Introduction

Lazada is currently one of the eCommerce leaders in South East Asian Marketplace.
The company established in year 2012. The company continues to expand and attract investors
from all around the world to put in their shares into the business. Lazada overcame challenges
faced during startup and continue to breaking sales record. On the Singles Day 2018, Lazada
recorded an estimated 3,000 transaction per minute, where the performance marks a new
milestone in the ecommerce platform’s history.
The success of Lazada is a benchmark for ecommerce businesses opening up in the
South East Asian. (Ketan, 2019) Lazada also encourage sellers to join their business by
promoting their products in their application interface. It is a B2B2C model, where Lazada
prepare marketspace for sellers to promote their products whereas buyers are free to view via
surfing the app according to their preference. With Lazada seller app, it enables the seller to
view and process their orders with ease to deliver products to end users.
Lazada created a virtual platform where transaction occurred without sellers and buyers
met face to face in reality. By providing the service to their users, Lazada developed a profit
model with charging commission to the sellers per successful transaction. However, Lazada
announced 0% commission charge policy only for marketplace seller, further attracted sellers
to join the platform because the sellers are finding it is easier to make money with lower cost.
(Farhan, 2019)
Combing the concept and knowledge in ecommerce lectures, the factors towards
Lazada success are contributed by one of the concepts we have learnt in the lecture – 8 unique
features of ecommerce technology.

1. Ubiquity
Internet serves an important role nowadays in human daily basis, especially in
social connection. It can be said internet slowly grow as one of the human needs
nowadays, not exaggerating. Looking to the community, we can observe almost
everyone owns a smartphone as the first point of contact between Lazada and their
customers. Frankly to say, all internet users are the potential customer for Lazada.
From above, Lazada have to develop a virtual marketspace which is compatible
to all user devices’ model, including laptops, tablets, smartphone and other common
gadgets, yet they achieved this successfully. For example, they provide compatible

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 view for wide screen (PC, laptop, tablets) and compact view for smartphones for
different operating system of devices, where this could be major challenge for most
ecommerce businesses.
One of the outstanding parts from user experience with using Lazada, was users
can view the page with almost all devices with internet browser (PC, tablets, laptop,
smartphone) and OS (iOS, android, windows, etc.) smoothly by clicking and swiping.
For smartphone users, Lazada also provide application available in different stores
(Google Play and Play Store) to enhance online shopping experience. In my opinion,
Lazada established benchmark in ubiquity with providing services that beyond user’s
expectation.

2. Global reach
Question: What are the fundamental differences between traditional shopping
and online shopping? Anything, anytime, anywhere, aren’t they? Same goes to Lazada,
they provide an open and outward marketspace for both sellers and buyers. These
virtual marketspaces allow sellers to accept order without meeting face to face, not even
required to set up or rent a shop. Furthermore, it allows more unheard retailers to display
and promote their products with significantly lower cost. This promises they could offer
more competitive prices in the market. Moreover, these sellers might be doing business
with customer from the other part of the globe. This also attract other big businesses to
promote their products in Lazada. Surprisingly, on the Singles Day shopping festival
of 2018, 27 tones of Milo were sold in a single day. (Ong, 2018) This broke my limited
mindset towards online shopping.

3. Universal standard
Internet has its own universal accepted standards of how information is
presented. This made many businesses are equal at a point because anyone can access
the information they need in the market. This refers to the technical standard of the
internet, including various internet browsers in different operating system.
Readily available webpages impact user experience and buying decision in
positive direction. Meaning to say, all users all around the world are seeing same views
and information at a single point of time. To ensure users viewed Lazada’s webpage
with least effort, the embedded media of the webpages are standardized to fit user’s

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 device compatibility. This is because the media such as pictures, videos and audios are
affecting the buying decision for shoppers. Lazada business also has to ensure other
countries are also viewing the same contents as local to further promise the standards.

4. Information richness
The products contents available on Lazada aim to deliver to the individual’s
hand exists in different cluster of society (age, genders, workgroups, hobby and etc.).
These enormous number of products are sorted in different categories, such as men,
women, house appliances, electronical gadgets and etc. In Lazada homepage, there is
always a global search bar allow users to find specific products. For example, user can
insert ‘LCD television’ in the search bar to find relevant information if they wish to
purchase one. There will be tiles of products arranged in order displaying the name (or
model), price, and pictures of the products. These tiles only provide compact
information to attract attention of users. This allows users to make quick comparison to
set their own wish list.
The product pages are featuring with set of photos for users to refer. These
products come with product description uploaded by sellers to improve familiarity
towards the products. Moreover, there are also suggestion products list at the end of the
pages promotes other products towards other users. This allow users to view more
products and improve the purchase opportunity of buyers.
Overdoing in information richness could yield negative result. This is because
excessive information could stress out user’s attention. However, Lazada works fine on
the design of information with providing minimum level of information in tiles, and
provide further details only if users tapped into it.

