Introduction
Expanding into East Malaysia
Worldpanel’s East Malaysia panel continuously tracks East Malaysians and their purchasing behaviour across 120+ FMCG categories for in-home consumption. The panel consists of 1,000 shoppers who report their ongoing shopping habits and must reside in East Malaysia (i.e. excluding East Malaysians who spend weekdays in Peninsular Malaysia). As in Peninsular Malaysia, panellists record their purchases using the Kantar Scope app on their smartphones.
The East Malaysia panel offers valuable context for Total Malaysia, and helps to uncover opportunities beyond the more mature Peninsular Malaysia market. Differences are expected, given the varied states (Sabah vs Sarawak), ethnic backgrounds (Bumiputera vs Non-Bumiputera), and shopping habits (with key accounts in Peninsular Malaysia not dominating the East Malaysia retail scene).
Across the broader Malaysian landscape, East Malaysia contributes approximately 14% of total FMCG spend and is about one-sixth the size of Peninsular Malaysia in value terms. If a product sees more than 14% of its value coming from East Malaysia, understanding local shopper behaviour becomes crucial. While the region’s contribution did not increase over the past year—due to similar growth in Peninsular Malaysia—East Malaysia is showing a pattern of slow but steady long-term growth.
Although the +5% growth rate matches that of Peninsular Malaysia and is driven by a 4% increase in purchase volume, the underlying causes differ significantly. In Peninsular Malaysia, shoppers made fewer but larger shopping trips. In contrast, East Malaysians are shopping more frequently, increasing from 63 trips two years ago to 67 last year and 69.7 in the most recent year.
This trend suggests more frequent shopper touchpoints, without any significant reduction in basket size. Despite the increased frequency, spend per trip remained relatively stable (RM47.49 last year vs RM46.80 this year), and volume per trip was nearly flat (13.9 vs 13.7). This indicates that there is currently little need to introduce smaller pack sizes or more affordable SKUs to accommodate increased purchases from East Malaysian households.
