For me, it's about payment method. It's not easy for teens (who are major users of the internet in Thailand) to have a credit card. While Debit card still hasn't been accepted in online world, we have no other choices.

There are some efforts to create e-wallet alternative. The problem is the implementation. If I remember correctly, PaySbuy requires a lot of payment fee. Then, no one uses it and finally it's gone.

Insecure is my opinion. Using credit card on internet is a risk and Paypal or other money online agents are still not popular.

My senior is working for IT specialist at a bank. He told that credit cards can be hacked very easy and many of customers was hacked because buying online. Buying online have to depend on reliability of seller.

Cheaper? It's always cheaper buying online.

I think it's all about reliability of seller.

I have seen a big online shop that run an affiliate program.

http://www.complexplaza.com

I only pay online for things that cannot be paid by other methods e.g. my domain name registration. Otherwise I prefer walking to the shop -_-a

And security is also a very serious issue. A corporate-level site in Thailand doesn't even use https for credit card payment process. Another online service site even forces the user's password to be 4-digit number only!

- - - - -
suksit.com

I agree with other people here about payment method and how insecure it is. It's a big obstructer for normal e-commerce website to gain customer's confidence. For me, I'm not even trust a big retailer in Thailand if they have e-commerce website. It's not a business that they familiar to. How can I know they're going to handle it properly.

I gotta admit that I have no idea how to promote e-commerce. I thought PaySbuy is the solution for this problem. It looks like it's more complex than I thought. However, I think I can summarize some idea here.

• Living in bangkok, I can still easily find something I want by went to a mall. I got what I want immediately. No need to buy online.
• For electronics and big items, people seem to be hesitate because they don't see it.
• Books, CDs, DVDs and other media, I can easily find from nearby store (if I don't illegally download it, of course)
• IT parts, this is what I want to buy online. I'm sick and tired to walk for hours in IT mall finding items that I really want. I always end up buying cpu and mainboard from one store and harddisk from another and so on.
• I think off-line shopping difficulty is one of main advantage for e-commerce.
• Then rural area will benefit from e-commerce. However, as far as I know, its market size is "still" not big and shipping cost is burden too. And I still didn't talk about internet accessibility problem.

It seems to be a dilemma, which is more than two. I believe one big impact will eliminate all problems. But I don't know what the impact, though.

http://www.seasandsong.com/

There would be a payment solution, if there was demand for it.
There would will no demand for it as long as there are no good payment solutions.
Thats the dilemma.

For security concerns: A well respected thai bank could offer a paymant gateway to which the customer whould be redirected same as paypal. There could be different payment solution. all secured by this bank.
After payment, customer gets send back to website for confirmation.

Why people don't like to buy online here? not sure.
but i know one big reason why people like to buy online in europe for example:

-better prices

And in thai market it is hard to beat prices of retailer, just with advantage of online channel, cause wages for salespersons are comparably low and rend for shop as well.

I would not say it is impossible. but i guess thai people love haptic of products before buy, because quality range is very wide.

Another reason: First movers in online retail are often well known brands.
Because they have same quality and people have experience about quality. Thinking about fashion for example. But in Thailand brand have only little bit of market share. And shopping brands is more like a celebration in one of the flashier shopping malls. don't think people would like to miss out this happening i they pay 10 times as much as for non brand stuff.

at the end, i think it's easier to sell stuff to outside thailand, than to domestic market.

just my 0,02$ :)

There're too much factors to achieve e-commerce here, look, how many percent of Thai people use internet? How many percent of the first question's answer that have enough income to be qualified to make a credit card? How many percent of the second question's answer decided to make it one(Note, it's not everybody who qualified will decide to take it)? How many percent of the third question's answer trust in payment security? It's never been 100% safe, right? After filter all above factors out, there's very very small percent left, so, no wonder if it would be hard to try to cheer up or encourage this market. Moreover, to say cheaper price, it's not always true. One of the most important culture here, bargaining!

BTW, IMO, e-commerce or selling goods online in other word is just the very first success story in cyberworld, it was looking good at the beginning of period and dissolved after that, who can be successful with it? Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Radioshack, who's next? (If you have any other cases, please remind me.) You may say Ebay is one of the case, but actually Ebay is an open market which rather leads into client to client deal, so, it's supposed to be considered as service than shop or e-commerce that we're talking about.

