According to the report, online apparel and footwear sales are projected to grow 68 per cent by 2020. The uptrend is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to embrace the omni-channel approach to broaden customers’ accessibility to their products and detailed information.
Kraipob Pangsapa, Cotton USA Asean representative, said: “Global Lifestyle Monitor is a biennial consumer research study sponsored by Cotton Inc and Cotton USA in the UK, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Mexico, Colombia, India, China, Japan and Thailand to study consumers’ apparel shopping behaviour.
“The results of the study provide insightful analyses to industry entrepreneurs on various topics, including consumer shopping habits, purchase drivers, key trends, and sustainability and social concerns. With these insights, business operators can plan on their product development, marketing and distribution channels to meet consumers’ needs and lifestyle preferences more effectively.”
He said the sample group in Thailand consisted of 1,000 respondents in Bangkok and other cities. The key findings of the study were the following.
Sustainability remains important, with 75 per cent of Thai consumers saying they seek it in their apparel purchases. Nearly all (98 per cent) of Thai consumers say that cotton fibre is safe for the environment, 81 per cent prefer cotton-rich clothing and about 67 per cent are willing to pay more for it.
In comparison with manmade fibres, cotton is regarded as the most authentic by 82 per cent of the consumers, the most reliable by 81 per cent, the most sustainable by 80 per cent, and the softest and most comfortable by 73 per cent.
Some 84 per cent of Thai consumers begin their online shopping journey on social media, an increase from 69 per cent in 2014, followed by 32 per cent who begin on search engines and 20 per cent on e-commerce websites.
As connectivity grows, the online world has become increasingly influ
ential with the shopping patterns and decisions of Thai consumers. One-fifth of Thai consumers shop for clothing online. About 21 per cent shop online and use the Internet to seek information for their decision-making.
The study revealed that 67 per cent use the Internet to browse fashion trends and clothing styles, 55 per cent to research apparel, and 46 per cent to read customer reviews.
Their top concerns when shopping for clothes online were quality, as outlined by 91 per cent, shipping time by 79 per cent, clothing availability by 78 per cent, return policies by 77 per cent and information privacy by 77 per cent.
When asked about the retail channels to shop for clothing, 59 per cent of Thai consumers say they shop for most of their apparel at street markets, followed by 16 per cent at hypermarkets, 11 per cent at department stores, and 10 per cent at independent stores.
“By 2030, Thai consumers’ spending on apparel is projected to grow 62 per cent above the Bt300 million in 2015,” Kraipob said.
“Online apparel and footwear sales are expected to grow 68 per cent from Bt3 billion in 2015 to Bt5 billion by 2020. The figures suggest that Thai consumers tend to do more apparel shopping on online channels and increase social-media utilisation for their buying decisions.
“The top factors that could influence these decisions are accurate product descriptions and detailed size information. As a result, entrepreneurs need to provide all the detailed product information sought by the consumers.
“They should also prioritise development of their own online platforms and channels alongside offline sales channels and touchpoints, such as retail stores, in order to elevate consumers’ shopping experience across all channels,” he concluded.

