E-commerce stores are fast becoming the universal destination of choice when it comes to shopping. In fact, a report by Malaysia-based online store reviews platform TrustedCompany predicts that the industry will grow by 20 percent in 2014 to hit a massive US$1.5 trillion in revenue.
The same report, however, states that US$100 billion was lost in 2013 due to online shopping fraud. This is especially worrying for Malaysia, who ranked seventh in Sift Science’s list of the top 25 most fraudulent countries based on its sampling of online transaction data. Sift Science is a US-based fraud detection service provider, and conducted their investigation last year.
At the same time, online shopping is increasingly becoming more popular among Malaysians – a recent report by PayPal showed that, out of the 1,000 Malaysian adults surveyed, around 73 per cent of the respondents shopped online at least once a month. Not surprisingly, 58 percent of them listed the fear of having their financial details stolen by cyber-criminals and falling victim to fraud as their top concerns.
Building consumer trust in Malaysia
To tackle this, TrustedCompany recently launched a contest in Malaysia called the Trust Awards 2014. The purpose of the award is to help customers in Malaysia identify reliable and reputable online retailers. Customers were asked to rate the online stores that they frequent in terms of trustworthiness and popularity over a period of three weeks. Here are the companies that clinched the top three places, starting from first place: Ethnicraft online furniture store, One Simple Gown, and Amplified Armature.
“With the award we want to [...] empower consumers to recommend or warn against certain shops and benefit from other people’s reviews at the same time [...] Outstanding merchants in the Malaysian internet market [also] deserve a reward for their integrity and customer service,” TrustedCompany co-founder and managing director Philip Knuth says.
See: TrustedCompany is Yelp for e-commerce, aims to solve trust issues online
Strangely, the regionally-popular MyTeksi, or GrabTaxi, came in 57th place, while another local favorite Carlist.my also languished at in 44th position. Each of these companies only received one review each, which were both highly positive at 5 stars apiece, bringing into question how the overall ranking is actually calculated.
Moreover, it is worth noting that while online reviews are a good indication of whether a store is trustworthy or not, it is by no means foolproof. There are various ways that such reviews can be fabricated, whether it be through “buying” or bribing customers into giving positive reviews, or crafting them in-house. Even established e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and Yelp have been unable to entirely eliminate this problem thus far.
While TrustedCompany is taking a step in the right direction by emphasizing “authentic customer reviews”, it is in reality almost impossible to guarantee – at least for now. Therefore, beyond referring to reviews, it is always good to err on the safe side by sticking to recommended practices for online shopping.
(Image credit: Flickr user Nribestbuy)
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