Summary,I think e-commerce's trend has gone, especially in Thailand(Even though it's never been here before!), IMO, the direction of online business has changed, there are Google/Facebook/Yahoo, there are advertising/service/entertainment. However, all above is just my opinion and I might be wrong.

nice points. actually, to implement an online bargaining thing could be a key to thai ecommerce. social commerce is big thing right now. so why nor bargain online.
i think it's not too late for commerce in thailand. in some aspects i think ebusiness in thailand is at a very early stage.
having a credit card doesn't have to be key to onlineshopping. right now it is, just because lack of other option.

take germany for example. as i said amazon just anounced 1 billion in sales (just one country) at the same time most germany don't have a credit card. how do they pay?

most is done my letting amazon access bankaccount. so you enable them to take money from you account. thats maybe more than 50% of transaction volume. another big part is cash on delivery. so you pay amount to the post guy.

interesting discussion.

for me it hard to negotiate the price , most of my purchase via net is booking the airline

Stay Foolish

No other opinion yet, but I used to work in tohome.com, which is considerably an established e-commerce site in Thailand (operated since 1999 or 2000).
But how big? I have no idea.

Oakyman.com

I found bargaining is an interesting point too. Ebay just implemented their bargaining system. I think that would be a good example if someone want to implement it in thailand.

I think there're a number of quite successful e-commerce in thailand. tohome.com that oakyman pointed out is one of them, also tarad.com, thatsecondhand.com, thanni.com, chulabook.com But it seems no one is really big.

IMO, price is not the main key. People can't compare a price between an online store with a retail store which they still didn't go there! (unless they called if they know phone number). Online store can't cut a big chuck of price either. Like bara.munchies said, wages is not the main cost in thailand. In US, one advantage is also there's no tax for some online store.

I don't know if we can see a successful case from US, UK or German. Environment is a lot different, like city layout, wage cost, people perception, government etc. How about Japan, Indonesia, or Singapore? Is there a successful case in either of these countries?

http://www.seasandsong.com/

...I have to say that it depends.

If you are in the girls-who-love-makeup group, it's really is another story. Online shopping is widely accepted. Girls love to buy privately imported make up and skincare because it's lots cheaper than getting one from the department store and some of them can't be bought in Thailand. Also, those girls who live outside of Bangkok also have difficulty buying beauty products too. If you check out www.weloveshopping.com (recently bought by True Corp.) you'll see that there're plenty of stores and they sell various kind of products. I think they're the biggest online shopping point in Thailand but I'm not sure though. The payment method that is currently using is money transfer. The money is to be transferred to the bank account of the sellers. After transferring the money, the goods will be send by post.

Yes, there're cases that the sellers cheat and you never gets the stuffs you paid for, unfortunately. So, the reputation really is important in this system. This is more about the words of mouth thing.

You could say that this is a unique shopping habit only happens in a small group of people but it is spreading. (It's not really small because many girls I know have shopped online) The girls who are shopping online are mostly at young ages like university students and office ladies. They are those who use Internet everyday or almost everyday. This habit will make them more familiar with the online shopping and they will no longer afraid of it. I think they will buy more as they grow.

Anyways, I still think that the e-commerce will success if they offer something better than the store such as cheaper price or something u can't get in Thailand or at the store near you.

I would say for most common Thai people, the problem with buying online is:

• Trust, people don't really trust one another just yet especially where scams are still on everyday's news
• Bad Delivery Infrastructure, though it's gotten heaps better now, but some of the people still perceive Thailand Post or any other postal service not so reliable. (Netherlands is another good example of having bad postal services)
• Not that many people own credit cards, here in Thailand. Though the more common method of transaction is actually direct bank transfer. And direct bank transfer usually involves risk.

IMHO, most E-commerce sites in Thailand don't offer "long enough" tail. They don't take advantage of being online. Most of stuff they sell are available at nearby shopping mall.

Delivery method is another issue. I have to trust the seller, the postal service, even my apartment's staff. There's a great chance that my item can be lost.

.

Two things:

1. Payment
2. Shipment

What they (banks, paypal-like and Post) should do to make this market grow rapidly are to make payment and delivery : easier and faster.

http://www.dailynews.co.th/web/html/popup_news/Default.aspx?Newsid=156999&NewsType=1&Template=1

E-banking was hacked. The bank lost more than 10 millions.

Old one story...5 Mar 2008
2 years ago,time changed but not thing changed...

Haha. Time sure flies.
IMO, E-Commerce in Thailand is still a flop.

Mpay is Answer?