Yes, the two questions above will be the top 2 questions for most of the Malaysia business in the current time including e-commerce business.

In recent weeks, we even received a call from Big Retail and E-commerce player asking what’s the trend. They need the trend and data to make the decision for the coming weeks and months.

Due to this Covid-19 seems to be a Black Swan event for us, this seems to be very tricky for us as well. We have some data on hand showing the trend in the past few weeks, however we can’t predict the future on it. We can only ”predict” the near future and future trend based on the info and facts that we collected up to date.

Yes, from our data, e-commerce is really growing at exponential speed in the past few months during the MCO period. However that is not the whole picture, there are some categories in e-commerce that are seeing slow down and basket size start to show a drop. This actually quite match with the research from Dr Moonyati Yatid and Ryan Chua, senior analyst and researcher respectively at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia. They have concluded that no easy roads to take even for e-commerce amid Covid-19 as E-commerce has not lifted all boats.

Thus, we would like to give a few suggestions that can help our sellers to survive and thrive especially in coming post-CMCO time.

• Capture and Up-Sell to the First Time Online Shoppers

If you are able to acquire new customers and deliver a pleasant online shopping experience to them during these Covid-19 and MCO/CMCO time, we would like to congrats to you. It is because you get a chance to up-sell and revisit your online store even the MCO is lifted as they will able to remember to you deliver a good online shopping experience to them.

• Diversify Line of Products

In this tough time, if your current niche industry is not in high demand, you may need to expand your current line of products. Sellers may need to diversify their line of products and consumer acquisition approaches to suit new trends, such as highlighting brand aspects relevant to new consumer norms in order to survive the business.

• New Pricing Strategy

According to a study by Nielsen, “With four out of every 10 Malaysians experiencing some form of income loss as a result of the pandemic, we believe that Malaysians will continue to tighten their belts and adhere to their budgets when it comes to spending”. This is true when we start to see the drop of basket size in the shopping carts on our end. Thus, sellers are encouraged to come out with a new pricing strategy that is more covid-19 friendly attract the purchase from buyer.

• A New Normal

On the other hand, let’s don’t be too pessimistic. During the current time, customers would likely reduce spending on high class products, at the same time, people would also reward themselves on weekends and during festive season. 

Furthermore, as people are now stuck and bored at home with no outdoor entertainment and recreation. Thus, a new in-home entertainment and recreation demand been created. This is an opportunity for all the business and sellers.

As always, for Malaysian businesses including SME businesses that would like to move or expand their businesses online, we would like to help, please contact us (email to vendor@lelong.com.my) or leave a comment below if you saw our message here.