Malaysia e-commerce starts 2019 with rosy performance
KUALA LUMPUR: The amount of online orders made through Shopback Malaysia’s platform in January 2019 maintains at the same level as December 2018, which is an uncommon sight as online purchases in January is usually lower than December.
December is the busiest month that is packed with events like 12.12, Christmas, and back to school preparations.
“This is definitely encouraging. If we would to compare YoY with Jan’18, the number of online orders made through ShopBack Malaysia in Jan’19 increased by more than 100 per cent.
“It shows that online shopping has gained strong popularity over the past year and despite we being in the first quarter (1Q) – supposedly a quieter quarter for e-commerce industry versus 4Q – the purchasing trend is growing strong,” says ShopBack Malaysia country general manager Alvin Gill in a statement.
“We wouldn’t be able to achieve this without the strong support from our partners. We also unlocked another milestone last month. A new vertical, movies, is now available on ShopBack Malaysia. Users can get cashback when they purchase a movie ticket with mmCineplexes via our website and app.”
Alvin attributes the growth in January to the success of ShopBack Malaysia’s ‘9ood 9ood New Year’ campaign, a close to one-month Chinese New Year campaign where the company curated best offers from over 40 partner stores with rewards up to 30 per cent cashback on top of the partner store’s discounts.
More than RM2 million cashback were given to ShopBack users during this period, double last year’s CNY campaign.
According to the company’s data, 11street, Agoda, Booking. com, Lazada and Shopee were the top five online stores last month. In addition, ShopBack Malaysia observes a 40 per cent increase in terms of the percentage of orders made via its app in January 2019, when comparing YoY with January 2018.
“This is driven by our app integration with Grab, Lazada (app), and subsequently 11street, Shopee, AliExpress and Booking. com apps.
“The integration enables us to work directly with partners to give cashback for app purchases at the same time, motivate ShopBack users to try out partners’ apps.
“ShopBack is a pioneer in app to app integration in the region and we target to onboard more popular apps this year.”
“Notably, many online shopping platforms have been creating mobile-app games to attract customers since last year such as Shopee’s Shake and Lazada’s Slash It. It helped to cultivate open-app behaviour and more importantly, expand the user base and encourage purchases.
“Discounts (including price cut, coupon discount, cashback and free shipping) remain as the main reason for customers to make purchases online, followed by convenience,” said Alvin.
ShopBack Malaysia foresees 1Q will continue to grow especially with its upcoming 4th birthday celebration. Online shoppers can anticipate epic rewards such as lucky hour cashback 100 per cent cashback on selected items, special upsized cashback and exclusive promo codes offered by partner stores, as well as RM30K Shopping Spree Giveaway from February 20 to 22.