E-commerce is the activity of electronically buying or selling products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is the largest sector of the electronics industry and is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry.
In non-Asian countries, an Asian supermarket largely describes a category of grocery stores that focuses and stocks items and products imported from countries located in the Far East.
Rakuten Group, Inc. (楽天グループ株式会社) is a Japanese technology conglomerate based in Tokyo, founded by Hiroshi Mikitani in 1997. Centered around the online retail marketplace Rakuten Ichiba, its businesses include financial services utilizing Fintech, digital content and communications services such as the messaging app Viber, e-book distributor Kobo, and Japan's fourth-most used mobile carrier, Rakuten Mobile. Rakuten has more than 28,000 employees worldwide, operating in 30 countries and regions, and its revenues totalling US $12.8 billion as of 2021. Rakuten was the official sponsor of the Spanish football club FC Barcelona from 2017 until 2022, and the Golden State Warriors of the NBA as of 2022. It is sometimes referred to as the "Amazon of Japan".
Amazon China, formerly known as Joyo.com, is an online shopping website. Joyo.com was founded in early 2000 by the Chinese entrepreneur Lei Jun in Beijing, China. The company primarily sold books and other media goods, shipping to customers nationwide. Joyo.com was renamed to “Amazon China” when sold to Amazon Inc in 2004 for US$75 Million. Amazon China closed its domestic business in China in June 2019 after the US severed all relations with China, offering only products from sellers located overseas.
An online marketplace is a type of e-commerce website where product or service information is provided by multiple third parties. Online marketplaces are the primary type of multichannel ecommerce and can be a way to streamline the production process.
Taobao is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it was the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
DHgate.com is a Chinese business-to-business (B2B) and Business-to-consumer cross-border e-commerce marketplace that facilitates the sale of manufactured products from suppliers to small and medium retailers. It is one of the largest B2B-cross-border e-commerce trade platforms in China. The company is based in Beijing and has offices worldwide, including in the US and UK.
Farfetch is a British e-commerce company focused on luxury clothing and beauty products. It operates as a digital marketplace that sells products from several hundred brands, boutiques and department stores from around the world. In January 2024, the company was acquired by Coupang.
E-commerce or electric commerce in Southeast Asia is the buying and selling of products and services over the internet in the countries of Southeast Asia. These practices reached Southeast Asia during the dot-com mania in the 1990s. After the dot-com bust, local e-companies have seen promising growth in this sector.
Reebonz is an online platform for buying and selling luxury products. Members can shop on the web or mobile for new and used luxury merchandise. Visitors are required to log in via Facebook Connect, or register as a member with their email addresses before they can view and buy. Membership is free.
PricePanda is a price comparison shopping website and distributed content store, founded in 2012 by Christian Schiller and Louis Iskandar in Berlin. The managing director is Philip Wegener.
Foodpanda is an online food and grocery delivery platform owned by Berlin-based Delivery Hero. Foodpanda operates as the lead brand for Delivery Hero in Asia, with its headquarters in Singapore. It is currently the largest food and grocery delivery platform in Asia, outside of China, operating in 11 markets across Asia.
2C2P is a financial services company headquartered in Singapore. The company primarily provides payment gateway services to businesses.
Priceza is a shopping search engine and price comparison tool, with local websites in six Southeast Asian countries:
Carousell is a Singaporean smartphone and web-based consumer to consumer and business to consumer marketplace buying and selling new and secondhand goods. Headquartered in Singapore, it also operates in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Carousell is available on both iOS and Android devices.
Lazada Group is an international e-commerce company and one of the largest e-commerce operators in Southeast Asia, with over 10,000 third-party sellers as of November 2014, and 50 million annual active buyers as of September 2019.
Unilog Content Solutions is a global technology company specializing in eCommerce and product data management in the B2B marketplace. Their flagship product is CIMM2, a software platform designed to facilitate commerce and communication between businesses. The company is headquartered in Bangalore, India with North American headquarters near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Unilog has been positioned in the Magic Quadrant for Digital Commerce by Gartner since 2016.
SK Planet Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of SK Telecom, was established in 2011. It is an internet platform development company located in Pangyo, South Korea’s Silicon Valley, with operations in eight countries. SK Planet was spun off from SK Telecom to focus on online services and has since evolved to concentrate on three core business areas: e-Commerce, Online-to-Offline services, and digital marketing.
Xiaohongshu, also known as RED, is a social media and e-commerce platform. It has been described as "China's answer to Instagram", and is sometimes referred to as "Chinese Instagram".
Ozon is one of the first e-commerce companies in Russia, sometimes referred to as "the Amazon of Russia." Established in 1998 as an online bookstore, Ozon was one of the three biggest online retail platforms in the country by 2019. It was named as the #3 most valuable Russian internet company of 2020 by Forbes.
