Online grocery shopping gains popularity in Thailand

Squeezing the avocados and smelling the mangoes, in person, may well become a thing of the past as online grocery buying quickly gathers pace. The intense competition in online grocery sales is expected to surge in 2020. Online Apps like Line, Grab and Lazada are making major inroads into the Thai grocery market valued around 30 billion baht. Pushing the growth is the ‘stay at home’ phenomenon where people try and avoid air pollution, traffic, no plastic bags to conveniently carry any groceries and the free delivery offered by the online shopping providers.

Lazada and Grab have already launched their grocery shopping services, LazMart and GrabFresh. Now Line Man, a subsidiary of Line Thailand, has announced it will partner with HappyFresh, to offer online grocery services. In all cases the shoppers can “scroll through the aisles” online rather than physically walking around a supermarket, select their produce, pay for it and have it delivered – in some cases for free.

Online grocery accounts for 3% of the whole grocery market in Thailand and is expected to rise to 5% in the next two years and 10% by 2025. HappyFresh say they’ve identified their principal market as 25-40 year olds spending an average of 1,200 baht per purchase.

The chief strategic officer of Line Thailand, Jayden Kang, speaking for Line Man, says the next two years are key to Thai customers learning how to leverage online grocery shopping into their busy lives.

“Online grocery is still nascent in Thailand and the main customers now are expats, white collar workers and condominium residents as well as housewives,” as quoted in Bangkok Post.

“With free delivery and urbanisation, the customer base is expected to broaden.”

Line Man already has 3 million active users ordering meals through the current services along with 100,000 restaurant partners for food deliveries.

SOURCE: Bangkok Post