Khon Kaen – Mekong Institute (MI) successfully concluded the one-week regional modular training on ‘Rural E-Commerce Development in the Lancang-Mekong Countries’ on March 25-29, 2019 at its Residential Training Center in Khon Kaen, Thailand.
Twenty-four participants from Lancang-Mekong countries, including Cambodia, P.R. China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam (CCLMTV), attended the training program. They represented private sector in CCLMTV including social enterprise, import-export enterprise, business association, e-commerce service provider, logistics service provider and non-governmental organization (NGO).
In the training program, certified resource person (RP) as well MI staff members shared their knowledge on definition, concept, trend and tools of e-commerce and rural e-commerce. By the end of the training program, participants enhanced understanding on different tools and strategies to develop on-line marketing and sales channels for their respective businesses. Participants also learned about value proposition for products and businesses for the effective development of on-line market plan.
As a major output of the one-week training, participants drafted a total of 24 e-market plan as action plans (APs) for implementation in their respective business models for rural e-commerce. In the next six months following the training program, the team from MI Trade and Investment Facilitation (TIF) Department and RP will provide on-line and on-site and technical support, guidance and coaching to the participants in the implementation of their APs. An on-line synthesis and evaluation (S&E) workshop, scheduled in October 2019, will be held to collect from 24 participants on the results, experiences, best practices, challenges, lessons learned and recommendations from the APs implementation.
The training program is part of a two-year project on “Action Research on Rural E-Commerce Development in Lancang–Mekong Countries” funded by the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Special Fund (LMCSF), in coordination with the Ministry of Commerce (MoC) of Royal Government of Thailand.