This country brief is part of an eleven-part series exploring the landscape of B2C e-commerce marketplaces in various East Asian economies. This series offers in-depth insights into the traffic trends for active e-commerce websites, national established and emerging key players, main characteristics of the marketplaces, ease of online selling, the degree of specialization in terms of products as well as the products characteristics.
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Malaysia shows a particularly high internet penetration rate (97%) and a moderate proportion of its population purchases goods online (46%). In addition, the density of B2C marketplaces is middle ranging with 176 B2C marketplaces for a population of 33.9 million (capturing 6.1% of the total traffic in the region studied).
Over the period 2019-2022, traffic on the 176 B2C marketplaces has grown significantly, rising from 1 to 1.37 billion visits. Among them, online shopping malls account for the largest proportion of marketplaces (48.3%) and capture most of the traffic (81.3%).
The e-commerce market is dominated by domestic companies (31%) and closely followed by the United States (22%), and Singapore (8%). Of the total 176 B2C marketplaces, there is an important geographical diversity given the 26 other countries with companies holding B2C marketplaces.
The e-commerce market is highly concentrated with the Top 10 websites capturing 90.8% of total traffic. This Top 10 is largely dominated by online shopping malls, 6 in total, of which two Singaporean companies (Shopee and Lazada) account for 58.1% of the total traffic. Only one company from Malaysia appears in the third position with 12.2% of the total traffic.
Regarding the ease of selling on these B2C marketplaces, only 47% of them allow foreign sellers to operate and 56% offer open registration to online sellers. Almost half of these marketplaces are fully transactional (49%) and, as a corollary, 48% require trading fees to sell online.
Malaysia has a greater proportion of generic B2C marketplaces (61%) compared to specialized marketplaces (39%). The 69 specialized marketplaces’ traffic can be mainly attributed to three sectors: fashion/shoes (32%), groceries (31%), and automotive parts (26%).