The Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore (“CCCS”) has issued its findings and recommendations for its market study on e-commerce platforms. The market study focused on gaining an in-depth understanding of the business models and operating environment of e-commerce platforms that compete or potentially compete across multiple market segments offering distinct products and/or services. It also identified potential competition and consumer issues which may arise from the proliferation of such e-commerce platforms. Taking into consideration the issues identified, CCCS has reviewed its existing assessment toolkit to ensure that it is sufficiently robust to address the issues identified.

Digitalisation has opened new ways of doing business, work and play. The recent years have seen a proliferation of digital platforms globally. In Asia and Southeast Asia, including Singapore, there is an emerging trend of e-commerce platforms that generally start their growth in a single product or service market segment, before expanding to other market segments (for example, “super apps” that offer an integrated range of distinct products and/or services). CCCS focused on such e-commerce platforms operating in the region in its market study as their operations tend to be more localised, with the effects on market competition and consumers being potentially more direct and immediate. Further, such e-commerce platforms have not been the subject of similar studies overseas.

The market study is part of CCCS’s on-going efforts to monitor key developments in the digital economy and understand the impact of these developments on competition and consumers in markets within Singapore.

Read the full media release here.