Thailand's Instant Commerce Boom Moves Retail Competition From Store Shelves to Phone Screens

An Hour Is Becoming the New Shopping Deadline

Thailand's online retail market grew 14% in 2024 to approximately 1.1 trillion baht, according to the Thai e-Commerce Association (THECA), which projects it will reach 1.6 trillion baht by 2027. Within that expanding market, quick commerce is forecast to grow from USD 0.59 billion in 2025 to USD 1.01 billion by 2030, representing an annual compound growth rate of 11.27%.

Consumers who once accepted delivery in two to three days increasingly expect purchases to arrive within an hour. Instant commerce is becoming a dominant force in digital shopping, creating what industry participants call the "Impatience Economy": a market in which immediate convenience helps determine what people buy and which businesses win their orders.

Line Mart, the grocery delivery service operated by Line Man (Thailand), recorded a tenfold increase in gross merchandise value and a sixfold increase in orders over three years. Gross merchandise value, or GMV, measures the value of goods sold through a platform. Its growth shows the scale of shopping activity moving through the service.

Jirote Horathai, head of marketing solutions at Line Man (Thailand), described the changing pattern at the recent ECOM 2026 seminar held by Priceza:

Users are building habits. While food delivery is a daily habit, grocery orders are becoming a weekly habit.

Line Mart's experience points to a change in shopping routines as well as delivery times. Planned purchases are giving way to more impulsive "micro-moments", when someone notices a need and wants to complete the purchase immediately. For retailers, the task now includes being available at that exact moment, having the item nearby and getting it to the customer quickly enough.

Platforms and Store Networks Compete for Speed

Grab, LINE MAN Wongnai and Shopee are investing heavily in infrastructure as traditional e-commerce matures and instant commerce expands. Foodpanda's departure from Thailand in May 2025, after cumulative losses of THB 13.8 billion, showed the intensity of that competition. Grab and LINE MAN Wongnai each retained close to 40% of delivery transactions.

Shopee (Thailand) identified delivery in less than one hour as a primary growth strategy for 2025, alongside options for delivery on the same day and within four hours. Those choices give shoppers different ways to balance urgency and convenience.

Thanyathorn Laowatchara, director of business development at Shopee (Thailand), explained the demand behind the strategy:

We see unmet demand from shoppers willing to pay extra for faster delivery. This also expands the reach of offline sellers with branches.

CP ALL, which operates Thailand's 7-Eleven network, brings a different advantage: an unmatched grid of approximately 15,000 stores that can also serve as local hubs for preparing online orders. The company aims to open 600 additional outlets focused on food by 2027. Sales through its 7NOW app jumped 25% in 2023, illustrating how a traditional retailer can use existing physical stores to support immediate digital shopping.

Thailand's shift can be followed through several milestones:

• 2020 to 2024: Social commerce volumes on platforms including LINE and Facebook increased 173%.
• 2023: Sales through 7NOW rose 25%, while TikTok Shop Thailand's GMV reached THB 561 billion, compared with THB 151 billion in 2022.
• 2024: Thailand's online retail market grew 14% to approximately 1.1 trillion baht.
• May 2025: Foodpanda exited Thailand after cumulative losses of THB 13.8 billion.
• 2027: THECA projects an online retail market of 1.6 trillion baht, while CP ALL targets 600 additional outlets focused on food.
• 2030: Thailand's quick commerce market is forecast to reach USD 1.01 billion.

Generation Z Puts the Smartphone at the Centre

Generation Z, defined here as consumers born between 1997 and 2012, is a major driver of instant commerce adoption. These consumers grew up with digital technology, and their preferences align closely with shopping built around speed, convenience and easy movement between online and physical channels.

Nielsen IQ projects that Generation Z's spending power will reach an estimated USD 12 trillion by 2030. Its consumer research describes the generation's relationship with technology:

Gen Z has never known a life without immediate, open access to information through technology.

Mintel research identifies fast delivery as an essential expectation among these shoppers. Delays or high shipping charges can be enough to stop a purchase. An omnichannel experience, meanwhile, means a customer can move smoothly between channels, such as discovering a product on a phone and buying it from a nearby store through an app.

Thailand's mobile internet penetration reached 89% in 2024, and more than 80% of online purchases now originate on smartphones. Social commerce volumes increased 173% between 2020 and 2024 on platforms such as LINE and Facebook, strengthening the phone's position as the main shopping interface.

