2014 Asia Pacific Top 500 Ranking is out!

Euromonitor International sums up key findings from this year’s Retail Asia-Pacific Top 500 rankings and provides an overview of the retail scene in 14 Asia-Pacific economies in 2013.

Highlights from this year’s ranking

The Top 500 retailers in the Asia-Pacific region registered sales totaling US$1,035 billion in 2013, down nearly 3% from the previous year. The biggest decline in sales was contributed by Japan, which still accounted for the second most number of entries in the rankings after China. This was due primarily to the Yen weakening against the US dollar in 2013. China continued to garner the most number of entries in the Retail Asia-Pacific Top 500 rankings – and in fact, has gained a bigger share of the rankings in 2013.

Internet retailing remains a channel with strong potential

There has been much attention on internet retailing and its growth in the region, and indeed globally. The channel presents both exciting opportunities and challenges for retailers. In 2013, the top 10 internet retailers in Asia-Pacific had sales totaling US$110 million, up 23% from the previous year. Of the top 10, the leading six players are pure-play internet retailers and generally operate in multiple markets in the region, with the exception of JD (Jingdong Mall), which used to be 360buy.com prior to its name change in 2013. China’s Tmall continued to lead internet retailing sales in the region in 2013.

With the exception of Rakuten, Yahoo! Shopping and Dell, all other internet retailers in the top 10 witnessed increase in sales in 2013. Rakuten, Yahoo! Shopping and Dell all face intensive competition. Rakuten is turning to markets outside of Japan such as Singapore and Indonesia in a bid to maintain its position. It remains to be seen what Yahoo! Shopping and Dell will do to stem declining sales as their brand equity shrinks over time.

Retailers continue to see internet retailing as a channel of opportunity as it presents a low-cost area for them to tap into. With high rental costs dogging markets like Hong Kong and Singapore and labour crunch becoming more of an issue in many markets in the region, these factors further up the appeal of the internet as a platform for retailers to utilise to address these issues either in full or in part. Shoppers in Asia are also taking to internet retailing like fish to water as they become savvier and know that they can either get their hands on products not available in store-based retail in their home country or better prices for the same products that they find in stores.

Top 10 internet retailers in Asia Pacific