MALAYSIANS love to shop – you just need to check out the crowds at
shopping malls whenever a holiday season approaches. And this trend is spilling over to the Internet.

PayPal, a payment service provider for the Web, says close to half of all Malaysian holiday shoppers are inclined to shop online for holiday gifts.

A survey in August that polled online and offline shoppers shows that the average festive spending among Malaysians this year is about RM730, with Chinese New Year topping the list at about RM950 per person.

And online spending accounts for 44 per cent of total holiday spending.

Malaysians cited time (75 per cent), crowd (64 per cent) and access to a wider range of products (51 per cent) as the main reasons for shopping online.

Top shopping sites What are the top sites Malaysians visit for their festive buying, and how much are they spending? PayPal’s general manager for Southeast Asia and India Mario Shiliashki says the wide range of products at sites such as eBay.com makes them the preferred sites for online shopping, with 64 per cent of the shoppers making online purchases.

Manufacturer-specific sites come in second at 48 per cent, followed by online retailer sites such as coldstorage.com (42 per cent), online holiday gift stores (39 per cent) and specialty online stores, which supply multiple brands in specific product categories (37 per cent).

Popular product categories for online purchases are apparel, health and beauty products, DVDs and CDs, gadgets, books and festival-related gifts and greeting cards.

Average spending online for Malaysians is about RM315, or 44 per cent of their overall holiday spending, Shiliashki points out.

A key finding from the survey is that Malaysians are buying more from overseas merchants than local ones. The reasons cited are greater product availability and choices, known brands, and a more appealing Web site experience.

Asked how local merchants could improve their services, the respondents cited the need for local merchants to improve on competitive pricing (62 per cent), carry a wider range of products (57 per cent), offer more popular brands (43 per cent) and make their Web sites more appealing (41 per cent).

What’s more, online blogs, micro-sites and social networking networks have given individual merchants and consumers greater opportunities to discover new markets, comment on new trends and provide active feedback on products and services.

“Consumers expect to enjoy easy, secure and cost-effective transactions as their choice of vendors are now borderless, making it critical for Malaysian online merchants to offer a similar experience to consumers from local and overseas markets,” Shiliashki says.

Malaysians also find assurance in payment security, return or exchange policy, and purchase dispute settlement support to be essential when shopping online.

Future of shopping Whether online shopping will someday overtake the physical way of buying remains to be seen. But the convenience of online shopping is keeping it on track to do so.

“While online shopping still has a long way to go in overtaking the current physical way of buying, its rapid growth has a significant impact on consumer markets, and the growth benefits gained from having an e-commerce presence are vast,” Shiliashki says.

Last year, the total value of worldwide transactions conducted using PayPal alone was US$60 billion (RM207 billion), or US$2,000 a second. The Asia-Pacific is PayPal’s fastest-growing region with over 12 million accounts.