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

Singapore shows a particularly high internet penetration rate (96%) and a sizeable proportion of e-commerce users (62%). In addition. the density of B2C marketplaces is in the middle range with a total of 191 e-commerce websites for a population of 5.6 million (3.8% of the total traffic in the region studied).

Over the period 2019-2022, traffic on the 191 B2C marketplaces has grown significantly, apart from a slight decrease in 2022, from 771 to 862 million visits. Among them, online shopping malls account for the largest proportion of marketplaces (46.1%) and capture most of the traffic (66.7%).

The e-commerce market is dominated by domestic companies (37%), but closely followed by the United States (24%). Of the total 191 B2C marketplaces, there is an important geographical diversity given the 28 other countries with companies holding B2C marketplaces.

The e-commerce market is relatively concentrated, with the Top 10 leading websites capturing 77.7% of the total traffic. This Top 10 is largely dominated by online shopping malls, 6 in total, and with companies mainly from Singapore (7), the United States (2) and China (1).

Regarding the ease of selling on these B2C marketplaces, only 50% allow foreign sellers to operate and 55% offer open registration to online sellers. Almost half of these marketplaces are fully transactional (48%) and, as a corollary, 50% require trading fees to sell online.

Singapore has a balanced proportion of generic (56%) and specialized B2C marketplaces (44%). Among the 84 specialized marketplaces, 30% specialize in fashion, accessories, and shoes (capturing 18% of the traffic) and 20% in automotive parts (25% of the traffic). The traffic dynamics also show that consumers’ preferences strongly lean towards electronics & IT (36% of the traffic).