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.
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Cambodia shows a moderate internet penetration rate (68%) and a particularly low level of participation in online shopping (4%). In addition, the density of B2C marketplaces is middle ranging with 85 e-commerce websites for a population of 16.8 million (0.14% of the total traffic in the region studied).
Over the period 2019-2022, traffic on the 85 B2C marketplaces dropped considerably from 39.7 to 32 million visits. Among them, online shopping malls account for the largest proportion of marketplaces (64.7%) and capture most of the traffic (59.2%).
The e-commerce market is largely dominated by international companies (74%), including first and foremost the United States (39%). Of the total 85 B2C marketplaces, a commendable proportion are held by domestic companies (26%) and China is third with 9% of the operating companies.
The e-commerce market is highly concentrated with the Top 10 websites capturing 91.9% of total traffic. This Top 10 is largely dominated by online shopping malls, 7 in total, but the leader is a classified site held by a domestic company. After that, companies are mainly from China (4) and the United States (2).
Regarding the ease of selling on these B2C marketplaces, 65% of them allow foreign sellers to operate and 65% offer open registration to online sellers. A significant proportion of these marketplaces are fully transactional (64%) but, as a corollary, 60% require trading fees to sell online.
Cambodia has a larger proportion of generic B2C marketplaces (58%) compared to specialized marketplaces (42%). Among the 36 specialized marketplaces, 39% specialize in fashion, accessories, and shoes (capturing 30% of the traffic). The traffic dynamics also show that consumer preferences lean towards purchasing groceries (41%) and to a lesser extent automotive parts (14%).