Malaysian eCommerce: AI Growth Despite Low Adoption

9th April 2025, Kathmandu

AI Presents Growth Opportunities for Malaysian eCommerce Sellers, Despite Adoption Challenges, Lazada Report Reveals

• On average, Malaysian online sellers have adopted AI in only 26% of their business operations, significantly lower than the SEA average of 37%.
• Indonesia and Vietnam lead average AI adoption in eCommerce in Southeast Asia, followed by Singapore and Thailand.
• Lazada’s new playbook provides sellers with best practices, actionable insights, and resources to help integrate AI into their operations.

Lazada, a leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia, today published its research report, Bridging the AI Gap: Online Seller Perceptions and Adoption Trends in Southeast Asia (SEA).

Malaysian eCommerce AI Growth

Developed in collaboration with Kantar, the report surveyed 1,214 e-commerce sellers across Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam to examine AI adoption trends, challenges, and opportunities, shedding light on sellers’ readiness to integrate AI into their operations.

Knowledge, perception, and implementation gap evident among online sellers

The research reveals that 69% of Malaysian online sellers show strong familiarity with AI, in line with the average for the region at 68%, indicating that they are aware of AI. While SEA sellers believe they have integrated AI into 47% of their business operations, actual adoption stands only at 37%.

In Malaysia, this gap is even wider, with sellers estimating adoption at 30%, while real implementation is lower at just 26%, underscoring a disparity between perceived and actual AI use in the country.

Online sellers face a dilemma in terms of assessing AI efficacy and its cost implications. While 89% of SEA sellers acknowledge AI’s role in boosting productivity, this sentiment is slightly lower amongst Malaysian sellers at 77%.

This contrasts with the perceived overall usefulness of AI, where only 1 in 2 Malaysian sellers are sceptical about its utility, compared with almost two-thirds (61%) of SEA sellers who feel the same. Furthermore, although 87% of sellers in Malaysia agree that AI can drive long-term cost savings, nearly two-thirds (64%) cite costliness and time-consuming implementation as barriers to adoption.

The research also suggests an implementation gap, where sellers understand the importance of AI but struggle with effective deployment. Highlighting the challenge of transitioning from familiar, manual processes to AI-driven solutions, nearly all sellers in SEA (93%) agree that it is important to upskill the workforce to use AI so that they can be more productive, yet 3 out of 4 sellers (75%) also concede that their employees still prefer to use tools they are familiar with, rather than new AI solutions. In Malaysia, the importance of upskilling for AI is slightly lower at 89%, although a high majority of sellers (67%) still indicate that their employees prefer to use tried-and-tested ways of working.

Comparing AI-readiness levels in Malaysia vs. SEA

Across the region, Indonesia and Vietnam lead with 42% AI adoption across business functions, while Singapore and Thailand follow closely at 39%, and finally, the Philippines at 32% and Malaysia at 26%. Based on the level of AI adoption across five core aspects of operations of a seller’s business, namely operations and logistics, product management, marketing and advertising, customer service, and workforce management, the report identifies three distinct seller archetypes – AI Adepts, AI Aspirants, and AI Agnostics, based on the average score they attained in each aspect of operations to represent their readiness level to embrace AI:

AI Adepts: Sellers who have integrated AI across at least 80% of their operations, placing them at the forefront of adoption. Only 15% of Malaysian sellers belong to this category, significantly lower than the SEA average of 24%.

AI Aspirants: Sellers who have partially integrated AI into their operations, but still face adoption gaps across key functions. This group comprises 43% of Malaysian sellers, aligning with half of the sellers in Southeast Asia (50%).

AI Agnostics: This group lags in AI adoption, with most business functions still handled manually. Malaysians have a notably higher number of sellers in this category (42%), nearly double the Southeast Asia average of 26%.

Findings indicate that Thailand has the highest share of AI Adepts, with 30% of sellers in this category. Singapore (29%), Indonesia (29%), and Vietnam (22%) also demonstrate strong AI implementation despite knowledge gaps, while Malaysia (15%) and the Philippines (19%) face challenges related to internal buy-in and infrastructure limitations. 85% of Malaysian sellers fall into the AI Aspirants and AI Agnostics categories, signalling a pressing need for enhanced seller support (48%) and AI-powered tools (47%) to drive implementation.

“The findings from our research reveal a fascinating gap in Southeast Asia’s e-commerce ecosystem. While most sellers understand AI’s transformative potential, many are still navigating the path from recognition to implementation,” said James Dong, Chief Executive Officer, Lazada Group. “As a leading eCommerce platform in Southeast Asia, we aim to bridge the knowledge and adoption gap by developing accessible AI solutions that address the unique challenges faced by sellers across different markets, ultimately making technology more accessible and driving sustainable business growth regardless of a seller’s size or technical expertise.”

