A year-end review of 2017 Malaysian ecommerce

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• Lazada is the most searched ecommerce platform in Malaysia, followed by Shopee.
• Online sale periods which garnered the highest interest were the 12.12 sale, Single’s Day, and Black Friday.
• Shopee and Lazada were the highest ranked mobile shopping apps of 2017.
• The ecommerce platform with the most Facebook fans in Malaysia were Lazada, 11street, and Zalora.

This year has been vital for ecommerce in Southeast Asia. We’ve seen Google and Temasek increase their 2016 predictions, stating the digital economy will be worth US$50 billion by the end of 2017.

The Malaysian government has also publicly noted the huge potential of ecommerce to the development of the nation. This was evident in the country’s establishment of a Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ) in cooperation with Alibaba, the allocation of significant government resources to the sector, and the inclusion of ecommerce among the country’s eight key thrusts in its 2025 development plan.

The digital space is as fertile as ever for ecommerce players, with more than 22 million active internet users and another 5 million to come in 2018. To assess the winners in Malaysia, we conducted a study to ascertain the country’s most searched ecommerce platforms, highest-ranking mobile shopping applications, and their popularities on Facebook for 2017.

Most searched ecommerce platforms in Malaysia

Lazada further increased its market lead, with a 62.9 percent increase in search interest compared with 2016. The ecommerce marketplace was a key winner in all vital ecommerce sale events, especially the ones by Alibaba, which holds a majority stake in the company. These include the 12.12 sale and Single’s Day.

In its latest announcement, Lazada wrapped up its month-long sale campaign with US$250 million in gross merchandise value (GMV), shattering its previous record of US$123 million.

But Shopee is closing in. The C2C platform began the year in fifth place and is now the closest competitor to Lazada, ahead of more experienced ecommerce platforms like Zalora, Lelong, and 11street. According to Google Trends, Shopee first took second place in July 2017 and further cemented its position when parent company Sea filed for a US$1 billion IPO in the US. Shopee also gained five times more search interest this year compared to 2016, becoming a serious competitor to Lazada.

Missing from this year’s top five is ecommerce platform GemFive, which closed its website and mobile apps in September 2017. They gave no official announcement on their closing, but the ecommerce platform went through significant downsizing in early 2017 and probably lost the backing of its operator, Guoline eMarketing.

Most vital online sale periods

Our study shows that the 12.12 sale was the most popular online sale period ahead of Single’s Day and Black Friday. All three sale periods took place toward the end of the year and were more popular when compared to local events such as the Chinese New Year, Ramadan, and National Day sale periods.

Nonetheless, local festivals and holidays remained important for ecommerce platforms. One example is Zalora, which experienced a surge of interest during Ramadan when most Malaysians were searching for fashion products (Baju Raya) in preparation for Hari Raya.

Top mobile shopping apps

According to Google and Temasek’s study, Southeast Asians spend more time using mobile internet than anyone else, with an average of 3.6 hours per day. Realizing this, key ecommerce players in Malaysia developed mobile apps to meet the increasing m-commerce demand.

Most popular ecommerce platforms on social media

Methodology