Author: Rebecca

12,500 products are now available to view and purchase at the online marketplace’s Australian department store, Myer.

Australian consumers can now head to the Myer department store through eBay in order to be able to enjoy a virtual reality shopping experience that has been created by the massive online marketplace.

In order to be able to take part in this VR experience, shoppers will need to wear Shopticals.

The Shopticals are special virtual reality shopping goggles, which are essentially an altered version of the cardboard viewer from Google. Over 100 products are already viewable in 3D, but the VR technology will take things to an entirely different level. In order to make sure that Australians are properly equipped to go shopping within the virtual reality environment, eBay is giving away 1,000 of the Shopticals every day until 20,000 have been distributed.

Consumers can also request a pair of their own Shopticals virtual reality shopping goggles online.

All consumers need to do is visit ebay.com.au/vr and they can request a pair of their own Shopticals. A spokesperson from eBay has explained that there is already an “incredible” demand for the VR goggles and the company is going to be broadening the ways in which it distributes them soon. Myer is among the most recent retail additions to the Australian eBay sellers.

That retailer was selected by eBay for its very first VR shopping launch partner due to the broad spectrum of products that Myer has to offer, said a spokesperson from eBay. She explained that “We wanted to make sure that the first time people shop in VR they can see a wide selection of brands and categories, and a department store felt like the best way to showcase breadth and depth of selection.”

In order to use the Shopticals for virtual reality shopping on Myer at eBay Australia, the consumer needs the eBay VR app, which is already available at Android and iOS. Once the headset is on, the shopper can move through the digital department store and look around at the large selection of various products that are available there.

Mobile commerce is expected to lead the growth of online payments adoption in Malaysia.

According to iPay88, the leading online payment service provider in South East Asia, Malaysia’s m-commerce market will lead the growth of online payments adoption through mobile shopping. The executive director of iPay88 Chan Kok Long said that mobile commerce is now the hot trend to watch and that based on the ratio of the company’s mobile traffic – including its total online payment transactions – digital payment transactions make up nearly 70 percent of the Malaysian market, reported Marketing Interactive.

The mobile commerce trend is expected to rise as the number of mobile device users increases.

Last year, iPay88 recorded that 3.7 million online shoppers who made purchases via its systems used a mobile device. Back in 2014, this number was only 2.0 million, clearly revealing that the growth of mobile shopping in the country is accelerating at a huge speed. So far, this year, iPay88 has reported that in the first quarter 1.6 million shoppers have already made purchase via mobile.

With the number of mobile users increasing in Malaysia, the m-commerce trend is forecasted to increase. In 2015, mobile penetration reached 136 percent with 47 percent of Malaysians using their mobile phones to shop online.

Additionally, iPay88 has also noticed an increase in the number of merchants actively promoting mobile purchases this year. The company also noted that the percentage of mobile traffic has risen significantly from 27 percent in 2014 to 38.4 percent in 2015 to 48.6 percent in 2016 so far.

Malaysia’s m-commerce market ranks third in terms of mobile shopping growth rate in Asia.

This statistic comes from a mobile shopping survey conducted last year, which revealed the country’s mobile shopping growth rate to be over 20 percent from 25.4 percent in 2012 to 45.6 percent in 2014.

Amazon, Apple, Google Play, Walmart and several other popular international online stores have recorded a growing number of consumers making purchases via mobile. However this doesn’t come as a surprise.

“No doubt the availability of cheap smart phones and laptops have made the Internet accessible to a whole new demographic. The advent of tablets and smart watches has also broadened the spectrum of Internet usage,” said iPay88’s executive director Chan Kok Long.

In terms of the m-commerce market in Malaysia, ticketing accounts for 35 percent of purchases made via smartphones, while marketplace/group buying makes up 29 percent. However, when it comes to airline tickets, these items are mostly purchased via tablets.