Lazada extends e-commerce edge in Southeast Asia despite lull in overall visits to site

Lazada Group has extended its edge as the most popular e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia despite an overall sequential decline in visits to the site in the first quarter, according to a research report from iPrice and app analytics firm App Annie.

The Alibaba-backed e-commerce company scored the highest average monthly active users in Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Singapore in the first quarter, and was also among the top apps in Vietnam and Indonesia, ranking second and fourth respectively behind Tokopedia and Shopee.

However, Lazada saw a 12 per cent decline in total average visits (on desktop and mobile web traffic) compared to the previous quarter, due to “differences in marketing initiatives” between two periods such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Christmas, according to the report, which was released earlier this week.

Shopee, in which Tencent Holdings has a stake through its operator SEA, was the only one among the region’s top five e-commerce companies to record positive quarter-over-quarter growth in visits, chalking up a 5 per cent increase in the first three months this year.

The region has often been named as the next big e-commerce market to crack after China, with a population of 650 million who are relatively young and increasingly shopping online, reminiscent of China’s consumer demographics less than a decade ago.