afternoon highlight (20/03/12/051/526) SME told to go for online shopping market

SME told to go for online shopping market

KUALA LUMPUR: Small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) need to play catch-up on e-commerce to avoid losing out on the growing online shopping market.


According to the fifth SME survey conducted by the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia (ACCCIM), local SMEs are still depending on conventional business strategies, with only 28% of the 965 respondents being involved in e-commerce.


ACCCIM president Tan Sri William Cheng pointed out that the SMEs would lose the online shopping crowd if they failed to connect with consumers virtually.


“The SMEs generally missed a major group of consumers, namely the internet community, in their active quest for new market outlets,” he said in his keynote address at the ACCCIM’s third SME Conference last Thursday.


“I wish to stress that SMEs must not overlook the huge potential of this market segment.” He noted that the survey showed that not only were most respondents not active participants in e-commerce, they also did not have websites or social networking channels to reach out to the market.


“What I want to highlight here is, online shopping will become more common in line with the changing habit of purchase among the younger generation,” he said.


Cheng said that the type of products that consumers would buy online would increase and diversify as the popularity of online shopping picked up.


The survey also noted that among businesses that had been operating for less than three years, 37% used e-commerce. Among the older businesses which have been operating for over a decade, only 28% had adopted e-commerce. It pointed out that the lukewarm response towards e-commerce could be because the SMEs were still not prepared to make it part of their operations.


The hotel industry is the most aggressive and receptive in e-commerce currently, with 50% of them using it and 43% planning to implement it.


As for online presence, the survey found that 36% are on social networking websites, 54% has established websites and only 14% have set up blogs. Newer companies operating less than three years are generally more receptive of social networking, with 51% of them on online platform.

Source : The Star

Date : 20 March 2012

afternoon highlight (20/03/12/051/526)