Generation Z uses the smartphone to discover products, compare choices and complete purchases. For brands, winning attention on that screen is becoming more valuable than securing a prominent position on a physical shelf. A product must appear where the customer is looking and be easy to find when the customer decides to buy.

Brands Fight for Attention Before the Order

Natee Srisomthavil, brand lead of Coca-Cola Thailand, described this transition at ECOM 2026 as a move from "share of shelf" to "share of attention". In a store, brands compete for prominent placement, including shelves at eye level. On a phone, they compete to be noticed while someone searches, browses or considers an immediate purchase.

Natee outlined three areas for investment. Visibility means occupying prominent positions on screens, which can produce an 80% uplift in brand recall. Searchability means making products easy for the right customers to find. Contextuality means appearing during the moments when someone realizes they need a product immediately.

Louise Andersen, Thailand digital commerce lead at The Magnum Ice Cream Company, said Wall's entered instant commerce early to meet demand for immediate satisfaction. Late night cravings at home were a particular opportunity because physical ice cream carts could not serve those customers.

Andersen explained why brands need to remain visible as customers consider their choices, while also measuring whether purchases become repeat business:

As instant commerce consumers are demanding and suffering from choice paralysis, brands must be visible early and throughout the exploration journey to remind consumers to buy. Brands should move beyond GMV, focusing on loyalty, attribution and frequency.

Choice paralysis describes the difficulty of deciding when there are many options. Attribution means identifying which advertisement or other interaction helped produce a sale. Frequency measures how often customers buy. Together with loyalty, those measures help brands understand whether a prominent position in an app is building a lasting shopping habit.

The Logistics Behind Delivery Within an Hour

Instant commerce depends on three connected operations: the channel that receives the order, the process of finding and packing the goods, and the final delivery to the customer. The last of these is often called last mile delivery. Each part must work quickly for the promise of arrival within an hour to hold.

Leading operators use dark stores in dense urban areas. These are small fulfilment centres arranged for workers to pick and pack orders rapidly, rather than shops designed for customers to browse. Keeping goods close to customers shortens the delivery journey, while a layout built around order preparation helps reduce waiting inside the facility.

Rider shortages are putting pressure on labour costs. Incentives have pushed rider costs above 35% of the value of an order. Flash Express and Kerry Express each posted losses in 2024 after wage increases outpaced revenue growth, showing the difficulty of keeping delivery economics in balance.

Payment fraud adds another operational problem. Bogus QR receipts proliferated in 2024, while global e-commerce fraud is projected to reach USD 107 billion by 2029. A false payment receipt creates an immediate risk for sellers handling orders at speed.

Tata Consultancy Services sets out three phases for pursuing profitability in quick commerce. The first uses partnerships with outside providers to build a business with limited ownership of costly assets. The second introduces proprietary assets, including automated micro-fulfilment centres that can handle five times the volume of normal stores.

The third phase seeks revenue from those assets through premium subscriptions, delivery services sold to other businesses and retail media advertising. Retail media means advertising within a retailer's shopping environment. The approach connects delivery capacity with several sources of income, while the business continues to manage the cost of each order.

Groceries Open the Door to Medicine and Electronics

Groceries and staples account for 54.67% of Thailand's quick commerce market, keeping everyday necessities at the centre of the business. Platforms are also moving into neighbouring categories as they seek to make the same delivery networks useful for more kinds of purchases.

Line Mart recently began integrating its telepharmacy service, enabling prescription medication delivery alongside food and household goods. The move represents Stage 4 of the company's internal artificial intelligence roadmap. Under that roadmap, agentic AI will eventually discuss nutrition with users and automatically place food orders. Agentic AI refers to software designed to take actions, rather than simply provide an answer.

India provides an example of how far category expansion has already gone elsewhere. Quick commerce there grew from a niche experiment into a major retail channel, with gross order value reaching approximately USD 7.4 billion by FY25. Platforms are experimenting with delivery of fashion and electronics within 30 minutes.

Indian operators use dark stores and predictive algorithms to combine speed with product selection. Predictive algorithms use data to anticipate demand, helping determine which goods should be kept near potential buyers.

Reliance's JioMart operates across more than 1,000 Indian cities and serves more than 5,000 pin codes. It has launched quick delivery services for electronics and accessories in ten major cities. Those developments point to a possible direction for Thailand: extending instant delivery beyond food and necessities into categories with higher margins.

