JD Central, the leading e-commerce technology and retail business in Thailand has launched the ‘Gather of Luck Bundle of Joy’ campaign celebrating Chinese New Year and welcoming ‘Year of the Pig’ as an animal zodiac of 2019.

Inviting online shoppers to choose gifts for relatives and beloved one, JD Central offers up to 88 per cent discount in all product categories with a total discount coupon value over Bt8 million and special privileges from leading brands throughout the campaign period until February 5.

Rvisra Chirathivat, chief marketing officer of Central JD Commerce said “Chinese New Year has not only become more prominent for the Thai of Chinese descent but also has a greater impact on Thai economy, particularly for overall market spending during its period.

In the past year, the number of spending during the Chinese New Year splashed out over Bt13 billion over modern retail businesses, fresh markets and tourism sector, respectively.  Realizing the significance of the festival, we have launched ‘Gather of Luck Bundle of Joy’ campaign to celebrate Chinese biggest event of the year, aiming to provide consumers good-quality products with utmost convenience through online shopping and fast delivery.”

For the campaign, JD Central brings the best deals from various top brands for shoppers to buy auspicious gifts and bring joy and prosperity to their homes, as followings:

Theme Sale – shop for auspicious items with up to 800-baht discount and quality products starting at 8 baht

Lucky Coupons : try your luck with on-top discount up to 700 baht! 4 times a day only and Brand Coupons are also offered with a variety range of brands, such as Xiaomi, Logitech, Nike, Fila, New Balance, Wacoal, Lesasha, and MamyPoko etc.

Lucky x3 : with ‘Lucky Gifts’ shop the latest lucky items from various brands in mobile phones and tablets, clothing, electrical appliances categories followed with ‘Lucky Deals’ shop high-quality auspicious gifts with highest discount up to 88% and shop items starting at only 8 baht in ‘Lucky Hours’ on 26, 28 January and 30 January – 2 February 2019, 3 times per day!

JD Lucky Points : earn up to x28 JD Points when purchase selected items

For more information, please visit JD.CO.TH website and JD CENTRAL Facebook Page. Shop high quality, with 100% guarantee! at JD CENTRAL

Thai Union Group Plc and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) co-hosted a health and safety training workshop for more than 70 fishermen recently in Chumphon.

Participants received a range of guidance, including first aid and basic medical training techniques such as CPR, and how to effectively respond to a potential life-threatening situation while at sea. Each fisherman also received a medical kit containing supplies to use while on board vessels.

“I found the training workshop very useful – especially the medical training. We learned things that no one had ever really told us before now – which are very important to know,” said Kyaw Kyaw Myint, a migrant worker originally from Myanmar.

The workshop also covered basic instruction on fire safety, good health practices as well as how to use bank accounts in Thailand.

“This programme is all about putting what we found in our vessel audits in our supply chain into practical, useful advice for fishermen, captains and vessel owners,” said Darian McBain, Thai Union’s global director for sustainable development.

“We know that auditing alone does nothing to improve the industry, and we really want to help the fishermen understand basic, safe practices. We also found that most vessels do not have basic first aid kits, and the kits distributed at the workshops can potentially save lives,” he said.

“When you teach people very practical skills that they can put into practice in everyday life, that is when they see the value.”

Lunar dining at Central Food Hall

Central Food Hall and Tops will utilise omni-channel marketing online and offline to organise a Chinese New Year Celebration for the year of the pig.

Traditionally, one of the most important practices in the Chinese New Year is offering the best possible food to the higher spiritual beings, resulting in a blessing for longevity and prosperity to the donor.

Tops has arranged the presence of SBL Somboonlarb Restaurant, a Bib Gourmand-rated restaurant, at the event to prepare exclusive sets of food offerings for our customers.

Central Group has also arranged promotion campaigns worth of more than Bt20 million – including special discounts, gold prizes, Tops gift cards, and cash redemption from Siam Commercial Bank credit cards. The event runs until February 12.

Nescafe launches Red Cup campaign

Nescafe Red Cup is starting the New Year with the launch of its “#the one in your heart” campaign, to build on its “nurture stronger bond” concept the brand introduced in October last year, to drive the growth of Thailand’s Bt19 billion in-home coffee market.

The new campaign aims to inspire Thais to return to the great experience of a personalised cup of coffee with Nescafe Red Cup, which the company promotes as offering the full flavour and rich aroma of finely-ground roasted coffee.

It was the first product in the pure soluble coffee segment to be certified with the Healthier Choice Logo.

Nescafe Red Cup is investing over Bt200 million in an integrated marketing communications strategy for this campaign, in which Thai coffee drinkers will be able to enjoy coffee with 14 of the most-missed stars at 10 high-traffic locations in Bangkok and other urban centres.

