樂，學中文、教中文。/Enjoy learning &Teaching Chinese

By JANE A. PETERSON October 23, 2017

https://cn.nytimes.com/business/20171023/alibaba-amazon-southeast-asia-lazada/en-us/

隨著年輕的中產階級人群的開始成長並開始使用網路，該地區商業前景可觀。根據谷歌和新加坡主權財富基金淡馬錫控股公司(Temasek Holdings)的預測，到2025年，東南亞的電商銷售總額可達到880億美元。比2015年增長10倍以上。

The promise is there, as the region’s young middle class grows and goes online. Southeast Asia’s e-commerce sales could total $88 billion by 2025, according to projectionsfrom Google and Temasek Holdings, the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund. Volume was less than one-tenth that in 2015.

諮詢公司貝恩公司(Bain & Company)預測，在大約相同的時間段內，印度市場可能會有6倍增長，達到類似規模。

Over about the same period, India’s market could increase six times to a similar amount, Bain & Company, a consulting firm, projects.

阿里巴巴和亞馬遜正在爭取像新加坡人方麗(Janice Lee Fang)這樣的消費者。方麗6歲的女兒在學校裡會想家。為了逗女兒開心，她決定買一個機械人。通過亞馬遜7月在新加坡推出的Prime Now服務，她買了一個Sphero SPRK Plus——一個透明的塑料球，在智慧型手機上點一下，它就能在地板上四處遊走——不到一天就收到貨了。

Alibaba and Amazon are seeking consumers like Janice Lee Fang, a Singaporean who decided she needed to buy a robot to amuse a 6-year-old daughter home sick from school. Through Amazon’s Prime Now service, introduced in Singapore in July, she bought a Sphero SPRK Plus — a clear plastic ball that can skitter across the floor with a tap of a smartphone — that arrived in less than a day.

「我樂壞了，」自稱也使用了阿里巴巴的方麗說。「我有時間拆箱並教她怎麼用。真是緊要關頭的購物救世主。」

“I was thrilled,” said Ms. Fang, who said she also uses Alibaba’s services. “I had time to unbox it and teach her how to use it. It’s a last-minute shopping savior.”

但人口6億的東南亞不是中國。這是一個鬆散的地區，政治、語言和文化不一。有些地方現代，比如新加坡。其他一些地方則缺乏讓人們獲取所需物品的公路和其他基礎設施。

But Southeast Asia is no China. A diffuse area of 600 million people, the region is divided by politics, language and culture. Some places are modern, like Singapore. Other places lack the roads and other infrastructure to get people what they need.

「這是城市、城鄉結合部和鄉村地區的集合，被遠距離和（在菲律賓和印度尼西亞的）水域分隔，」貝恩東南亞分公司的合伙人邁克·布克(Mike Booker)說。「貨到付款依然很流行，其他的本土競爭者依然有競爭力。」

“It’s a mix of urban, semi-urban and rural areas, separated by large distances and — in the Philippines and Indonesia — by water,” said Mike Booker, a partner at the Southeast Asian arm of Bain. “Cash on delivery is still prevalent, and other local players are in the fray.”

這些挑戰迫使阿里巴巴在東亞最大的公司拉扎達要更有創造力。

The challenges have forced Lazada, Alibaba’s biggest Southeast Asian operation, to get creative.