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August 17, 2009

Young Malaysian Consumer Trends

Background

An initial online survey was undertaken with 48 respondents ranging between the ages of 13 to 25. Two-thirds of respondents were
college-level or young working adults, aged 19 to 25 and the rest were secondary school students. 56% of the respondents were
male, and 44% were female. Due to the survey methodology of snowball sampling, the respondents are likely to be from a Chinese
or Indian youth demographic, mostly from upper middle class to lower middle class families and mostly, if not all, technologically
proficient.

The results presented were not adjusted for the sampling method; therefore the survey and this report are neither professional nor
especially representative of all young Malaysians. In fact, by conducting the survey online, a substantial number of youths are
automatically excluded from representation, not to mention the fact that respondents are chiefly acquired through recommendation/
requests. Therefore the report is strictly best-effort and should only be considered a guide, rather than a definitive tell-all of what
"kids these days are up to".

Education and Allowance

Almost 46% of the people surveyed were educated at Chinese/ Tamil language primary schools and went on to either national or
private secondary schools. Of the respondents at college level or beyond, 59% attended a private college and more than half of
them went on to transfer into an international university. University-level students showed a diverse range of majors, ranging from
actuarial science to food technology (see: Appendix A).

Average monthly allowance or salaries was just above RM 1200, largely skewed due to the large proportion of college-level and
working respondents. Indeed, the average monthly allowance for respondents aged 18 and below was about RM 300, while
respondents aged 18 and above had approximately RM 1830 a month.

The average age of female respondents in this survey is 20.5 years while the average age of male respondents is 19.26 years. Yet
female respondents drew an allowance or salary of RM 1900 on average, while male respondents get RM 964 a month. However,
this situation should be unique to this population, again due to snowball sampling: the survey drew more boys aged 13 to 15 than
girls, and there were more female respondents aged 22 and above than male respondents. Therefore it is likely that the survey
sample contains more working women than men, and more school-age boys than girls.

Reading

Most Malaysian youth still rely largely on newspapers and television as their main sources of news. However, most respondents
follow online news sources alongside mainstream news and more than 80% regularly follow more than one source of news.
Approximately 70% of youth surveyed read The Star. Other commonly newspapers read include The Sun and Sin Chew Jit Poh.
Almost 20% of respondents do not read newspapers. The types of news most preferred are local news and international news,
closely followed by entertainment news. For magazines, 50% of male respondents read technology related magazines such as PC
World or PC Gamer while 50% of female respondents read lifestyle magazines such as Galaxie. 46% of all respondents read
general interest magazines like Time or Readers Digest frequently. A quarter of youths surveyed do not read magazines at all.

As for books, science fiction and fantasy received the largest following (a largely male preference), followed by comics and manga,
and non-fiction (particularly self-help and how-to books). 46% of those surveyed have read at least one Harry Potter book (most

https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AbCpwP-wzKfaZGY0dmtuYnJfM2NzdGhuNGRn&hl=en&pli=1[16/12/2010 12:29:11 PM]