MANILA -- Shopee Philippines is working on making shipping faster and cheaper for its customers, a company official said Monday.

Vincent Lee, head of Shopee Philippines, said shipping cost is one of the barriers stopping customers from buying items online.

"I think there is a couple of things that comes to mind when it comes to challenges in the industry," Lee said. "One of which is buyer’s hesitation towards product quality and service quality. The other one would be the shipping cost or the barriers for them to make that first transaction online."

The executive said Shopee is now working with their third party logistics providers to see how they can keep their costs low.

He also said the online shopping platform hopes to send packages to customers more quickly this year.

"End of last year, one of our third party logistics providers that we work very closely with, they just launched a mega-sorting center in Laguna area. This facility is fully automated. That helps us to reduce the buyer waiting time that we’re talking about," he said.

"We’re also trying to ensure that by end of this year, more than 50 percent of our urban orders gets delivered in less than 3 days from the time they created the orders," he added.

--ANC, 29 January 2024

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