You've been watching the wrong competitors. Here's how to find the real ones.

Ask most shop owners who their competitors are and they name the two or three famous brands in their space. Meanwhile, the shop quietly taking their buyers is one nobody mentioned: same size, same price, three rows down in the Shopee search results. You cannot react to a rival you have never looked at. And the ones you should be watching are usually not the ones you would name.

Getting this list right is the whole foundation. Watch the wrong shops and every minute you spend "keeping an eye on competitors" is wasted.

Who counts as a real competitor?

Your real competitor is whoever your buyer considers instead of you. Not the biggest name in the category, but the shop sitting next to you in the buyer's head when they decide where to spend. It might be a brand you have never heard of. The famous names matter too, but mostly for ideas, not for who pulls your orders this week.

Why does this matter so much in Malaysia?

Because your buyer has a dozen shops one tap away. Among Malaysians aged 18 to 34, 78% bought something online in 2023, up from 51% in 2020 (DOSM, via Mordor Intelligence), mostly on Shopee, then TikTok Shop, then Lazada (Mordor Intelligence). On those apps your buyer can compare you against a dozen shops in seconds. The ones they compare you against are your real list.

How do you find them?

Look where the buyer looks. Four quick ways:

• Search your main keywords on Shopee and Lazada and note who keeps ranking near you.
• Check "customers also viewed." The marketplace is literally telling you who the buyer is weighing against you.
• Scan your category's hashtags on TikTok and Instagram to see who shows up again and again.
• Ask your own buyers what else they looked at before choosing you. It is the most honest signal you can get.

Once you have the list, what do you do with it?

Split it into two groups. The big brands are your benchmarks: watch them for direction, new ideas, where the category is heading. The shops your own size, same buyer and same price, are your direct rivals: watch them closely, because they are the ones who can pull your orders this week. Treating both the same way is how you waste your attention.

What does it cost to get this list wrong?

If your list is full of famous names you will never really compete with, you feel busy but you miss the shop that actually undercut you on payday. You watched the whales while a guppy ate your lunch. The fix costs nothing but an afternoon of looking in the right places, and it makes every bit of competitor watching you do afterward actually count.

You are already doing the hard part. This is the easy part.

You built the product and the shop. Pinning down who really competes with you, then watching them every day, is the piece that is easy to get wrong and easy to drop. That is exactly why we built BuzzSignal: tell us your shop and we help surface the rivals actually competing for your buyer, then watch them overnight and send you one short morning list of what changed. Start free with a report on your own competitors.

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Sources

• Mordor Intelligence, Malaysia E-commerce Market Size, Share Analysis (platform ranking; online shopping figures originally from the Department of Statistics Malaysia): https://www.mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/malaysia-ecommerce-market

Figures are third-party estimates and were accurate as of June 2026.