E-commerce in Thailand

E-commerce

Internet access

According to the Electronic Transactions Development Agency, Thailand currently has around 41 million internet users. Internet penetration in Thailand is currently at 43% and should reach 50% by 2021. Smartphone penetration is 32% and is projected to grow to 40% by 2021.  Thailand is among several countries in the Asia Pacific region which are considered mobile first. 66% of all web traffic is mobile, with 44% of traffic divided between all other devices. The most popular search engines in terms of the market share are Google (98.58%), Yahoo! (1.14%), Bing (0.2%), Baidu (0.02%), DuckDuckGo (0.01%) and Yandex Ru (0.01%).

E-commerce market

The e-commerce market in Southeast Asia is one of the fastest-growing and most promising, projected to grow to $11 billion in 2025. The Thai market is currently second largest in the region and expected to grow 22% annually till 2020. The driving factors come from increased internet and mobile phone use as well as improved logistics and e-payment systems. This creates heightened convenience and consumer confidence to shop online. In addition, the quality and reliability of online shopping services have been improved significantly, and the acceptance of e-commerce has increased in the country. In 2017 the total e-commerce market in Thailand was estimated at US$ 2 billion, and the total revenue is expected to reach US$ 3.5 billion in 2018. B2B e-commerce in Thailand is also growing rapidly due to internet development and mobile transformation. Cross-border B2C is particularly significant and it's estimated to grow to US$ 1 trillion by 2020. According to the Electronic Transaction Development Agency, the sectors using e-commerce platforms to increase their productivity include the food and service sector with 31%, followed by manufacturing at 16%, and retail and wholesale at 15%, respectively.

Social media

Thailand’s Social Media Penetration is just 32% of the total population. However an important consideration is that 51% of online shoppers say they purchase goods directly via social media. Thailand currently has around 41 million Facebook users, 33 million LINE users, 7.8 million Instagram users, and 5.3 million Twitter users. The most used social networks are, by market share, Facebook (87.14%), Google+ (4.3%), VKontakte (2.87%), YouTube (2.43%), Twitter (2.41%) and Pinterest (0.57%).