For Nguyen Ngoc, a merchant in Ho Chi Minh City selling blouses and wallets, a typical way to reach online customers is through Facebook. But these customers often ask to switch to online marketplace Shopee for payment.
Ngoc understands why: Shopee is known for free deliveries.
“From the beginning, Shopee has been geared toward low fees. People associate it with free shipping,” Ngoc told Nikkei Asia.
Free deliveries and low commissions are part of Shopee’s aggressive marketing efforts in Vietnam that have helped it to become the country’s most popular ecommerce platform and to grow during the Covid-19 pandemic. Shopee, owned by Singapore-based tech group Sea, received 62m monthly visits in Vietnam in the third quarter of 2020, up more than 80 per cent from a year earlier.
Shopee’s bullish expansion in Vietnam is part of a new phase of development in south-east…
