Lazada is thinking big: learning from their annual Lazada Seller Event
We were lucky enough to join an exclusive group of 100 active sellers and other service providers at the annual Lazada Seller Event. We heard first-hand how Lazada intends to achieve its plan to become a truly global player. They also talked about maintaining its competitive advantage as new threats, including Amazon enter the local market.
1) Marketing
As a global player, Lazada is striving to be a dominant player and a thought leader in the industry. First of all, they are refocusing their marketing efforts. Firstly, to drive more visibility leading to increased market share through more online and offline ads. And secondly, introducing marketing tools to entice more consumers. Hence, they are looking at grab deals online and promoting the benefits of online shopping.
2) Assortment challenge
There is a direct correlation between the number of SKU’s offered by a seller and the number of sales they get. Lazada acknowledges that there is still a huge way to go to help sellers list all their products in online channels. However, not every merchant has the technical capabilities and manpower to work on this. Consequently they end up listing only their top selling products. Product Data Management Platforms like CrescoData or Lazada Content Creation Services can help automate product uploads and solve this issue.
3) Price competitiveness
The second challenge that Lazada highlighted is the price competitiveness. With the spread of the internet, pricing is very much open and readily accessible by the consumer to compare.
Lazada has launched ‘Lazada Price Challenge Tool’ for sellers to bid their lowest price in comparison to Lazada competitors. It is a tool designed to feature certain SKU’s offered by the seller and it will appear on a separate price bidding website. All sellers can take a look at their price and competitor platform price offering. Likewise, they will be subsidizing the difference between the lowest price offered by the seller and competitor elsewhere to ensure their price is always lower or comparable to other sites.
4) Order processing time
Finally, once a consumer is is at point of purchase, order and delivery are important considerations. Sellers need to tackle these issues to retain customer trust and satisfaction. Since all sellers are encouraged to process orders quickly, they should be confirmed and received it straightaway. Sellers could consider synchronizing orders to their webstore, ERP system or their inventory management system to improve this process.
Finally, we thought it was noteworthy that Lazada is adopting Alibaba’s statistic display of order processing time. This is so the customer can make their purchasing decision based on the seller processing time. Monetary rewards are available if sellers are able to achieve order processing within their stipulated time frame.
Lazada is ready for the battle, will their merchants get ready as well?
