This country brief is part of an eleven-part series exploring the landscape of B2C e-commerce marketplaces in various East Asian economies. This series offers in-depth insights into the traffic trends for active e-commerce websites, national established and emerging key players, main characteristics of the marketplaces, ease of online selling, the degree of specialization in terms of products as well as the products characteristics.

For more project information visit https://www.unescap.org/projects/b2c

Brunei Darussalam shows a particularly high internet penetration rate (98%) and a large proportion of e-commerce users (72%). In addition, the density of B2C marketplaces is particularly high with a total of 65 e-commerce websites for a population of 0.45 million (0.03% of the total traffic in the region studied).

Over the period 2019-2022, traffic on the 65 B2C marketplaces remained relatively stable ranging from 7.4 to 7.7 million visits. Among them, online shopping malls account for the largest proportion of marketplaces(75.4%) and capture most of the traffic (84.3%).

The e-commerce market is largely dominated by international companies (81.5%), including first and foremostthe United States (46%). Of the total of 65 B2C marketplaces, only 12 are held by domestic companies (18.5%) and China is third holding 11% of the operating companies.

The e-commerce market is highly concentrated with the Top 10 websites capturing 91% of the total traffic. This Top 10 is largely dominated by online shopping malls, 8 in total, and companies that are mainly from theUnited States (3), Brunei Darussalam (3) and China (2).

Regarding the ease of selling on these B2C marketplaces, 71% of them allow foreign sellers to operate and 63% offer open registration to online sellers. A large proportion of these marketplaces are fully transactional(75%) but, as a corollary, 74% require trading fees to sell online.

Brunei Darussalam has a balanced proportion of generic (54%) and specialized B2C marketplaces (46%).Among the 30 specialized marketplaces, 40% specialize in fashion, accessories, and shoes (capturing 32.5%of the traffic). The traffic dynamics also show that consumer preferences lean toward purchasing groceries(32%) and to a lesser extent towards beauty products (11.5%).