Recently, renowned authoritative research firm YouGov PLC released the 2026 Best Brand Rankings report, which specially identifies brands with the highest comprehensive brand health scores in Malaysia. In this evaluation, Shopee stood out with its user-friendly experience, exceptional cost-effectiveness, and reliable service quality, securing first place on the list with an outstanding score of 68.0 and solidifying its leading position.
It is reported that the ranking is based on consumers’ long-term brand awareness, comprehensively evaluating a brand’s performance across multiple dimensions including public perception, product quality, value delivery, and user satisfaction. This result reflects that, in Malaysia’s e-commerce market, Shopee’s leading advantage is not only reflected in market scale but also means the platform has deeply integrated into the daily shopping habits of Malaysian people, becoming an important choice for local consumers.
Notably, across Southeast Asia, Malaysian consumers, with their diverse consumption backgrounds, are among the world’s most enthusiastic cross-border shoppers.
According to a previous joint report by market research platform Statista and global financial payment service Airwallex, 94% of Malaysian consumers show strong confidence in cross-border online shopping, exceeding the global average of 89%. Meanwhile, approximately 72% of Malaysians engage in frequent cross-border shopping, making at least one cross-border online purchase per month — a figure also above the global average, highlighting strong demand in the local cross-border e-commerce market.
In recent years, Southeast Asia’s digital economy has maintained strong momentum, and the e-commerce industry has gradually entered a new phase of high-quality competition, making it one of the world’s core regions with the greatest growth potential in cross-border e-commerce.
In late 2025, the 2025 Southeast Asia Digital Economy Report, jointly released by Bain & Company, Temasek, and Google, stated that Southeast Asia’s overall digital economy revenue was expected to reach 135 billion US dollars in 2025. Among them, the e-commerce sector remained the core engine driving digital economic growth, with its gross merchandise volume (GMV) projected to rise to 305 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of about 15%, maintaining steady growth.
As the market matures, a clear industry trend has emerged: content commerce has fully risen, becoming a new engine for sustained industry growth.
TikTok Shop’s GMV in Southeast Asia has achieved rapid growth for consecutive years. Its overall scale in 2025 more than doubled compared with 2024, with daily average GMV rising 90% year-on-year, and the single-day peak transaction volume at the end of the year nearly doubling that of late 2024.
These figures demonstrate TikTok Shop’s strong growth momentum and fully confirm the huge appeal of content commerce in the Southeast Asian market.
Overall, the rapid rise of TikTok Shop and the continued leadership of Shopee fully prove that “localization + contentization” has become the core development logic of Southeast Asia’s cross-border e-commerce industry, and also highlight the enormous growth potential of this regional market.
For Chinese cross-border sellers, the Southeast Asian market presents both opportunities and competition. Only by deeply understanding local market demand, continuously optimizing product and service quality, and adhering to compliant operations can sellers seize growth opportunities in this promising market and achieve long-term sustainable development.
