Comscore Snapshots: online retail in the Asia-Pacific region
Alex Gevers
Senior Insights ManagerIn this week’s edition of Comscore Snapshots, we look at the consumption of retail-related services in the Asia-Pacific region. Our analysis includes statistics for Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
Scope: We include websites and mobile apps that provide retail services such as apparel, consumer electronics, home furnishing, fragrance and cosmetics and sports/outdoor. Examples include Amazon and Alibaba.
Top line observations:
Table 1: Whilst we know that e-commerce is very much suited to mobile, it is important for advertisers not to disregard the desktop completely. In this table we consider the year-on-year change in visits to retail-related sites on desktop for all markets in the region and including mobile for Indonesia, Malaysia and India. The impact of recent events on the e-commerce category in the Asia-Pacific region has been varied. For six of the markets included, traffic to retail-related sites has decreased year-on-year, however, for the remaining four there have been positive increases, notably in Australia with an over 10% increase year-on-year.
Table 2: In almost all markets, many entities have managed to reach at least 1% of online consumers and a smaller proportion of these entities have reached over 5%. The Asia-Pacific e-commerce market is highly competitive, particularly in India where we see over 60 companies reaching more than 1% of consumers. Whether this can be sustained remains to be seen.
Table 3: The retail category in the Asia-Pacific region is dominated by large multi-national e-commerce sites which offer a wide variety of products. These large businesses have captured large market. However, as table 2 shows, there is a great deal of competition in the region and these giants will need to stay on top of their game to maintain their positions.
Table 1. Reach of retail-related websites and apps
| % reach of total digital population |
Year-on-Year percentage points variation (Nov 2020 vs Nov 2019) |
|
| Australia | 65.0 | 11.6 |
| China | 64.8 | -10.2 |
| Hong Kong | 62.9 | 8.9 |
| India | 89.4 | -5.7 |
| Indonesia | 71.4 | 0.8 |
| Japan | 48.6 | -3.0 |
| Malaysia | 70.6 | -1.0 |
| Singapore | 38.7 | -2.2 |
| Taiwan | 86.3 | 3.9 |
| Vietnam | 12.0 | -5.4 |
Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, Nov 2020, Asia-Pacific region. (N.B. desktop only for all markets except India, Indonesia and Malaysia which include mobile)
Table 2. Market competitiveness and consumer adoption of retail-related sites and apps
| Number of retail-related websites or mobile apps that reach more than 1% of the total digital population | Number of retail-related websites or mobile apps that reach more than 5% of the total digital population | |
| Australia | 24 | 6 |
| China | 15 | 4 |
| Hong Kong | 32 | 6 |
| India | 62 | 10 |
| Indonesia | 28 | 10 |
| Japan | 47 | 7 |
| Malaysia | 32 | 6 |
| Singapore | 20 | 3 |
| Taiwan | 39 | 15 |
| Vietnam | 8 | 0 |
Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, Nov 2020, Asia-Pacific region.
Table 3. Top retail-related sites and apps
| Country | Entity | Description |
| Australia | Amazon Sites | Multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce |
| China | Alibaba.com Corporation | Multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce |
| Hong Kong | HKTVMALL.COM | Shopping and entertainment platform |
| India | Amazon Sites | Multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce |
| Indonesia | Shopee.co.id | Multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce |
| Japan | Amazon Sites | Multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce |
| Malaysia | Shopee.com.my | Multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce |
| Singapore | Amazon Sites | Multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce |
| Taiwan | Fubon Multimedia Technology | TV, online and catalogue retail specialist |
| Vietnam | Shopee.vn | Multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce |
Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, Nov 2020, Asia-Pacific region.
Multi-Platform Content Measurement
Comscore Media Metrix® Multi-Platform provides an unduplicated view of total audience behavior across desktops, smartphones and tablets.