Rakuten finally ventures into Malaysia



We have heard rumours of Rakuten lurking into Malaysia's market for about 2 years now, and they have finally announced that they will be in for good.

Malaysia is the ninth country out of Japan in Rakuten's global expansion, and interestingly this is Rakuten's first "greenfield approach" - without any joint venture or acquisition.

This also means that 3 out of the top 4 e-commerce companies in the world are now presented in Malaysia, except Amazon (#1). The other 2 being eBay (#2) and Groupon (#4), of course eBay doesn't have a local office here but launched the local site 8 years ago.

E-Commerce Articles on Sin Chew Jit Poh

If you follow my tweets, probably you are aware that I have wrote e-commerce articles for Sin Chew Daily (新媒體) since early this year.

Six articles in total:

1. Current state of e-commerce in Malaysia
    大马电子商务综述/现有状况

2. How to buy safely online?
    安全网购知多少?

3. Where to shop online in Malaysia?
    我国有哪些平台/地方可进行网购?

4. Selling online: selling via multiple channels
    网上销售:哪些平台最适合你

5. Selling online: online marketing
    网上销售:线上行销知多少?

6. Selling online: delivering happiness
    网上销售:顾客至上

Here are the articles (in Chinese) again if you miss it, or if it's useful for you.

Malaysia's E-Commerce Statistics (Updated)

Visit my new blog for updated post on e-commerce statistics

The last time I wrote about e-commerce statistics in Malaysia was 2-3 years back, which you can read it here. It's time to get some updated figures, thanks to PayPal's "Online and Mobile Shopping Insights" study.

Malaysia's online shopping market size was RM 1.8 billion in 2010, estimated to be RM 5 billion in 2014. It's safe to predict that our e-commerce market size is around RM 2-3 billion for this year.

Malaysia E-Commerce Market Size

E-Commerce Milestones in Malaysia

Here, I am compiling a list of important milestones for e-commerce industry in Malaysia.

If you refer to the milestones below, things start to heat up in recent years. Truth to be told, we rely significantly on foreign players to invest into our market. Perhaps local businesses or investors will rather invest into something else rather than e-commerce (which requires long term ROI), haha!

I think there are 3 waves in terms of consumers uptake or market competitiveness:
- Post 2001: Now everyone can fly!
- Post 2011: Coupon madness and group buying war.
- Post 2012: Marketplace (platform) war?

Do leave a comment, and let me know if anything important missing from the following...

e-commerce, online shopping news and insights focus in malaysia and asia
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