Page 105 - FREN-C2021 PROCEEDINGS

growth is increasingly driven by digitization. Based on Federal Budget 2021, Economic digitalization
is a main priority for the Malaysian Government where about RM1 billion is allocated in areas of
Cybersecurity, Connectivity, the Internet of Things, Digital talent, and Digital Transformation
Malaysia Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs). The budget for 2021 is expected to boost Malaysia’s
critical ICT infrastructure and it will positively impact Malaysia’s Digital Economy. Digital
technologies will be vital for Malaysian businesses that trying to persist relevantly.

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Introducing MyDigital as part of the 12 Malaysia Plan and the Shared Prosperity Vision 2030 will
creating 500,000 new job opportunities in the digital economy which is expected to contribute to
contributed 22.6% of Malaysia’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030. The existence of this
initiative is indeed a good plan and the government can help more than 875,000 micro-enterprises and
SMEs to go digital via e-commerce.

According to (Soto-Acosta, 2020), due to pandemics, businesses are accelerating the adoption of
digital transformation as the best way to avoid a short-term economic collapse and combat the
pandemic with resilience. To ensure economic viability, traders in Malaysia also need to take
opportunities and make quick decisions to ensure that their business is still able to remain in the
market.

Consumer behaviour has changed to a quick and easy transaction option either through mobile phones
and the internet(Arora et al., 2020). It was more marked during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has made
the digital economy increasingly important in ensuring the sustainability of the economy. As
lockdown create a new normal, businesses went digital, providing goods and services online
automatically raising e-commerce worldwide from 14% in 2019 to about 17% in 2020 (Popov, 2021).
Business owners need to grab this situation when consumer behaviour changed and pandemics
automatically make business online instead of offline. Shifting toward digitalization will make
companies more global and digital.

Digital transformation not only adopts digital technologies to help business but need to add another
value proposition for existing markets opportunities. (Soto-Acosta, 2020). It depends to a business
owner whether to proceed or not while everyone makes a move into digital. Although the company
moved to digital transformation, it does not abandon the existing business model.

E-commerce industry and Covid-19
As of today, the number of cases keeps increasing. According to World Health Organization (WHO,
2021), 198,778,175 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 4,235,559 deaths. The number of cases
in Malaysia as of date cumulated about1,146,186 confirmed cases and the number of deaths 9,460.
The government of Malaysia did implement lockdown to reduce the number of cases. World Health
Organization encourages physical distancing policy should be used to reduce contactless activities.
Due to this, consumers avoiding brick and mortar shopping and crowded place. Furthermore, in
Malaysia, movement of more than 10km is not allowed. Therefore, consumers much preferred using
online instead of offline.

Covid-19 has disrupted consumers transaction switch from brick and mortar to online. Physical stores
closed and lockdown giving another alternative for the consumer to keep shopping to fulfil their
needs. There are several top online stores by the year 2020 as below: -

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