There will also be many exciting activities both on-ground and through Nescafe’s digital channels targeting 48 million consumers nationwide.

KBank yesterday announced a mission to create better services for all clients, by integrating data, human resources and business partners towards a brand-new banking business. Executives say they have developed a vision for pushing the bank forward and taking advantage of the synergy between experienced staff members and Artificial Intelligence.

Predee Daochai, KBank president, said that within the next two years, Thais will be able to access new financial services from local banks as a result of their cooperation in the financial infrastructure, as follows:

First, an upgrade of the PromtPay project to move beyond providing a Thai standard-based QR code system service only in this country. It would move towards spreading the Thai standard throughout the CLMV+3 – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and China – with the aim of allowing customers with mobile banking apps from all Thai banks to make payments abroad.

A business scan customer (B Scan C) service would also be introduced to offer greater convenience for consumers in making payments via a mobile phone.

Second, the Thailand Blockchain Community Initiative project has begun offering a letter-of-guarantee service. A total of 22 Thai and international financial institutions, plus seven business and state enterprises sectors, have joined this project. It is expected that the growth of such transactions would reach approximately 40,000 items and increase sharply beyond that point, as more agencies join the initiative.

Third, the National Digital ID (NDID) Project, which is designed to allow individuals to confirm their identity online, would allow consumers to open bank accounts anywhere, anytime without having to go to a bank branch. Their use for online loan applications, loans and opening of securities trading accounts, plus white-label ATMs would help banks manage their costs more efficiently and reinforce the Thai banking system’s position at the forefront of Asean, he said.

Kattiya Indaravijaya, KBank president, said it aims for Bt30 billion of data-driven lending, and to earn data-driven income at not less than 50 per cent of total income, up from the current 5 per cent proportion – and achieve that within the next two years.

To achieve that goal, staff are key to creating business value based on data. Data analytics potential has been enhanced organisation-wide, including training above 500 employees in business analytics and 284 employees in machine learning analytics, she noted.

“To create a data-driven culture, we have blended human intelligence with technology to become an ‘augmented intelligence’ with the aim of achieving cognitive banking status,” said Kattiya.

“We also assure data privacy for all customers as individual names would be removed from the process of data analytics, and private information would not be shared with a third party without consent from customers,” she said.

She said that about 80 bank branches out of the 985 total nation-wide would be closed this year but 30 new branches and banking agents will open. Employees would not be laid off, but instead reskilled, she assured.

Meanwhile, Ruangroj Poonpol, chairman of Kasikorn Business-Technology Group said that the bank will invest Bt5 billion in its IT system this year in order to upgrade its core banking, re-architecture and bring new servers online – with the purpose to become the best technology company in Southeast Asia and one of the world’s technology hubs within 2020.

The bank will build up its capacity to accommodate the rapid rise of online banking transaction in order to avoid a repeat of the systems crash that happened last year.

“This year our IT capacity could reach more than 10,000 online financial transactions per second, up from over a thousand transactions currently,” he said.

The goal of cognitive banking is to deliver services that are highly intelligent, highly adaptive and highly personalised, he said. The bank also wants to recruit 300 more IT personnel, he added.

“We have increased our marketing budget by more than Bt20million for branding and expanding our customer base to younger generations. This is on top of more than Bt200 million we have spent on gift-with-purchase promotions each year,” Bundit Praditsuktavorn, Mc Group’s chief financial officer and head of business development, said at a recent press conference on the firm’s vision.

Listed on the Thai stock market, Mc Group is best known for its Mc Jeans. But it has also managed several other brands, including McT, U-P and M&C., Mc Group has nurtured plenty of hardcore fans in Thailand and many overseas markets, with its Mc Club members now numbering over 650,000. Membership records, however, show most fans have now aged to at least their late 20s.

Somchai Soongswang, commercial officer, hopes his firm will be able to attract a new generation of customers aged closer to 18 years.

“We have been communicating with our targets using both offline and online media based on the “my Mc, my best look” concept,” he said.

Expecting Mc Club memberships to reach one million within a year from now, Bundit said the Group had already launched dark-black jeans that would be a fine fit for university students to wear to class.

“We have also conducted various activities at campuses,” he added.

He continued that Mc Group would also launch its mobile application before the end of March, to ensure efficient communication with each target group.

“With the mobile app, communications can happen anywhere, anytime. Communications, moreover, will come at a lower cost,” he noted.

Nopadol Tangdenchai, the chief information technology officer at Mc Group, said the omni-channel strategy had already materialised, as customers now could order products they wanted online and conveniently get deliveries or collect the ordered items from their nearest Mc outlet.

