ANN/THE PHNOM PENH POST – Cambodia aims to expand local product sales on Amazon.
Cambodia ministry officials met with Amazon representatives last week to discuss the possibility. The participants included Ministry Secretary of State Chea Ratha and Amazon’s Senior Manager of Public Policy, Darren Ong, as reported in a recent social media post by the ministry.
“The meeting discussed cooperation between Cambodia and Amazon to promote Cambodian products on Amazon’s platform and support digital business development and the digital economy,” said the post.
Amazon ranks as the top global e-commerce platform, attracting nearly 4.8 billion visits annually.
Economic researcher Hong Vanak at the Royal Academy of Cambodia believes that similar promotions are very important, but only once the quality of a product is guaranteed.
He suggested the first step should be to ensure that each product enjoys an excellent reputation in local markets and with foreign visitors.
Once this is assured, then they should be advertised on popular online marketplaces like Amazon.
He said before launching on the international online market, it is necessary to evaluate how popular a product will be with international consumers.
“In my opinion, if we skip local advertising and go straight to large international markets, we risk losses. The high costs and low returns from unknown products could be problematic,” he said.
He believed Amazon could be important for Cambodian products, because the two countries enjoy excellent relations and Amazon has a very long reach, meaning the Kingdom’s products could be sold in a great deal of new markets.
Currently, several Cambodian products are on sale on China’s Alibaba online trading site, including pepper, dried snacks, cashew nuts, mango jam and dried longan.
