Malaysian shoppers move beyond price as retailers rethink value

Retailers who continue to lead with discounts are misreading the room.

Malaysia's retail sector is contending with a consumer base that has permanently recalibrated its expectations around value, reshaping the way purchasing decisions are made.

Industry leaders speaking at the Retail Asia Summit 2026 in Malaysia discussed how it is caused by market conditions, including inflation, digital access, and a new generation of deliberate shoppers.

"The shopper knows as much as you do," Sachin Suresh, business head for South East Asia at Babyshop, Landmark Group, said. "They can see prices across channels and know what is best out there,” he added.

A central argument to emerge from the discussion was that retailers conflating value with low pricing are operating with a framework that no longer reflects how Malaysian consumers think.

“Affordability is the balance between quality received and cost paid, and it shifts depending on the individual consumer's expectations, aspirations, and context,” Suresh said.

Nur Azre Abdul Aziz, senior director of strategic partnerships at TikTok Shop Malaysia, noted that in a market where trust and convenience increasingly shape purchase behaviour alongside price, the competition for the Malaysian consumer's wallet is not a race to the bottom.

Azre reported a 130% year-on-year growth for both Malaysian-made products by #JomLokal MSMEs and the authenticity-guaranteed TikTok Shop Mall segment, attributing the surge to buyers actively choosing authenticated quality and branded assurance.

One of the sharper observations to surface during the panel was that retailers frequently overestimate their own products' value relative to what the market will accept.

Suresh said that a retailer's proximity to their own product generates an intimacy with its attributes that consumers simply do not share.

“The recommended corrective is exhaustive competitive mapping, direct consumer engagement, and a willingness to let the supply-and-demand curve arbitrate where internal conviction cannot,” he said.

Beyond price and product quality, panellists identified two further variables that Malaysian consumers are increasingly using to evaluate retailers— convenience and trust.

“With the proliferation of online, offline, and social commerce channels, any friction in the shopping journey is effectively a referral to a competitor,” Suresh said.

On trust, he noted that the dynamic is more nuanced. In a digital environment where consumers face more choices than they can meaningfully evaluate, the brands that offer reliability and assurance command loyalty that overpowers price sensitivity.

The question every retailer must be able to answer, panellists argued, is a deceptively simple one: when a consumer comes to you, are you actually solving the problem they came in with?

"If I come to you as a retailer, are you solving my problem?" Suresh asked. "That is what value means."

Kai Wei Tay, head of brand marketing at Baskin-Robbins, said that he noticed that consumers are willing to spend more money over time if the environment of the retail outlets is more comfortable and memorable to them.

"One interesting trend that we noticed in recent years is that there are evolving expectations from our landlords too,” he said. “So when we remodel or even open a new outlet, they expect us to make sure the store feels more lifestyle-oriented and more premium."