Leveraging the Use of Online Marketplace for SMEs in Malaysia:

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to review the impact of SMEs that leverage online marketplace by examining the benefits of e-marketplace and explore how to successfully overcome the perceived barriers for SMEs to gain competitive advantage in Malaysia. SMEs need to recognise and fully embrace online marketplace opportunities to develop informed approaches to stay competitive. Malaysia, a thriving country within the South East Asia countries, has aggressively been increasing its efforts in aiding its SMEs to be digitally prepared to support the technological evolution by empowering a digital nation by 2022. This is to create commercial effectiveness and output synergy by leveraging automation processes that creates collaboration within digital skills usage across multiple businesses (Sharon, 2019). This study further delves into the adoption of online marketplace synergy created within the SME’s business model which enables data-driven innovations as business value by leveraging the vast data generated in digital transactions (Barann, Hermann, Cordes, Chasin, & Becker, 2019). Further synergy created via partnership with customers through online marketplace will significantly expand SMEs business’ inventive activities (Walsh, Przychodzen, & Przychodzen, 2017).