“With the Click and Collect option, customers can enjoy various kinds of services such as hemming. It’s very useful for buyers who don’t have someone at home during daytime to accept parcels, or may need to change ordered items or other services,” he said.

Bundit explained that their online platform, http://www.mcshop.com, was created to ensure consumers could make purchases whenever they desired.

“But we have also continued to increase our physical outlets so as to complement our reach to our target groups,” he said, adding that the number of Mc Group’s stores has jumped to 927 now from 894 last year. The firm, moreover, expects to expand to at least 1,000 outlets within the next two years. Some stores are even opening inside PTT service stations.

Kaisri Nuengsigkapian, who chairs Mc Group’s executive committee, said her firm had been aware of digital disruption and had been continuously at work developing its business.

“All developments have been made based on our core value of delivering quality products at a fair price,” she said.

Mc Group’s chief executive, Sunee Seripanu, expected Mc Jeans to lead the game throughout the coming year.

“We now offer selvedge jeans. While pairs are available at more than Bt3,000 in the global market, the ones from the Mc Selvedge collection will cost just about Bt2,000,” she said.

Mc Group has set its sight on boosting its sales by five per cent this year. In 2017, its sales totalled Bt4.2 billion. Between January and June last year, its sales dropped to Bt1.97billion. The firm’s current fiscal year started from last July.

The initiative is the first-of-its-kind within the alcohol industry and uses interactive learning to provide a solid foundation of alcohol knowledge, including the truth about common myths.

Shutchada Chandrangsu, CSR & communications manager at DMHT, said on Monday that the growth in the market coupled with the rising trends in innovations had led to a shift in consumer behaviour and affected the way people consume the media.

To keep up with this ever-changing scene, this engaging DRINKiQ e-learning tool will educate people about alcohol via an easy-to-use digital channel, she said.

She added that the initiative also reinforced DMHT’s commitment to responsibly operate its business in Thailand and was in line with a wider approach to meeting Diageo’s 2020 targets in reaching one million adults with training materials that will enable them to champion responsible drinking.

This user-friendly e-learning platform, with a total duration of 14 minutes, is divided into four modules: the effects of alcohol on the body (six minutes), factors involved in alcohol metabolism (three minutes), the standard drink (three minutes) and a set of short questions to test the learner (two minutes).

The resources are designed to fit with all age groups over 20 years, even those who have made the choice not to drink.

This e-learning initiative is an extension of the responsible drinking website DRINKiQ.com, which educates people about alcohol.

Useful tools such as a drink calculator can help consumers make informed choices about their alcohol and calorie intake for a balanced lifestyle.

In so doing, KBank has integrated data, human resources and business partners to personalise services that meet the needs of customers residing anywhere.

The bank is aiming for Bt30 billion of data-driven lending, retail loan growth of 9-12 per cent, while also tapping into CCLMVI (China, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Vietnam and Indonesia) markets.

KBank’s income from overseas business is projected to increase by more than eightfold over the next three years, president Predee Daochai said on Monday.

He added that the Thai banking sector has had to adjust to rapid changes in the economic and business environment, in particular consumer behavior and technologies, as evidenced by steady growth in digital transactions, given that the mobile Internet penetration rate in the country is at 82 per cent, while 74 per cent of all Thais conduct financial transactions via mobile banking, and 48.5 per cent shop online.

In that context, the Thai banking sector is pressing ahead to become an efficient financial intermediary through cooperation to build an essential and pioneering element of Thailand’s financial infrastructure, namely PromptPay, which currently has 46.5 million registered IDs and 4.5 million transactions per day, Predee said.

QR code payment standards have also been introduced, and QR code is being used by 3 million merchants.

The capacity of ITMX (Interbank Transaction Management and Exchange System) has been expanded to accommodate up to 1,000 interbank transactions per second, and member banks have agreed to double its capacity at their respective institutions by the end of the year.

A project promoting payments through the use of debit cards instead of cash has helped increase the number of debit cards to 59 million, he added.

A total of 700,000 EDC devices have been installed at various stores nationwide.

Twenty-three organisations, members of the TB-CERT project designed to build the stability and security of the banking IT system, have exchanged data and conducted cyber threat exercises regularly.

Thai banks have cooperated to bring the systems and services of Thai financial institutions to a position of leadership within Asean, Predee added.

Many Thai financial services are at the same standard as those of leading countries.

The efforts undertaken by Thai banks are intended to offer maximum benefit to the customers, who are thus able to make quick adjustment towards the digital era on a large scale, and promote Thailand’s entrance to the digital era in a stable and sustainable manner, he explained.