In this week’s Looking South, Eric Gau chats with PCHome Thai Chief Operating Officer, Sam Tsai, about PCHome‘s expansion into Thailand.
Transcript:
Eric Gau: Good morning everyone, I’m Eric Gau, and welcome to Looking South, here on ICRT, our program looking into the government’s New Southbound Policy and its effects. Today, we have PCHome Thai Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Sam Tsai to talk about the online shopping platform’s recent expansion into a Southeast Asian country. Mr. Tsai, welcome to the program.
Sam Tsai: Hello everyone, my name is Sam. Thank you for having me, Eric. Thank you.
Eric: Mr. Tsai, why did PCHome choose Thailand as the country it is going to expand into?
Sam: Choosing Thailand as our Southeast Asia market expansion strategy involves two perspectives. First of all, I think for every company, when they are trying to step into a new market, they will do regular market evaluations. The same thing happened at PCHome when we were trying to step into the Southeast Asia region. Among the overall Southeast Asian countries, Thailand in all kinds of indexes stands out. Another perspective is actually more critical, is that we have a very, very important local partner, which is Kinpo Thailand (泰金寶). And泰金寶belongs to金仁寶集團 in Taiwan. So with a very trusted local partner, 泰金寶, which makes us feel much more reliable and comfortable when we step into an unfamiliar market. That is the reason why we chose Thailand.
Eric: What can PCHome bring to the Thailand market that isn’t already there in the online shopping space? How is this expansion going to help Thailand’s e-commerce market grow and develop?
Sam: I think the name of PCHome will be helpful and valuable for the Thailand market. Our experience and perspective in e-commerce sales is very experienced. We in Taiwan already ran e-commerce business for over two decades. And currently in Thailand, the overall e-commerce market is still in the early stage, the status and the rules are still changing dynamically. This means that the overall room for growth is very big. And if you check for every kind of element for e-commerce business, there is no standard answer. For example, in this market, what is the best payment method? What is the best logistical fulfillment service for this market? There is no standard answer, which actually requires a very experienced service operator to really really find a way to fulfil and to provide the best service to the local market. To reply to your question here, our past experience and perspective, plus our local operations presence, will be valuable to the local Thailand e-commerce market.
Eric: What is your company doing to adapt its services or offerings to make sure you can meet the needs of local consumers? Obviously, it’s going to be different from what you’re used to here in Taiwan already.
Sam: Simply speaking, the answer should be localization. Because the most basic principle for us to run a local business is we need to make everything localized. For example, the first thing we did in the Thailand market was to apply for a local payment license. And we now use the payment license to offer our payment service to local users. The same principle applies to all other operational functionality. For example, we do have a local team, we do local marketing activities, we provide local customer service, and we definitely make our platform default language in Thai. If you want to make a business work, you need to do localization from all perspectives in our service.
Eric: When you say localization, you means you have Thai nationals providing, for example, customer service, they don’t have to call Taiwan to get help, they can call a number in Thailand itself, things like that?
Sam: That’s for sure. As I said, we do hire local staff here, so with a local operations team, we provide in terms of marketing, in terms of customer service, in terms of local seller recruitment. All the front-end operational functions we all use local stuff to fulfil local needs.
Eric: With this expansion, how will PCHome’s presence in Thailand help Taiwanese manufacturers and product sellers here at home?
Sam: For this one, I think it also involves one of our current major projects, which is the so-called the ‘Grand East Asia Cross-border Project’, and as part of this, we are now working to bring Taiwanese sellers to sell their products into Thailand markets. In Taiwan, we do have some advantage in e-commerce field. For example now, we have more than 100,000 SMEs joining our online store platform, which is PCHome Store. We also have two personal sellers marketplaces, one is Ruten, the other is Personal Market. So with all of this, we can actually directly talk with Taiwan local sellers, and convince them to join our cross-border program, and the leverage our local presence to local marketing, sales promotion, customer service and all kinds of local operations services, so we can help Taiwanese sellers to bring them to sell their Taiwan products into the Thailand market, which will be helpful to help Taiwanese manufacturer or product sellers get into the Thailand market.
Eric: Before we go, is PCHome eyeing other Southeast Asian countries for future expansion?
Sam: If you’re talking about ‘eyeing’, the answer is ‘for sure’, and ‘always’. But if you’re talking more precise terms like when or where or how, I think my answer is ‘a little bit at the moment.’
Eric: We’ve been chatting with PCHome Tai COO Sam Tsai about the country’s operations in a New Southbound Policy target country. Mr. Tsai, thank you again for joining us on the program today.
Sam: Thank you Eric, thank you.
Eric: And that wraps up today’s episode of Looking South. For this and past episodes of the series, you can download them from the podcast section of the ICRT Web site. I’m Eric Gau, and thank you for tuning in.