eBay, in its Southeast Asia Small Online Business Trade Report July 2022 highlighted the successes of small and medium-sized enterprises in Southeast Asia in expanding their global reach and selling to international markets using the platforms global marketplace.
SMEs are the backbone of Southeast Asia’s economy and a vital tenet of the regional economic architecture. In Malaysia, SMEs account for 97.2% of total business establishments, contributing 38.2%, or more than RM 512.8 billion, to the country’s GDP in 2020. Among the six Southeast Asian markets of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam covered in the Report, 68% of eBay-enabled small businesses exported to 10 or more international markets. In 2020, the region’s eBay-enabled small business community made sales in 214 international markets.
eBay’s global marketplace is uniquely positioned to offer Southeast Asian SMEs e-commerce export opportunities – while less than 20% of traditional businesses in each of the six markets highlighted in this Report export, all eBay-enabled small businesses in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam are exporters, and more than 95% in Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore use eBay to reach global consumers. As a result, eBay enables small businesses to become global retailers from day one, and the eBay marketplace offers them an extended growth runway that is both diversified and resilient.
Beyond that, the ability to access non-traditional export markets via the eBay marketplace is immediately apparent for these SMEs. Seven of the top ten export markets for eBay-enabled small businesses in Malaysia are not in the top ten for traditional exporters.
The top five product categories exported by Malaysian sellers on eBay were: Auto Parts, Home & Garden, Health & Beauty, Cell Phones & Accessories and Collectibles.
eBay is leveraging the combined depth of our in-market teams and the global scale of eBay’s marketplace to assist SMEs in growing their businesses and meeting the increasingly complex demands of global markets and consumers.
[1] The growth rate is for 2021 full year over 2020 full year
