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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Thailand shows a high internet penetration rate (88%) and a commendable proportion of its population purchases goods online (55%). Nevertheless, the density of B2C marketplaces is relatively low with a total of 213 B2C marketplaces for a population of 71.7 million (8.7% of the total traffic in the region studied).

visits. Among them, classified sites account for the largest proportion of marketplaces (58.2%) but online shopping malls capture most of the traffic (81.4%).

The e-commerce market is dominated by domestic companies (53%), followed by the United States (18%) and China (4%). Of the total 213 B2C marketplaces, there is an important geographical diversity given the 20 other countries with companies holding B2C marketplaces.

The e-commerce market is moderately concentrated, with the Top 10 leading websites capturing 79.5% of the traffic. This Top 10 is dominated by online shopping malls, 7 in total, of which two Singaporean companies (Shopee and Lazada) account for 62.8% of the total traffic. The other eight marketplaces are owned by domestic companies.

Regarding the ease of selling on these B2C marketplaces, only 32% allow foreign sellers to operate and 65% offer open registration to online sellers. Only 34% of these marketplaces are fully transactional and, as a corollary, only 37% require trading fees to sell online.

Thailand has a balanced proportion of generic (56%) and specialized B2C marketplaces (44%). Among the 94 specialized marketplaces, 41% specialize in cars, motorcycles, and motor parts (capturing 19.5% of the traffic). The traffic dynamics also show that consumer preferences lean toward purchasing groceries (26%) and to a lesser extent towards electronics & IT (18.5%).