Thailand is eBay's largest market in South-east Asia

Thailand is eBay’s largest online retailer in South-east Asia, and the California-based e-commerce operator is gearing up to get more small and medium-sized exporters in the country to use its platform.

Of eBay’s six major markets in South-east Asia, Thailand had the highest number of sellers and highest trading value, surpassing Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia.

The top five markets for Thai sellers were the US, Australia, Britain, Canada and Russia and the top five product categories were jewellery and gemstones, auto parts and fashion.

Ten Thai businesses had sales totalling over US$1 million a year on eBay.

Ekachai Rukachantarakul, head of eBay Marketing (Thailand), said that though many people thought of eBay as primarily a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) platform, most of its revenue was from business-to-consumer (B2C) sales.

“Therefore, this year, we will do a lot of marketing and educating to get the market to know more about eBay. Our challenge is to get people, especially SMEs, to realise that eBay is a B2C e-marketplace that can help them to reach the global market effectively,” he said.

And despite the intense competition from other e-commerce sites such as Alibaba, prospects remain favourable because of the region’s vast potential.

While online shopping currently accounts for just 1% of retail sales in South-east Asia (compared with 8% in China and more than 10% in the US and Britain), eBay expects e-commerce in Asean to grow by 25% in the coming years, up from an average of 15% in the past four years.