Expand the market! Ten minutes to understand the e-commerce environment in Bangladesh

In recent years, Bangladesh has made great progress on the road of digitalization. However, compared with developed countries, the Internet penetration rate is still low. Therefore, for the global e-commerce market, Bangladesh is still a piece of uncultivated fresh soil , a new opportunity, but also a new challenge . This article will briefly introduce the e-commerce environment in Bangladesh and provide some ideas and help for Chinese sellers who are interested in understanding the relevant market .

The current state of e-commerce in Bangladesh

At present, there are about 2,000 independent e-commerce sites in Bangladesh . The more mature local e-commerce platforms include Chal Dal, Daraz, ClickBD, etc. , with about 30,000 products traded daily . Most transactions are limited to areas such as Dhaka, Chittagong and Gazipur . In addition, their online payment system needs to be improved.

Key challenges of Bangladesh’s e-commerce market

1. Product procurement

Leading international e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay are not available in Bangladesh . Domestic e-commerce in Bangladesh uses traditional import methods to purchase products. Therefore, the cost of domestic cross-border e-commerce is high and the transaction time is long, which may also provide opportunities for Chinese sellers on the other hand, after all, local competitors have almost no landlord advantage.

2. Find the right customer base

Currently, Bangladesh provides almost no official market data. What kind of products are customers interested in buying online? What products sell more? Which niche market has the largest online trading customer base ? These basic data need to be mined and analyzed by yourself .

3. Low conversion rate

Generally speaking , successful e-commerce sellers have a conversion rate of about 1% to 2%. However, in Bangladesh, this ratio is even less than 0.2%. On the positive side, this means that the local awareness of online shopping has not yet been fully developed. If you can use appropriate marketing methods to stimulate the desire of local people to shop online, then you may have the opportunity to be the first to try out the e-commerce market in Bangladesh.

3. Low customer retention rate

Another factor directly related to lead generation is customer retention rate . Global large e-commerce platforms have an average customer retention rate of more than 30%, and Amazon and other platforms have a retention rate as high as 93%.

However, Bangladeshi e-commerce platforms have not even reached a 10% retention rate. This is mainly due to the lack of after-sales service policies for targeted marketing. Chinese sellers can start from this point and enter the market with good after-sales service as a selling point.

In general, Bangladesh's e-commerce market still has a large market survival space, and one of the reasons for the blank space is the lack of government supervision and relevant policy support. In contrast, China's domestic e-commerce has developed and matured under policy support and effective market supervision. Applying China's e-commerce business ideas to undeveloped new soil may be a new opportunity for the development of cross-border e-commerce.

Cross-border e-commerce market