As well, given the current speed of Thailand’s economic growth, it is likely that our working population will retire before they get rich. The future financial well-being of our people will be at risk.
For a typical person, most income is spent on consumption ranging from foods to electronic gadgets, instead of saving and investment. According to official statistics, the ratio of savings to disposable income contracted from 11 per cent in 2007 to 8.5 per cent in 2014.
Even worse, a sizeable chunk of consumption has been financed by borrowing, such as credit cards, personal loans and car loans. As a result, household debt has piled up over the past five years, reaching 82 per cent of gross domestic product.
These borrowings are also ridden with delinquent payments, reflecting deteriorating credit quality. Thailand’s credit-card delinquency rate is currently 7 per cent, above those of Singapore (5 per cent) and the United States (3 per cent).
The combination of low saving, high debt and bad credit quality has been partly spurred by recent government packages such as the first-car scheme and bank’s underwriting standards. To this end, it is undeniable that individuals also contribute a fair share of the problem because of a lack of financial knowledge and discipline.
Financial literacy, defined as the combination of knowledge, understanding, and awareness to make a sound financial decision for better financial well-being, would solve this problem.
However, Thailand has been on the low side on financial literacy. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Thailand’s financial-literacy scores are less than the global average, ranking 17th of 30 surveyed economies, and well behind Hong Kong (fifth) and South Korea (seventh).
Many public-sector and private bodies have put considerable effort into improving financial literacy. Unfortunately, these efforts are not well concerted from the holistic view, leading to overlapped, fragmented and inefficient plans and actions. Campaigns have proved to be sporadic and have yet to reach the wider population.
Scalability is the critical issue here, and digital platforms are the answer. One example of building and scaling up financial literacy has taken the shape of a digital lending platform.
LendUp, partly funded by Google, is a US financial-technology platform that provides online lending that induces borrowers to improve their financial literacy. In a nutshell, borrowers will receive better interest rates if they complete the online interactive financial-education sessions. This is on top of the good payment behaviour they exhibit and the number of friends they recommend to use LendUp.
This mechanism imprints good financial behaviour on individuals by using better interest rates as incentives. It also improves financial inclusion, as the platform welcomes borrowers with limited access to credit.
More important, it keeps building the borrower’s financial knowledge through e-learning courses.
Peer recommendation also spreads out the network effect of the good borrowers. Therefore, financial literacy will increase through a leveraging effect.
Digital platforms therefore can be tools to scale financial literacy nationwide. But the utmost key to success would be a national strategic direction from the government to shape the trend of financial well-being to the way that our country must be.
Last, improved financial literacy would improve financial well-being by building more savings and investment, and better debt serviceability. This would make our country prosper, not only today, but also in the future.

Panawat Innurak is a specialist at TMB Analytics. He can be reached at Panawat.Inn@tmbbank.com. Views expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of TMB Bank or its executives.

It says exports in 2017 should grow for the first time in five years.
The main reason is that oil prices have bottomed out. The oversupply witnessed this year due to increases in production capacity of several countries, particularly Iran and Iraq, should be relieved to a significant extent after the fall in the United States’ production of shale oil.
Coupled with the gradual revival of global economy, oil demand and consumption should go up. The International Monetary Fund recently forecast that global oil prices in 2017 would average US$50.60 per barrel, an increase from $43 in 2016.
These are contributing factors to Thai exports of such oil-related goods as refined fuels, plastic resins, chemical products and rubber, which combined account for more than 13 per cent of total Thai export value.
Meanwhile, exports to emerging markets, such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (CLMV) and “new frontiers”, have continued to grow, reaping the following advantages. The CLMV countries are among the strongest in the world in terms of economic growth, at around 7-8 per cent. Thai exports to CLMV (roughly 10 per cent of total export value) have already outpaced those to the European Union and Japan. Major exports with high prospects in CLMV include consumer goods and construction materials.
The average growth of Thai export value to so-called new-frontier markets over the past 10 years has been 10.5 per cent annually, higher the overall average of 6.8 per cent per year.
Thailand’s export value base in 2016 is small, having contracted every year since 2013. Growth in export value this year is expected to be flat, or possibly minutely positive. Therefore, from such a small base, export value in 2017 is predicted to expand to some extent.
However, certain concerns prevail for Thai exports in 2017, including the stated protectionist policies of the incoming US president, which may have impacts on Thai exports, both positive and negative.
The US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership would help relieve Thailand’s disadvantages against its major trade competitors that are in the TPP, especially Vietnam, which is Thailand’s main competitor in exports of such products as electronics, textiles, shoes, canned seafood, and air-conditioners.
Increased US tariffs on imports from China would be an opportunity for Thai exports to win back some market share, as Thai goods such as automobile tyres and air-conditioners have been in competition with Chinese goods in the United States. However, such measures could also affect Thai exports of raw materials and semi-raw materials to China for the latter’s exports of finished products to the US. Some of these products are parts and accessories for smartphones and computers.
Moreover, the researchers recommend keeping a close watch on the nationalism tide, and how much that will determine the outcome of the German and French elections in 2017. If there is a switch in the ruling political parties, money-market and foreign-exchange fluctuations will be seen from time to time. Therefore, Thai exporters should get prepared to cope with such challenges with the use of risk-hedging tools.

