E-commerce sales in Malaysia likely to grow: report

Online retail sales in Malaysia will increase at a lower rate than its regional neighbours, according to the Malaysia B2C e-commerce Market 2017 report by yStats.com, a Germany-based e-commerce business intelligence specialist.

The report indicates that the online portion of total retail sales in Malaysia will grow from the present single percentage point to over 5% by 2025. This growth rate is eclipsed by other regional markets such as Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand.

Additionally, B2C e-commerce sales account for just above 1% of the total retail market in

Malaysia. Through 2025, this number is projected to quintuple due to online sales outpacing store-based retail by a large margin.

The Malaysian government has initiated a roadmap calling for private sector co-operation to double the rate of e-commerce sales growth.

Favourable to this growth are the ready Internet infrastructure and the interest of young adults in making purchases online. Malaysia’s Internet penetration is one of the highest in the region and about one-third of Internet users make purchases online, according to the report. More than 50% of online shoppers in Malaysia are less than 29 years old, so the continued maturity and wealth growth of those presently in this demographic is set to contribute to the increase of e-commerce.

The product category with the largest share of e-commerce sales in 2016 was clothing and footwear.

The report noted online retail sales in Malaysia are dominated by the marketplace model and the largest B2C marketplaces, Lazada.com.my and 11street.my have announced intentions to attract more sellers to their portals. Online classifieds portal Mudah is also a popular destination for browsing products to buy, with two-thirds of visitors to its website coming from mobile.

Other trends in e-commerce include the sales through social media and the rising use of mobile devices to connect with sellers.