Shopper Digest: Fast Meals, Tight Budgets

Amidst rising economic pressures, Malaysian shoppers are making notable shifts in their purchasing habits, increasingly favouring in-home cooking and convenient meal solutions. This evolving trend is especially pronounced in urban households and families with children, where time constraints and budget considerations prompt families to adapt their meal preparation practices. For brands, understanding this shift is crucial to anticipating consumer needs and seizing growth opportunities in a changing marketplace.

Economic Incentives

According to the Consumer Price Index released by the Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM), the inflation rate for food consumed at home is 0.5%, which is six times lower than that for dining out at 3.4%. This substantial cost advantage is encouraging more Malaysians to prepare meals at home as a way to manage expenses. 

Rising Interest in Cooking-Related Categories

Interest in cooking-related categories has risen. Quick-preparation items such as recipe mixes, non-seasoning noodles, frozen food, canned products, spaghetti, and pasta sauce are seeing significant growth in both penetration and basket size, catering to the demand for convenience and home-cooked meals.

Decline in Rice Consumption

While rice remains a staple, its consumption is declining as it typically requires additional dishes to complete a meal. Shoppers appear to be gravitating towards simpler, faster meal options that can stand alone.

Demographic-Driven Convenience

Growth in culinary products is being driven by shoppers from the Central region, urban areas, less affluent households, and families with children. These consumers, balancing tight budgets with the demands of a fast-paced lifestyle, prioritise affordable and quick meal solutions.

Understanding and acting upon these emerging trends in Malaysian shopper behaviour can offer brands a significant competitive edge. There is an opportunity for brands to innovate with new product lines and packaging tailored to the fast-paced, convenience-driven needs of Malaysian shoppers. Launching convenient packs, or even entirely new categories that simplify meal preparation, could help brands tap into the growing demand for quick, affordable, and in-home cooking solutions.

In the Worldpanel division, we consistently track shopper metrics on a 4-weekly basis, including penetration, shopping frequency, basket sizes, and volume and value sales. This enables you to see trended performance insights on how shoppers buy across category and brand levels. Penetration, in particular, is a crucial metric that key industry players use to evaluate the size of their existing customer base (compared to competitors) and to assess expansion opportunities.

Sources: P7 2024 database, Worldpanel Malaysia, Kantar
Department of Statistic Malaysia (DOSM), May ’24 vs April ’24