We spoke with PROFITENCE founder Subhadeep Chowdhury and Policy and Research Analyst Shane Gladwin to learn more about the process and key findings from the 3rd edition of its Cambodia E-Commerce report released earlier this year.
PROFITENCE 2022 E-commerce Report
In total, the PROFITENCE report covers ten industries and is meant to be a one-stop report “which is why it's big as it is” adds Gladwin. “We ran a nationwide survey with 1500 respondents and incorporated a lot of industry experts to get their inputs which were a first this year.” The report says it includes a national consumer behaviour study with a sample size of 1,500 respondents across all 25 provinces (with a focus on major cities). Chowdhury says the industries which were most impacted by trends in e-commerce and digitalisation in Cambodia are:
- Fashion and Apparel
- Logistics
- Insurance
- Healthcare
The pair add that there is a recruitment skills gap in Cambodia and that in terms of digitisation, there are huge requirements for data analysts, coders, and digital marketers as the demand for these resources is in Cambodia.
Gladwin added that the Beauty and Banking sectors have also seen changes and that for the latter, it is a fundamental cog of e-commerce and banks are offering more digital products and new players are entering the market too. Within Insurance they also identified some big changes - they could see in the previous report they compiled that the industry was pushing for digitisation and some big conglomerates were using Cambodia as a pilot program to see if the tech implementations were viable across the region. Overall, Gladwin says of the report, that the “feedback was positive in general and there were some points of contention which is not unusual. We had more downloads of the report than we could have imagined.” “We were surprised to see how high cashless adoption was and the numbers varied across different industries,” said Gladwin. He highlighted food deliveries in 2022 compared to 2021 where cashless payments saw a spike.
Cambodian Public and Private Partnerships
For the report to be thoroughly researched and as accurate as possible, PROFITENCE needed to work with the public and private sectors and they said that it was mostly a positive experience. The public sector has the structures, systems, and data which were needed to compile the report. “The public and private industries are working well together and our report is a testament to that,” added Gladwin. The collection of data was not always easy but they had to also ensure the reliability of data. “It's a challenge in Cambodia and infinitely more difficult when you leave the capital” but they did incorporate nationwide responses and not just from the main cities.