Lazada targets higher e-commerce penetration with online sale

MANILA, Philippines - Lazada Philippines, the country’s largest online retail company, targets to increase and strengthen e-commerce in the country through its month-long sale, the annual Lazada Online Revolution.

“It’s not just for Lazada to generate revenues or visits, but this is for the whole online ecosystem because these events will help the e-commerce in the country to grow. We do this to make the e-commerce market bigger in the Philippines,” Lazada Philippines chief executive officer Inanc Balci said in an interview.

Lazada’s Online Revolution held annually, brings all its partners to provide discounts of up to 95 percent.

On its third year, the Online Revolution to be held on Nov. 11 to Dec. 12, will pay homage to the tradition of Christmas gift-giving.

“Last year was 10 times growth in sales compared to normal transaction days and this year we expect explosive growth again because we have been working for two months now in terms of marketing efforts,” Balci said.

Lazada Philippines will be offering more than one million products for the month-long sale, 10 times higher than the approximately 100,000 products it offered last year.

Balci expects the Philippines to be the most successful among the six markets in the Southeast Asian region after it posted the highest growth in the Online Revolution in 2014. The Philippines is the second biggest e-commerce market in the region next to Indonesia.