Leading Cashback platform ShopBack conducted a survey recently and found the awareness level towards 11.11 Singles’ Day among Malaysian online shoppers has grown to 96% this year, from 69% in 2016. “In a 2016 survey to 2,000 Malaysian online shoppers, 69% answered they know what Singles’ Day is and 31% said they don’t. This year, 96% answered it is a huge online event (68%) or just another online shopping event (28%); only 3% from 2,000 respondents said they don’t know what 11.11 is, and 1% indicated that day has other meanings to them. This is an approximately 40% increase compared to 2016,” Alvin Gill, Country General Manager of ShopBack Malaysia says.
According to Alvin, Alibaba’s investment in Lazada and massive promotions rolled out via multiple online and offline channels, as well as education efforts done by reward partners throughout the years likely contributed to the awareness growth. “Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall have been collaborating with ShopBack on a regional level to boost market performance via cash rewards and multimedia educational efforts since 2014, of which include multi-lingual contents, digital and on-ground marketing exposures, as well as customer service support to encourage purchases through either Taobao, Tmall or Lazada’s Taobao collection, whichever suits their needs,” he adds.
“While it is encouraging that a majority of them are looking forward to 11.11, online sellers should also target those who feel 11.11 is ‘just another shopping event’ via better product and promotional strategy. 98% of respondents said they are willing to make more purchases if the products they need are available with greater offers online. The top three offers that would encourage them to spend are high product discounts, free shipping/delivery, and promo codes/coupon,” Alvin points out.
When asked to choose three online marketplaces that they feel would provide the best 11.11 deals this year, Lazada emerged as the top choice, followed by Shopee and 11street.
The survey also reveals that online shoppers prefer their shopping to be affordable, fast and safe. “Mobile & Electronics emerges as the most popular category for 11.11 without surprise; the second is Home & Lifestyle which suggests shoppers could be looking for items to make over their living spaces before the New Year, followed by Fashion as well as Health & Beauty.”
The 2018 ShopBack 11.11 online shopping survey covered views from 2,000 of ShopBack’s active online shoppers, of which 98.7% are aged 21 years old and above and around 85% have RM2,000 monthly income and above. 68.1% of the survey respondents use credit/debit card to make online payments while 25.4% select online banking as the preferred method, followed by cash on delivery 3.3%, Paypal 2.8%, and others 1.3%.
“We witnessed 10 times more than usual web traffic directed to our partner’s sites on 11.11 in 2017, more than RM6 million worth of transactions were made through our platform and over RM200,000 cashback saved by using ShopBack. Together with our partner merchants, ShopBack Malaysia has tailor-made the 2018’s 11.11 campaign according to shopper’s needs and we aim to break the record by doubling our performance as well as cashback number this year,” Alvin says.
Currently, more than 1 million Malaysians are using ShopBack for their daily purchases. The company works with online sites like Lazada, 11street, Taobao, Tmall, Booking.com, Expedia, Traveloka, ZALORA, Hermo, etc to give up to 30% cashback as a loyalty reward to online shoppers. Besides Malaysia, ShopBack also operates in Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan and Australia. Over RM25 million worth of cashback has been given to its Malaysian users thus far. The cashback savings can be transferred out to a user’s bank account upon validation.