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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

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