One of the most dynamic countries online in Southeast Asia (SEA), Malaysia is an attractive market for e-Commerce.
A middle-income country with a population of more than 30 million people, Malaysia attracts players from local and global companies that are interested in grabbing a share of its e-commerce market.
Now, Malaysia has topped Google search results with more than 732,000 searches and put itself on the world map thanks to the Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ).
DFTZ will provide physical and virtual zones to facilitate SMEs to capitalise on the approach of the exponential growth of the internet economy and cross-border activities.
What are the interesting Malaysia digital facts you should know?
Now, with all this information above, doesn’t that prove to you that Malaysia’s e-commerce has started booming in Southeast Asia? I have compiled the fun facts and you can read it below.
Fact 1: WhatsApp is the no. 1 social media platform
In close second place is Facebook, and the third spot is taken by Google+.
This statistic presents a ranking in Malaysia as of July 2015 by Statista, sorted by daily reach. Also, during the survey period, it was found that 73% of internet users accessed Facebook on a daily basis.
Fact 2: E-commerce penetration in Malaysia is now 1.1%
Despite being in the digital age and e-commerce savvy population, e-Commerce sales penetration is only 5% of total retail sales.
According to the Malaysia B2C e-commerce Market 2017 report, it indicates that the online portion of total retail sales in Malaysia will grow from the present single percentage point to over 5% by 2025.
Fact 3: 9 million Malaysians are not using the Internet
From the stats above, you can see that internet penetration in Malaysia is 68.6%, which means that 9 Million Malaysians are not using/don’t have access to the internet.
The reason is that most of the non-internet users are mainly in the rural area which doesn’t have the infrastructure, or belong to the young/old category.
But again, it is hard to justify because even nowadays, parents are relying on technology gadgets to entertain their children.
In Malaysia, our education system is not teaching/equipped to handle the technology thus the importance of it is still not there.
To bridge the digital divide, MCMC under the National Broadband Initiatives (NBI) has set up 1 Malaysia Internet Centre which acts as a one-stop technology centre for nearby residents to access the Internet, participate in ICT classes, and use ICT facilities.
These efforts will highly benefit those in rural areas, especially students.
Also, the average age of Internet users is 32.4 and non-user is 50.7. Marketers must think the other way around and digital marketing will not be able to reach all target market segments.
Fact 4: Users have an average 4 social media accounts
From the report of the Internet user survey 2016 by MCMC, on average, one user registered for four types of social media accounts.
However, 60% of them thought that each person should only own one account for any social media platform.
Therefore, this is where businesses need to utilise the advantages of the social media platform.
Fact 5: More male internet users in Malaysia compared to female
The male accounted for 59.4% while the female accounted for 40.6%. Male users remained prevalent among Internet users in 2015. In every 5 internet users, there were at least 3 men (59.4%).
It was revealed that women tend to be slightly more engaged with their Internet in terms of intensity of use.
Fact 6: Malaysian love to shop online during office hour
Despite the perceived sluggish overall economy, there is solid evidence that Malaysians are buying online more than ever.
Malaysians love to shop online during office hours and their favourite hours are between 11 am and 3 pm as well as 7 pm and 11 pm on weekdays.
With the convenience of mobile devices, shoppers tend to shop more during office hours. Popular days for online shopping are the later part of the week namely Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
Another factor that would encourage online shopping is that when the government starts to implement the abolishment of import tariffs imposed on items being shipped into the country that are priced over RM500.
Take action for your business today!
From the surprising fact above, hope you get a good insight about the digital statistics of Malaysians.
The digital world has changed the way people consume content. We have to accept the fact that today’s technology alters and, to a certain extent, dictates our behaviour and lifestyles.
Maybe one day, you will able to see Malaysia is moving towards this non-physical cyberspace realm with deep foresight, and to keep Malaysia competitive in the borderless globalised digital world where data is the new currency, bandwidth is the new travel time and air and space are the new commodities and playground.
If you are interested in shifting your physical brick-and-mortar stores to online or just started selling things online, do talk to us about how iPay88 can help you.
Be it setting up an online shop or an existing online shop, we will provide a seamless payment experience for your e-shoppers.