5. Interactivity
Lazada webpage has two major design – web view and smartphone view. Web
view (for PC, laptop and tablet screen) features rich information in the web and utilizing
wide space of screen to display products and advertisements while smartphone view
provides compact view for users. For smartphone users whom viewing Lazada catalog
using internet browser, they will be automatically redirected into the Lazada application
interface if they have installed the app. This feature reduces the complexity of user
operation.

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 Online agents are available to users if they faced any issues during shopping
experience. Users can inquire for further information about products, shipping or
billing. Also, users also encouraged to provide feedback on products which become the
reference for another buyer’s decision. This feature makes customers feel sense of
importance because their opinion is being voiced out and heard regarding both the
products and the sellers. The impact rating mechanism is one of the forces to drive the
sellers provide better service than another competitor. This creates a healthy
competition which benefit users in the end.

6. Information density
In Lazada, pricing is transparent to all users, including both buyers and sellers.
Pricing is the main factors affecting the buyer’s decision. In traditional shopping
method, pricing is difficult to acquire. Imagine Store A, B, and C selling same products
but with different prices. The customer would not know the information of the price
unless they physically attend there to check the price or hear from others. But
ecommerce business like Lazada shifted the focus to make price information readily
available, meaning users can fairly judge the fair price of the products.
For competitors, they can easily access the information provided by their
competitors or manufacturers. This saves time and cost of processing and
communication. They can make real time reaction to regain edge if they found
themselves are in disadvantages depends on the market. This denseness of information
available makes users happier because they can feel the sense of control in their buying
or selling experience.

7. Personalization and customization

Lazada features with “remembering” the user’s purchase and browsing history
and provide suggestions accordingly. When a user is frequently browsing a specific
product, for example earphone, the suggestion lists will prone to appear different brands
of earphone for future browsing. The app works like customized servant to the users
because the products for one is viewing might be different with another due to
difference in preferences. It enhances the user experience because the user will see the
products he frequently finds and those irrelevant products will not be appearing
frequently.

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 Besides, users also able to customized the products purchase if available. When
users decide to add the item in the cart, a pop up will let the users to choose model/color
and the quantity to purchase. If the users wish his purchases to deliver in different
location, he can perform batch checkout and selecting different address accordingly.
Users can find the shopping experience is tailored-like to their requirements and enjoy
to these features provided by the application.

8. Social Technology
Nowadays, the advancement of social technology plays an important role for
improvement of ecommerce business. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social
media application are where the people sharing their opinion and feeling. These social
media sites are also becoming one of the opportunities for buyers and sellers to engage
with others. Through sharing and posting on their profile, ecommerce business like
Lazada are getting advertised on the social media by the people for free.
Social media sites and ecommerce businesses is like carrot and peas.
Ecommerce businesses paid fees to these social media sites for advertisement to
promote their names and collect user information, while social media sites prepare a
platform and medium for them and internet users. Lazada also one of them whom take
advantages of these social media sites by promoting themselves via putting
advertisement in them.
Lazada also allow users to bind their accounts with Facebook and Google to
retrieve basic information of the user to improve user experience by customizing the
content to be displayed in the interface. Lazada also have their pages on Facebook,
where they can create interaction with their users by collecting feedback from
customers and news announcements.

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Conclusion
In conclusion, the skyrocket of ecommerce business doesn’t come from mere luck. It
requires great opportunity, user acceptance and dedicated effort made by the business
owners. The great achievement of ecommerce has established milestone and cap level for
its local competitors. But the growth of internet makes this cap possible to be break and a
new record to achieve. From the local, we can see many ecommerce businesses are readily
available in our social media, such as Zalora, Shoppe, 11street, mudah.com and etc., they
are all growing and competing each other in the virtual marketspace – internet. The power
of internet drives these businesses to grow their market further by driving more offline
purchase online.
The growth of internet does not have sign of slowing down. There will be more feature
in future ecommerce along with the evolution of internet and technology. Ecommerce is
significantly changed the way we do business, and will continue to do so for generation to
come.

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Reference

Farhan, A. (2019). Insights_ Lazada Business Model & Revenue Model ❱ ❱ NEXEA.
Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://www.nexea.co/insights-lazada-business-
model-revenue-model/
Ketan, M. (2019). (Infographic)LAZADA’s story_ The biggest Marketplace in South East
Asia! Retrieved November 1, 2019, from https://cedcommerce.com/blog/lazada-success-
story-infographic/
Ong, R. (2018). Lazada set new sales record on 11. Retrieved November 1, 2019, from
https://www.soyacincau.com/2018/11/15/lazada-set-new-11-11-sales-record/

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