Skip to main content

TOURISTS SPENT RM82 BIL. LAST YEAR IN MALAYSIA – How Much Of This Went To Online Stores?


Nothing!

Are Malaysian Online Sellers and Home Business Owners really getting what they and their products are worth?

According to the Tourism Malaysia’s website, some RM82.1 billion was spent on retail goods by tourists last year, and this is the highest spend since 2006. But how can online sellers access this huge cash bank that is just ready to be spent on something, anything, in Malaysia? There are many unique products that Malaysians make that would be great as souvenirs for our foreign visitors to take back, but unfortunately there is no way for an online seller to reach the tourist market.

 

It would be difficult for any Online Store or Marketplace to sell to tourists because they are only here for a few days, and within this few days they shall travel all over Malaysia, so they cannot afford the time of the two or three days wait for their products to arrive, and if there is anything wrong with the order or product, the tourists will be unable to return or exchange the product, hence Online Stores is missing out on a big chunk of tourist shopping budget.

These figures of billions as provided by the Tourism Board of Malaysia, should not alarm anyone and thus provides proof, as what was stated in my article yesterday ‘Do Not Start An Online Store Until You Have Read This’, that only 5% of the total retail sales are done online leaving the remaining 95% who are still shopping at brick-and-mortar retail outlets such as malls, hypermarkets, bazaars, shops, etc.

Malaysians are only beginning to test and use online buying and selling, e-commerce in Malaysia is still very much at its infancy as can be seen with the above figures. Statistics reveal that the greater number of Malaysians buy something online once every three months, therefore can an Online Seller survive with such a small buyer database? Can this now also be proof that no matter what we did to our websites and how well it was made and the ads developed to promote it, and yet did not yield any sale?

I think this is the proof – the figures don’t lie. Therefore, not only in Malaysia, Online Sellers anywhere in the world shall endure this same problem – they cannot access the tourists' money by only selling through an Online Store and not consider alternative and cost-effective methods that can ‘showcase’ their products at malls and other brick-and-mortar locations (offline)?

 

Socialnetworkmerchandise.com has been through all these issues in the past and now have the ONE and ONLY solution where any Online Seller or Home Business Owner can reach out to thousands of tourists who are ready to buy something from Malaysia – EVERYDAY. A very popular mall in KLCC informed us that they receive about 40 tourists buses to their mall every week (the mall has over a million monthly local visitors). These are some real statistics to work with, and a possible estimate as to how many people can possibly see an Online Seller's product if displayed or 'showcased' at a mall. The tourists market is indeed an untapped market for all Online Sellers, and now there is a way to access these tourists who come and shop at the mall for the e-commerce world to 'merge' with the physical retail world through technology (no staff or shop needed) by the Online Sellers.

 Have we realised how much business we are really losing out on?


Article written by:

Joy Nandy

Founder: Socialnetworkmerchandise.com
Inventor: Malaysia’s First T-Shirt Vending Machine
Inventor: The World’s First Vending Marketplace

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

A BRIEF HISTORY OF BOOK VENDING MACHINE

There are lots of reasons why a white elephant technology doesn’t catch on. Sometimes the technology is ahead of its time. In other cases, no amount of time can make a misguided technology useful or attractive. Then there’s vending machines that sell books. The first book-dispensing vending machine was built by Richard Carlile in England in 1822. Carlile was a bookseller who wanted to sell seditious works like Paine’s  Age of Reason  without being thrown in jail. His answer was a self service machine that allowed customers to buy questionable books without ever coming into contact with Carlile. The customer turned a dial on the devise to the publication he wanted, deposited his money, and the material dropped down in front of him. It’s unclear whether this was an automated process, but that didn’t stop England’s own automated process from convicting one of Carlile’s employees for selling “blasphemous material.” The Penguincubator The next book-dispensin...
Read more

OH WOW! FIRST BITCOIN VENDING MACHINES APPEAR IN MALAYSIA

The first vending machines for the increasingly popular cryptocurrency,  Bitcoin , has appeared in Malaysia. Singapore-based Numoni Pte Ltd has installed two Auto Vending Machines (AVM) in Bangsar Shopping Centre in Kuala Lumpur and Gurney Plaza in Penang last weekend. The new AVMs were installed after Numoni announced  the Bitcoin AVM in Spain last month. The company also installed four AVMs in its native island state. Interestingly, the company is looking to install another eight AVMs for a total of ten Bitcoin AVMs this year, and a total of 100 over the next three years. “Numoni is especially pleased to launch our machines in Malaysia as the machines are assembled in Malaysia in our Senai factory. The machine was fully developed by Numoni in Singapore since 2012,” said Numoni CEO Norma Sit. These Bitcoin AVMs work by reading a Bitcoin owner’s unique QR code, and accepts 22 physical currencies to purchase the cryptocurrency. These AVMs are also fully secured with ba...
Read more

ONLINE SHOPPERS IN A WEB OF SCAMMERS

A growing number of consumers are falling victims to pseudo-online merchants. Many shoppers on the Web are also bemoaning the poor quality of products and late deliveries. The National Consumer Complaints Centre (Malaysia) says it's about time outdated laws were amended to deal with present realities. E-commerce tops the sector with the most complaints received by the National Consumer Complaints Centre for two consecutive years. As more Malaysians turn to the Internet to purchase goods and services, there is a pressing need for an improved legal framework to protect their rights. ONLINE shoppers, beware. The e-commerce sector continues to top the list of complaints by Malaysian consumers, with the National Consumer Complaints Centre (NCCC) finding that an increasing number of Malaysians are falling victim to unscrupulous online merchants. These are mainly products offered by the merchants or direct-sellers who advertise them on social networking sites and online sho...
Read more

Malaysia's First T-Shirt Vending Machine in the News

Malaysia's First T-Shirt Vending Machine on Astro TV