VietNamNet Bridge - In the 4th quarter of 2018, the e-commerce market witnessed big changes as Tiki passed Lazada to occupy the second position on the local market and Vietnamese e-commerce firms were among the Top 10 Southeast Asia’s highest-traffic e-commerce sites.

A fruitful year for VN e-commerce

After a wide range of dynamic activities in 2018, Vietnam’s e-commerce is ranked 6th of the top 10 largest e-commerce markets in the world with the total revenues of nearly US$2.27 billion, an increase of 29.4% year on year. Also, the number of consumers shopping on e-commerce sites reached 49.8 million, up by 2.6% and 72% of e-commerce consumers did purchase on mobile. (Source: Statista - 2018, VECITA - 2017).

Vietnam e-commerce market 2018 at a glance (Source: Statista - 2018, VECITA - 2017).

This is a positive signal for the local e-commerce market. However, the most worth-mentioning factor is the change of Vietnam’s e-commerce site rankings in the 4th quarter of 2018.

Specifically, Tiki surpassed Lazada to rank second after Shopee, with 107.9 million visits in Q4 of 2018. Shopee still held the dominant position with 123.2 million visits while Lazada ranked third with 97.6 million visits, closely followed by The Gioi Di Dong with 88.3 million visits and Sendo with 76.2 million visits.

Overview of the site traffic of Vietnam’s e-commerce market in Q4/2018

Domestic e-commerce firms including Tiki, The Gioi Di Dong and Sendo also expressed the great progress when leaving their footprints on the Top 10 Southeast Asia’s highest-traffic e-commerce sites in 2018 (Source: iPrice Insights and SimilarWeb).

This is the positive situations for Vietnamese e-commerce enterprises, which leads to the prediction of considerable changes in the e-commerce site rankings in 2019.

Top 10 highest-traffic e-commerce sites in Southeast Asia in 2018

The strongest ever PR wave of the e-commerce market

The year 2018 witnessed a multitude of news pieces related to capital injection into e-commerce sites, as well as a bunch of dynamic and viral communications campaigns of e-commerce market.

Besides the extra investment of VND122 billion from VNG and others from JD, Tiki continued to greatly impress its audience by the Brand and Communications campaign entitled “Troi oi, tin duoc khong? (OMG, can you believe?)” with the cast of famous couple Truong Giang and Nha Phuong.

It is undeniable that Tiki has not only successfully conveyed its messages of 2-hour delivery and sale 91% but also become the trend setter on social media with the trendy keyword “Troi oi, tin duoc khong? (OMG, can you believe?)”.

Tiki’s communications campaign “Troi oi, tin duoc khong? (OMG, can you believe?)”

After receiving $51 million from eight investors, led by SBI Holdings (Japan), Sendo has shown its increasing coverage on communications channels with Sendo’s big sister My Tam, building a new look for the brand. It is expected that Sendo will achieve more accomplishments to reach more customers.

Lazada Southeast Asia’s extra investment of $2 billion has stimulated Lazada Vietnam’s development last year. In terms of PR, Lazada was a little bit quiet on social media. However, in the PR campaign called “Dai Tiec Mua Sam (Shopping Party) last November, Lazada focused on going viral its brand images via offline channels, approaching more customers.

Lazada “Dai Tiec Mua Sam (Shopping Party) in November 2018

Shopee Vietnam was invested an additional of $50 million by SEA, reaching the leading position regarding site traffic in 2018. At the same time, its PR activities were also promoted with the presence of well-known faces such as Miss Vietnam 2018 Tieu Vi and members of the U23 Vietnam football squad.

Thanh Van