Are you a Malaysian? Have you ever buy something online? I have decided to write about this after I saw this post by Boon on his blog. It’s a true story about his colleague who has ordered a toy Elmo from Parkson online & eventually did not received the item that was ordered because of some stupid reasons that were given by the manager, which is just so ridiculous! Do check out the post & read the whole story
It seems that most of the Malaysians are conservative minded, they prefer to buy something only when they can see the item in front of them rather than giving out their own credit cards number online; This is perhaps the major concern of those people who wants to buy something online as they feel insecure. But think of this: You do not need to go through the hassle of finding car parks and stuck in the jam for hours, isn’t that why E-Commerce sites were created? So Malaysians, better change your mind now & start supporting online shopping! (Only that I will have customers in the future for my business, you also don’t want to see me doing nothing after graduate, right?)
I felt sorry for what was happened to Boon’s colleague & as a student who’s pursuing E-Commerce in a local college, I really have to consider my choice of choosing the subject again. Thanks for their “contributions”, online shopping may not be popular in Malaysia for a while.. Why don’t they just learn something from Exabytes? Their costumer service are just excellent, at least they won’t sell something that is out of stock but still placing the particular item on the first page 
So, would you still buy something online in Malaysia?
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October 17th, 2007 at 10:45 am
thanks for the linkback pal
October 17th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
You ‘re welcome!
October 20th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
I do online shopping lo… Just brought my SLR lens from US last few months.
October 20th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
my opinion that online shopping only will work for those soft thing such as software and hosting service, will not work so nice for tangible thing…
October 20th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
well, i dun believe in online shopping..
firstly i dun get to see the product, i might end up purchasing someting tht is not up to the quality.
secondly, i dun trust online payment, especially in their security system.
third, long wait in getting the item
fourth, need to go thru lotsa hassles if to get back refund
October 20th, 2007 at 7:14 pm
@Jayce:That’s great! How much is it?
@iCalvyn:Yup, totally agree, people here will only buy the products when it’s in front of their eyes
@Nux:I do agree of your 4th point, they will just refer you to someone else until you run out of patience asking for the refund…
October 21st, 2007 at 7:31 pm
Yup, we need times to adopt the western culture and behavior. I’m from business schoool. Sometimes, i notice some students do not even touch computer and blame ecommerce is not going to work in Malaysia.
I did my own research for my school project. The main factors Malaysian do not shop online are:
1. Lack of trust from the merchant
2. Malaysian love to touch and see (even they dun buy, haha)
3. Malaysian claimed it’s slow in shipping
4. Some Malaysian claimed they are worry of credit card fraud
Btw, i own the TMX Elmo as my collection.
October 21st, 2007 at 9:04 pm
U r from business school too? Yeah business rocks, especially E-Commerce! Well, I asked my friends & it seems that they also have the stereotype that E-Commerce won’t work well in Malaysia. What a pity…
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:56 am
Sometimes, we cant blame them. As the merchant itself do not trust our “Islamic Country” and among the top fraud country in the world… e.g. Paypal
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:59 am
Btw, I’m not influencing Malaysian not to venture in EC. In fact, i put high hope in future EC. We might the market leader who dominate the Malaysia’s EC in the future? I sense it.
October 23rd, 2007 at 1:33 am
I did before in lelong.com. It is safe. I think the problem of Malaysian seldom purchase online because of the culture and environment here. Crimes and Fraud everywhere…If the biz is 100% safe and we can get 100% what we see in the website. I don’t thing it will be a problem.
I hope e-commerce can be popular in Malaysia one day. I hate drive car to shopping mall….car park, traffic..fees…TIME…
January 9th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Well, I would buy online, but not clothes.
Thingies that I would probably purchase online are:
- Digital products (Games, Softwares etc)
- Electronic thingies
Definitely not clothes!
Need to try out the clothes on myself first before deciding it is fitting enough for me, etc.
June 8th, 2008 at 10:13 am
I currently live in the US and i buy a lot of clothes online. I think one of the problems is the delivery charges, a lot of websites charge unreasonably for shipping.
But the good thing about buying online in US is that they provide paid postage stickers, so that we can refund the item if we are not satisfied without having to pay for the delivery back to their store. Besides that, they do price adjustments, let say the price of the item we purchased drops within 14 days, we can just send them an email and they will debit the difference into our card.
I think if malaysian sellers have an established shipping & refund system, it will help a lot for buyer’s to trust them. Besides, with the petrol prices now, i guess more ppl will be tempted to shop online.
June 21st, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I now currently running a online store selling men’s necktie, what do you about this product? Will you buy it online?
Actually during the payment procedure, as long as the store owner using Paypal, Worldpay, Ipay88, etc, your credit card info will not be seen by store owner or anyone else accept the Paypal themselves. So for me shopping online in Malaysia actually are very safe. Before i was expose with EC, i also think that shopping online are not safe and can not be trusted, but after have involve with EC, I feel a lot more confident to buy online now.
June 21st, 2008 at 10:01 pm
I now currently running a online store selling men’s necktie, what do you think about this product? Will you buy necktie online?
Actually during the payment procedure, as long as the store owner using Paypal, Worldpay, Ipay88, etc, your credit card info will not be seen by store owner or anyone else accept the Paypal themselves. So for me shopping online in Malaysia actually are very safe. Before i was expose with EC, i also think that shopping online are not safe and can not be trusted, but after have involve with EC, I feel a lot more confident to buy online now.
June 28th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
i start shop online this year, because i juz move from KL to Kuching, not much fashion things to see at here, so….
i like to shop online actually, i like the feel when received the parcel. some website at malaysia now provide a very good service also. but one serious things i cant accept is the quality is different with what is saw on the website. i also shock after i found that so many malaysia online shopping web already. 2 or 3 years ago, i can only order from taiwan.
September 8th, 2008 at 9:07 am
i still new in this internet business field. i setup my online shop that sale sarawak craft. at the first 3 months, there is no sales stated. only few month back i start to receive an order from customer.it is quite slow actually but i feel very satisfy because still, there are customer out there who buy product online. but still need more promotion and improvement in my operation to ensure more securiry n comfortability for customer.
September 14th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
i wonder if i can buy something from amazon … but it seem that the shipping is only to US region … you live there …show me a way how to buy item from amazon n ship to malaysia ….
September 18th, 2008 at 11:06 am
the problem is clear as my thesis is on it.if u interested follow me to see why this is happening.future will be changed after my publish
October 7th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Actually some stories like these do exist not only in Malaysia and even in the US, go and see reseller ratings, so many people complain of service quality and not receiving products from website sellers. I buy my computer stuff from Fusion IT. It is a local Malaysian company, and they always contact me, keep me updated a lot of people have been quite happy with them. I hope more online sellers locally follow their example.
October 19th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
the problem is the other way around now.. last time it was Malaysians who dont want to shop online.. now because of the huge number of fraud credit card transactions coming from Malaysia, a lot of online retailers NO LONGER WANT to sell to Malaysia.. so sad
I was trying to purchase something, and went through almost 20 stores that dont want to ship to Malaysia, even though I use secure payment method such as Google Checkout or paypal in addition to normal credit card payments.
Something to reflect on, huh?
October 21st, 2008 at 9:58 pm
hey SkaRn,
If you’re trying to buy something from overseas, try this shopping directory:
http://www.intletail.com/malaysia
It lists many online shops that ship to Malaysia.