report released by yStats.com, a global E-Commerce business intelligence specialist from Hamburg, Germany. According to the findings cited in this report, the Philippines was the smallest of Southeast Asia’s six major online retail markets, but is predicted to outpace the majority of the pack in terms of growth rate through 2025.
B2C E-Commerce in the Philippines is nascent, with less than 1% of total retail sales generated online. Rising Internet and smartphone penetration rates, however, are stimulating the market’s growth, predicted to be the second highest among the top six economies in Southeast Asia. Currently ranking last by B2C E-Commerce market size, the Philippines is projected to overtake Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia, coming in third in the region by 2025, according to the sources cited in yStats.com’s publication.
With Internet penetration rising, there are still major challenges preventing E-Commerce in the Philippines from reaching its full potential. These include a poor logistics infrastructure coupled with the multi-island nation’s complex geography, as well as lack of consumers’ trust in online credit card payments which results in a high share of cash on delivery. According to a recent survey referenced in this report by yStats.com, close to three-quarters of online shoppers in the Philippines paid in cash upon the receipt of goods.
The Philippine E-Commerce competition landscape is dominated by Lazada, a Southeast Asian E-Commerce champion controlled by the Alibaba Group. Third-party sources estimated Lazada’s share of the country’s fast growing online retail market at nearly one-fifth in 2016, as revealed in yStats.com’s report. Another major competitor is online fashion retailer Zalora Philippines, a 49% stake in which was recently acquired by Ayala Corporation. Furthermore, while having no local E-Commerce presence, US-based Amazon is nevertheless a major market influencer, with more than 50% of online shoppers starting their online product search on Amazon.