Zero Commerce Moves the Checkout Into the Conversation

Industry leaders expect another stage of digital retail to develop through "zero commerce". In this model, a purchase takes place directly within a social media feed, an AI chatbot or a search result, without the customer visiting a traditional e-commerce website.

TikTok Shop Thailand's growth illustrates the expansion of shopping within content platforms. Its GMV rose from THB 151 billion in 2022 to THB 561 billion in 2023, nearly quadrupling as livestreaming commerce grew. Livestreaming commerce brings product presentation and purchasing into the same live online experience.

Natee Srisomthavil of Coca-Cola Thailand described a future in which predictive AI anticipates a consumer's needs before the consumer recognizes them. His example was a system identifying a desire for a beverage at 2:55pm, followed by agentic AI completing the order in a single click.

Natee explained how that prospect changes the audience brands must address:

Data integrity is the new brand equity. Marketers must stop marketing only to consumers and start marketing to the algorithms and systems that serve those consumers.

Data integrity means keeping information accurate and reliable. If software helps choose products or place orders, the information it receives becomes part of how a brand earns attention and trust. Natee's description places product data alongside the messages brands direct at human customers.

Companies need to train employees to understand changes driven by data and use those insights to work directly with e-commerce platforms, becoming less dependent on particular retailers. Predictive artificial intelligence and local delivery data can also help businesses build loyalty and repeat purchasing habits. The AI ordering examples are described as future developments; no rollout date is given.

Early Investment, Payments and Repeat Purchases

Jirote Horathai of Line Man argued that entering instant commerce early can help brands establish their position before the market becomes more mature:

Investing early creates a snowball effect, allowing brands to capture market share and return on investment more cost effectively than waiting for the market to mature.

Customers often arrive with a specific intention, such as buying eggs, then add other goods to make the delivery fee worthwhile. Product placement and recommendations give brands a chance to join those larger baskets. The opportunity connects the original need with purchases made while the customer is already ordering.

Payment systems also help platforms retain shoppers within their services. Rabbit LINE Pay, GrabPay and TrueMoney processed more than THB 33 billion in 2023. PromptPay now supports 40% of online checkouts, reducing dependence on cash paid upon delivery and improving the movement of money through businesses.

Customers who use multiple services spend four times as much as shoppers who use a single service. That difference supports the commercial advantage of platforms with a broad ecosystem of services over apps built around only one function.

Faster Shopping Also Brings Waste and Cost Pressures

Companies are piloting electric delivery vehicles and greener packaging as consumer and regulatory concerns about emissions and waste gain weight. Instant delivery involves both transport and packaging, making those choices part of the operating model rather than a separate retail activity.

AI forecasting enables inventory placement at the level of individual products, often described as the SKU level. A SKU is a stock keeping unit, the identifier used to track a particular product. Forecasting helps operators decide which items to hold in which locations, and it can cut spoilage of fresh goods by 22%, an important consideration in Thailand's humid climate.

Thailand's instant commerce businesses therefore face several tasks at once: attracting attention, keeping the right goods nearby, managing payment risks and covering the cost of riders and fulfilment. Line Mart's growth and 7NOW's sales increase show how quickly customers can adopt the services. Foodpanda's exit and rising labour costs show the financial pressure that accompanies the race to deliver faster.

The next dated targets extend to 2027 and 2030. THECA expects Thailand's online retail market to reach 1.6 trillion baht by 2027, while CP ALL plans 600 additional outlets focused on food by that year. The quick commerce forecast reaches USD 1.01 billion in 2030, compared with USD 0.59 billion in 2025. For retailers and brands, the central challenge is turning demand for immediate convenience into frequent purchases that the business can afford to fulfil.

The Essentials

• Thailand's online retail market grew 14% in 2024 to approximately 1.1 trillion baht, with THECA projecting 1.6 trillion baht by 2027.
• Quick commerce is forecast to grow from USD 0.59 billion in 2025 to USD 1.01 billion in 2030, an annual compound growth rate of 11.27%.
• Line Mart recorded tenfold GMV growth and a sixfold increase in orders over three years.
• Grab, LINE MAN Wongnai and Shopee are competing on delivery speed, while CP ALL is using its approximately 15,000 stores as local fulfilment hubs.
• Generation Z and smartphone shopping are pushing brands to compete for screen attention, easy search and timely recommendations.
• Rider costs above 35% of order value, payment fraud and spoilage put pressure on the economics of rapid delivery.
• Medicine, electronics and AI assisted ordering point to expansion beyond groceries, while payments and repeat purchases help platforms retain customers.