Consumers in each age range differ in their decision-making processes, and there are also different decision-making patterns in the purchase of different products. This is especially true with real estate, which is a high-involvement product where decision-making is more complicated than for buying consumer goods in general. Because of the public’s familiarity with these goods, it is often not necessary to do comparative research to evaluate one’s options.
The question today is how decision-making towards real-estate purchases has changed with the current sombre mood due to the |passing of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej on October 13. How should business operators |prepare for the change?
One month on, the public is understandably inconsolable. If you ask me if the real-estate market now is in bad shape, I’m really not 100 per cent sure because industry operators still cannot do much to change the situation. Even advertising media are still not being fully used. This is particularly the case with outdoor media like billboards that, in the past, had quite an impact on the buying decisions for real-estate products.
In fact, we have had to adjust to the situation and slow down events for our projects. As of now, we still cannot anticipate how long this period of sadness will continue to affect purchasing decisions.
We have to admit that television has a considerable impact on consumer behaviour. I believe that people’s emotions and feelings will be back to normal when regular TV returns to normal. For now, all I can say is that most consumers are not in the mood to buy. This is obvious from the lighter traffic at department stores and community malls.
Recently, I had an opportunity to talk with securities analysts. Many asked me what would indicate that everything has returned to normal. It was a tough question to answer because no one knows for sure. But what we, and many other operators, are facing now has less impact on consumer-buying decision for low-rise products – townhouses and detached homes – than for condominiums.
This is despite the fact that marketing activities have not been back in full force. We can still see one indicator that is evidence of real demand. Business can move on, though it may not be like during normal times.
For example, sales of AP’s low-rise projects between October 14 and November 20 were worth Bt1.980 billion, of which townhouses accounted for Bt1.565 billion and detached homes for Bt415 million. For the condominium market, we have to admit that it has been quiet to some extent because there are two groups of condominium buyers – investors and people buying a place in which to live.
In this situation, investors are not so keen. But those wanting a place to live in continue to check out the residences they purchased and have ownership transferred.
So if we look at the demand that is still there – low-rise projects continue to sell and buyers continue to transfer condo ownership – the fundamentals of the real-estate industry are not so bad. What we can do is monitor the pattern of purchase decision-making before the end of the year to see if the market has returned to normal.
We need to keep an eye on the number of visits to our projects, online registration for news and information and, last, sales numbers, while keeping ourselves prepared for when consumer-buying decision patterns return to normal. We can then be ready to go full speed ahead.

The report, “The 2017 Global Credit Outlook for Banks: Risks Remain Significant amid Sluggish Growth, Heightened Political Uncertainty, and Low Interest Rates”, highlights protracted global economic recovery, heightened political uncertainty, low interest rates, and the still-evolving regulatory landscape as key risk factors weighing on the operating environment for banks globally.
After an extended period of material balance-sheet strengthening for most international banks, S&P believes that low economic growth, pressure on margins, and growing competition from non-bank players will keep pressure on the long-term sustainability of banks’ business models.
The constraining factors for bank ratings in 2017 include weaker prospects for earnings growth globally, potential risks related to British voters’ decision to leave the European Union, and more generally increased political risks.
A snapshot of banking industry country risk assessment (BICRA) trends – which reflect S&P’s view of at least a one-in-three probability that economic risk or industry risk of operating in a banking environment could change – suggests that 11 of the 20 largest global banking markets face negative pressure. Only two have positive trends (Italy and Spain), and seven are stable (Mexico, Singapore, France, South Korea, the United States, the Netherlands and Switzerland).
“Out of the 85 banking systems where we publish BICRAs, 47 per cent of banking systems have stable trends (on both economic and industry risk), 42 per cent have negative trends (on one of the two factors), and 11 per cent have positive trends (on one of the two factors),” the research said.
Since its last global credit outlook for banks published in July, the proportion of banks with a negative outlook or on CreditWatch negative (with a “negative bias”) increased in the Asia-Pacific region and Latin America.
Meanwhile, the percentage of bank ratings in the Middle East and Africa with a negative bias fell mostly because of negative rating actions taken earlier in the year (for example downgrades of several Nigerian banks).
The proportion of banks with a negative bias in North America, Western Europe, Russia/Commonwealth of Independent States, and Central and Eastern Europe were largely unchanged from July. The highest negative bias continues to be in Russia/CIS, primarily reflecting Russia’s stressed operating environment.