Leveraging Lazada’s AI-driven solutions to transform business operations

To support sellers in their AI adoption journey, Lazada is launching the Online Sellers Artificial Intelligence Readiness Playbook, designed to provide strategic guidance based on sellers’ AI maturity levels. The research reveals that sellers are already leveraging key AI-driven solutions on Lazada’s platform to enhance their efficiency, validating Lazada’s continuous investments in cutting-edge AI innovations and advanced tools that streamline eCommerce operations and drive competitiveness.

With 67% of sellers expressing strong satisfaction in existing Lazada AI features[2], Lazada is also releasing new Generative AI (GenAI) features that are designed to empower sellers and enhance their product listings, streamline operations, and boost customer conversions, such as:

AI Smart Product Optimisation: Powered by GenAI, this tool helps sellers identify improvements they can make to their product titles, descriptions, or even photos. It enables automated virtual try-ons, background modifications, and model adjustments, allowing sellers to produce professional product imagery quickly within minutes.

AI-Powered Translations: This feature automatically translates product content into multiple local languages, enabling sellers to expand their reach across diverse markets efficiently and accurately.

Lazzie Seller: A dedicated AI assistant within the Alibaba Seller Centre (ASC), providing instant responses to frequently asked questions, quick navigation to key features, store risk assessments, and business advice to boost seller efficiency and growth.

To find out more, download the Online Sellers Artificial Intelligence Readiness Playbook to understand how these solutions can offer a structured framework for sellers to integrate AI into their workflows to drive growth, efficiency, and innovation in an ever-evolving eCommerce landscape.

AI Adepts are sellers in the top 25th percentile for AI adoption in terms of their scores, AI Aspirants fall within the middle 25th and 75th percentile, and AI Agnostics are in the bottom 25th percentile.

About the Research

Developed in partnership with Kantar, Bridging the AI Gap: Online Seller Perceptions and Adoption Trends in Southeast Asia provides a comprehensive analysis of AI adoption trends, challenges, and opportunities, offering insights into how sellers can leverage AI to drive growth and efficiency in Southeast Asia’s evolving eCommerce landscape. The report surveyed 1,214 eCommerce sellers across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam in February 2025.

This follows the Artificial Intelligence Adoption in eCommerce in Southeast Asia Whitepaper, another research conducted in partnership with Kantar, which surveyed more than 6,000 eCommerce users in the region in September 2024 to better understand AI awareness, trust, and preferences, shopping behaviour, and consumer pain points in the region.

Lazada’s AI features for sellers:

Lazada Business Advisor: AI-powered analytics tool that provides real-time insights to optimise sales and business performance. Almost seven in 10 Lazada sellers report strong satisfaction, and almost half (48%) actively use this tool to track trends and make data-driven decisions.

Lazada Sponsored Solutions: A targeted advertising platform that boosts product visibility and maximises sales through AI-driven recommendations. Two in three (67%) sellers report strong satisfaction, and 46% actively use this tool, citing its positive impact on sales growth.

AI Smart Listing: A Generative AI tool that automates product listing by generating and pre-filling compelling attributes based on images or keywords. 64% of sellers report strong satisfaction in leveraging this feature to reduce listing time and improve content quality.

Virtual Try-Ons: An AI-powered AR feature that allows shoppers to visualise products in real time, increasing purchase confidence and reducing returns. 62% of sellers express strong satisfaction with its effectiveness, with 42% of sellers using it actively.

AI Selling Points: A tool that analyses product data and customer behaviour to automatically highlight key product features to drive conversions. 68% of sellers express strong satisfaction with this feature and 42% actively use it to attract more customers to their storefront online.

Lazada IM Shop Assistant (LISA): An AI-powered tool that helps sellers enhance customer engagement by providing automated, AI-driven responses to inquiries, improving service efficiency, and conversion rates. 65% of sellers express strong satisfaction with this feature and 38% actively use it.

About Lazada Group

Lazada Group is Southeast Asia’s pioneer eCommerce platform. For the last 13 years, Lazada has been accelerating progress in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam through commerce and technology.

Today, a thriving local ecosystem links about 160 million active users to more than one million actively selling sellers every month, who are transacting safely and securely via trusted payment channels and Lazada Wallet, receiving parcels through a homegrown logistics network that has become the largest in the region.

For more: Malaysian eCommerce AI Growth