The ShopBack ShopFest returns, with vouchers and cashback giveaways planned

• 90% of online shoppers intend to purchase something by end of the year
• 32% of respondents are prepared to spend between RM151 to RM500

IT WOULD seem that Malaysians are already primed to do a whole lot of year-end online shopping. According to a recent online shopping sentiments survey by rewards platform ShopBack Malaysia, 90% of the 1,200 respondents expressed that they intend to purchase something for themselves at the end of the year.

The top three choices, the survey found, are Fashion, Beauty and Supplements, and Home and Living. Forty percent of the respondents plan to spend within a range of RM51 to RM150, while 32% are prepared to spend between RM151 to RM500.

This is some interesting news, at least according to ShopBack Malaysia’s country general manager Eddy Han. “We didn’t expect the basket size of online shopping has increased this year. What this shows is that market confidence towards e-commerce platforms is getting better,” he says.

“The trust is there: they are willing to part with more money in one single purchase. We see this growing to larger ticket items. You’ll never know, but people may eventually buy cars online.”

At any rate, the increased preparedness for end-year online shopping is likely fuelled by the massive amount of online sales happening during this period. Besides the quintessential Christmas and New Year sales, the last legs of the year will see a deluge of sales that include the 9.9 (September 9th), 11.11 (November 11th), #MYCYBERSALE and the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.

ShopBack Malaysia is well prepared for this – they have recently kicked off the ShopBack ShopFest, which will be encompassing all important online shopping events mentioned above. During this period, Malaysian shoppers can more easily access the best deals, vouchers and cashback offered by the online shopping stores partnering with ShopBack.

Not only that, they also stand a chance to receive 1.5 million of vouchers and over US$4.766 million (RM20 million) cashback through the rewards platform.

Growing numbers

Last year’s ShopBack ShopFest (the inaugural one) received an overwhelming response. According to the company, the top three most purchased categories in Malaysia are Online Marketplace (sites like Lazada and Shopee), Travel (Agoda, Expedia, Booking.com) and Fashion (Zalora, asos, Fashion Valet).

On a regional level, 10 million orders were transacted on Online Marketplaces, while 1.4 million nights were booked through Online Travel Agent sites. A total of one million pieces of clothing were bought by users from ShopBack in the countries it operates in, namely Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan and Australia.

This bodes well for ShopBack, which has been seeing what they claim as “hyper-growth” this year. “Compared to 2H18, we observed that there is an increment of 77% in terms of Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) generated through our platform in 1H19. Given the positive outlook and strong online shopping interest found among local shoppers, we are confident that 2H19 will grow even better with the launch of ShopBack ShopFest,” Han says.

ShopBack has been operating in Malaysia since 2015 – the second in the region after Singapore. Currently, the platform has over 1.5 million Malaysian users, with the top user having withdrawn more than RM30,000 cashback to his account. Han says that Malaysia is one of the top contributing countries for ShopBack in the region, with the four years of operation allowing them to learn and experiment.

This, in turn, helped them achieved the 77% growth for the first half of 2019, namely through unlocking certain behaviour and user demography. “Also, with the help of our partners, we realised lots of ways we can reach our customers, and learn of what rewards they are looking for,” Han notes.

“But the one thing we did really well, from last year onwards, was to listen to our users. The input them has been very valuable for us.”

ShopBack Malaysia co-founder Sharmeen Looi adds that there are external factors contributing to the growth as well. “In Malaysia, we realise, the market is more mature. All these collective improvement efforts from all our partners definitely helped the (Malaysian) e-commerce ecosystem as a whole, and that helped with our growth.”

Rewards galore

Han says that popular merchants such as Agoda, Booking.com, Lazada, KLOOK, Shopee, Taobo and Zalora will be giving up to 80% discounts in each of the six major year-end sales this year. On top of that, ShopBack users will be able to reap up to 30% additional cashback, as well as vouchers.

“We expect all shoppers to receive double the amount of vouchers and cashback compared to last year. This year, we’ll make their experience even more fulfilling with the introduction of new app features such as a shortcut to upsize cashback, voucher redemption, as well as fun games throughout ShopBack ShopFest 2019.”