The Collision of Two Festive Occasions
The two biggest festive celebrations in Malaysia are Chinese New Year (CNY) and Hari Raya (Raya). While Chinese New Year is usually around the same time each year, Hari Raya gets earlier year by year. This will eventually result in a sharing of the festival months, informally known as Gong Xi Raya. The last time this occurred was from 1996 to 1998.
While 2025 did not yet fully embody the overlap in festive periods, it helps to indicate the likely direction of the FMCG market when Gong Xi Raya eventually occurs a few years from now.
To analyse the FMCG market and track the changes caused by the collision of the two festive periods, Kantar Worldpanel is closely monitoring Malaysian shoppers. This enables us to uncover insights into purchasing behaviour across more than 120 FMCG categories for in-home consumption. The panel consists of 4,000 shoppers who continuously record their purchases using the Kantar Scope app on their smartphones.
