KUALA LUMPUR: Southeast Asian sellers continue to adopt a confident outlook on business growth, with 77 per cent of online sellers expecting more than 10 per cent increase in their sales for the next quarter, Lazada said.
According to Lazada's first quarter (Q1) 2022 Digital Commerce Confidence Index (DCCI), sellers were also more optimistic about the state of the economy, with three out of four online sellers sharing the view that it would be better in the next quarter.
"With the fourth instalment of Lazada's Digital Commerce Confidence Index, we see that sellers' confidence continues to pick up as economies bounce back," chief strategy officer Magnus Ekbom said.
"According to Lazada Consumer Study, 73 per cent of Southeast Asian consumers identified online shopping as integral to everyday life.
"Online sellers who can better understand digital shoppers' preferences and category trends will be well positioned to stay competitive and win in the digital commerce industry."
Conducted in Q1 2022 with participation from 766 online sellers from across Southeast Asia, the report also found that sellers' confidence is shared across categories, with general merchandise (81 per cent), fashion (78 per cent), and fast-moving consumer goods (76 per cent) among the top three categories.
Additionally, the same study also found that customers look for low prices, affordable shipping, ease of search and convenience when shopping online.
According to the Lazada's DCCI Q1 2022, businesses were in tune with these factors and the need to put their efforts into attracting more customers to shop online and ensuring that their products are competitively priced.
Fifty-eight per cent of the sellers surveyed cited attracting more online traffic from shoppers and 56 per cent stated increasing price competition as top two considerations for growth in the next quarter.
On the other hand, more sellers are also citing high operations cost (23 per cent) as a potential challenge.
DCCI is the first study of its kind that seeks to map out the trends in digital commerce by indexing the sentiments and confidence levels of Southeast Asian online sellers.
It measures business confidence based on surveys benchmarking the opinions of online sellers in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore).