PayPal Study shows Malaysians Spent RM1.8 Billion on Online Shopping Last Year, Expected to Grow to RM5 Billion by 2014

PayPal released its first ever survey on Online and Mobile Shopping in Malaysia.The study shows Malaysians spent RM1.8 billion on online shopping last year and is expected to grow to RM5 billion by 2014

“The strong call-to-action for local merchants is to quickly adopt a multi-channel retail strategy, provide greater product choice and higher quality items in their online store, and offer more secure online payment options. In order to sell to mobile shoppers, they should choose a safer mobile payment method that can be completed in as few clicks as possible," said Elias Ghanem, Managing Director & GM of PayPal Southeast Asia & India.

Online shopping is more than just airline and hotel bookings.

1.) A wide range of categories shows that online shopping is becoming more mainstream and a bigger part of Malaysians’ daily lives:

• Travel = RM435 million (24% share)
• Bill payments = RM329 million (18% share)
  
• Entertainment and lifestyle = RM255 million (14% share)
  
• IT and electronics = RM218 million (12% share)
  
• General insurance = RM205 million (11% share)
  
• Fashion and beauty = RM181 million (10% share)
  
• Gifts and collectibles = RM68 million (4% share)
  

2.) Malaysians buy different items between domestic and cross-border online shopping.

• Malaysians purchased nearly 2.5 times as much airline tickets from local websites (RM173 million) compared to overseas websites (RM72 million).
  
• Financial products/services (RM78 million) and health/beauty products (RM29 million) are mainly purchased on local websites.
  
• Online purchases for clothings/shoes/accessories are slightly more on local websites (RM48 million) compared to overseas websites (RM41 million).
  
• Nearly twice as much spent online for books on overseas websites (RM63 million) compared to local websites (RM36 million).
  
• Again, nearly twice as much spent online for movie/music/game downloads on overseas websites (RM51 million) compared to local websites (RM27 million).
  
• Malaysians’ favourite countries for overseas online shopping were the US, Singapore, UK, China and Hong Kong.
  

3.) Enhancing security can boost online spending.

• 4 out of 10 Malaysian online shoppers said that current credit/debit card online security measures are inadequate.
  
• Nearly 6 out of 10 believe they are taking a risk every time they transact online with their credit/debit cards.
  
• However, increasing safety measures would convince nearly 7 out of 10 to spend more online.
  
• In fact, the middle income group, which accounts for the largest share of the online shopping market (42%), is the most willing to increase their online shopping if safety is improved (72%).
  

Finally, the key findings for mobile shopping showed that m-commerce is in its early stages, but has strong growth potential:

• Over 254 thousand online shoppers spent RM100 million on their mobile devices in 2010, approximately 6% of the online shopping market value.
  
• The top activity for mobile shoppers was paying bills on the go (22%), followed by buying low-priced items such as movie tickets (21%), books (15%) and movie/music/game downloads (14%) which led to an average mobile spend per head of RM388 in the past year.
  
• 4 out of 10 online shoppers are willing to make a purchase on their mobile phones.
  
• The top three barriers to mobile shopping are small screen size (48%), slow mobile Internet connection (48%) and security concerns (37%).
  

Check out details here and here.