Comscore Snapshots: online retail in the Asia-Pacific region

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

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

Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, Nov 2020, Asia-Pacific region.

Table 3. Top retail-related sites and apps

Source: Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, Nov 2020, Asia-Pacific region.