LAZADA Philippines is eyeing to expand in social commerce in one to two years given the high penetration of social networking in the country.
Inanc Balci, the company’s cofounder and CEO, said they are moving towards this direction once the payment options become available on social platforms. As early as today, he said they have forged partnerships with social-media platforms, such as V-Chat and Line.
He said they have leveraged on the popularity of various social-networking sites, such as Facebook (FB), in which the high level of penetration in the Philippines is ranked No. 2 globally.
To date, Lazada Philippines’s FB account has already gained 2.7 million likes. Also, it has close to 12,000 followers on Instagram.
“We are putting more and more efforts to communicate with our customers. Once technology advances, then these platforms will avail e-commerce solutions. In the Philippines, we will be able to offer them to our customers, as well. And this is where we are going to,” Balci said.
While the online marketplace continues to gain a foothold here as mobile traffic constitutes over half of the daily traffic to its portal, Balci sees it will further increase as high as 70 percent to 80 percent once they establish their presence well on social commerce.
The leading online shopping and selling destination in Southeast Asia was locally launched in March 2012, and since then has seen rapid growth.
In fact, in December 2014, Lazada Philippines received 18 million visits for its web site, lazada.com.ph.
The company reached more than 1,600 Filipino merchants by the end of February 2015, supported by 1,500 employees. Together, they serve around 1.5 million customers across the country.
Of late, around 160,000 items are available via lazada.com.ph, either through desktop and mobile channels. They are projected to expand to 900,000 by end of the year.
“So to strengthen Lazada’s positioning in the Philippines, we will do more in mobile applications and, at the same time, social networks, which is the future of e-commerce in the Philippines,” he said.