Video
As Southeast Asia’s digital ecosystem begins to catch up with more developed economies, companies need to act quickly to capture the market. Florian Hoppe, who leads Bain’s Digital practice in Asia-Pacific, discusses digital shifts and how brands can win in Southeast Asia.
Read the Bain Brief: So You Want to Win in Southeast Asia E-commerce?
Read the transcript below.
FLORIAN HOPPE: It's exciting times in Southeast Asia right now, where we have with the entry of Alibaba, Tencent and really the whole Chinese digital ecosystem for the first time in direct confrontation to what we're used to as the Western digital ecosystem with the Google, Facebooks, Amazons and Ubers of the world. All that's happening in a market which faces some unique features. So, it's heavily fragmented across geographies, across different archetypes of users, with many users being mobile-first in their using patterns.
Different payment systems in all markets, heavy reliance on cash on delivery. That has caught many companies on the back foot. The good news is, Southeast Asia is somewhat behind more developed markets by probably five-plus years, and a lot of the strategies you see work in other markets can be applied here. We see winners, at the very least, figure out new go-to-market strategies and channel models, partnership strategies to play with this new ecosystem, leverages to create further upside for themselves. The more advanced players are actually using this to create disruptive new growth opportunities for themselves across the region.
Read the Bain Brief: So You Want to Win in Southeast Asia E-commerce?
First published in November 2017