Malaysian Students' Preferences to Online Products and Services on the Internet: An empirical study

The study aims to discover the preferences of Student Internet Users (SIUs) for Online Products and Services (OPS) and research into the demographic factors that affect SIUs’ preferences. A questionnaire survey was conducted on 800 SIUs from private institutions of higher learning in Malaysia, an Industrially Developing Country (IDC). Parametric statistical methods were used to analyze the survey data. It was found that SIUs preferred OPS under the following categories, i.e. education (e.g. loan, scholarship and credit transfer), entertainment (e.g. songs and artistes’ photos for downloading, shared music and computer games), news and information (e.g. online newspaper, news on famous artistes, book reviews and jobs) and communication and collaboration (e.g. free e-mail, SMS and ring tones/logos/pictures). It was also found that gender, race and faculty (field of study) influence SIUs’ preferences. The research findings can provide some useful insights to providers of OPS and policy makers.