Growth Strategy of iPrice on the E-commerce Market in South East Asia

The goal of this master’s thesis is to provide business growth strategies on the e-commerce market for a price comparison website iPrice, which operates in seven different countries in South East Asia. In the first part of the thesis, the author will explain the e-commerce industry from the theoretical perspective, which will include the history, main objectives, the current outlook, future trends, and lastly the overview of e-commerce market in South East Asia. Furthermore, different online marketing strategies will be introduced with the key focus on search engine optimization (SEO), domain authority and content marketing and their influence on the organic traffic of the website. Additionally, the theory behind price aggregating (comparison) websites will be interpreted with a closer look to different meta-search engines in South East Asia. Secondly, the practical part of the thesis will be conducted by a thorough market research to identify popular vertical markets in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. In the next step of the practical part of the thesis, the consumer behavior survey will examine different online shopping patterns and preferences among consumers in these three selected countries. The results will provide a necessary foundation to formulate main research questions and business growth options which will be later tested and evaluated by two in-depth expert interviews. Based on the key findings, the author will recommend three most feasible growth option strategies for the company. These strategies will be an increase of SEO activities and high-quality content building, creating additional media publisher relationships in examined countries, and establishing new partnerships with suitable mobile applications such as e-wallets to increase the online traffic on iPrice website. After providing the final recommendations with brief feasibility studies, cost assessments and project timeframes, the conclusions of the whole master’s thesis will be presented.