KUALA LUMPUR, April 10 (Xinhua) -- More than half of Malaysian households said they would immediately cut spending as rising cost pressures push consumers away from borrowing and delayed purchases into more permanent austerity amid the Hormuz crisis, the latest survey showed.
Rakuten Insight's Malaysia Cost Pressure Pulse (MCPP) surveyed 1,052 respondents from April 6 to 8.
The survey found a sharp shift in coping behavior, with 52.1 percent of respondents saying they would immediately cut spending, up from 46.9 percent in March, as households exhausted short-term strategies such as delaying purchases or relying on credit.
In March, 15.3 percent of respondents said they would delay major purchases to manage costs. By April, that figure had nearly halved to 8.6 percent, marking the steepest decline across all coping mechanisms tracked in the survey.
At the same time, reliance on credit also weakened. Buy-now-pay-later usage fell to 3.1 percent from 4 percent, credit card use dropped to 1.7 percent from 2.3 percent, while borrowing from family declined to 1.3 percent from 2.5 percent.
Min Yao Kong, who leads commercial research at Rakuten Insight Malaysia, said the simultaneous decline in both delay and credit signals a structural shift in household behavior.
"When both options shrink at the same time, there is nowhere left to go except austerity," he said.
The survey also showed worsening financial expectations, with 57.4 percent of respondents expecting their household finances to deteriorate in the coming month, up 9.2 percentage points from March.
Rakuten Insight said the findings suggest that while global oil prices have eased following a U.S.-Iran ceasefire, household sentiment is unlikely to rebound quickly.
"The ceasefire is welcome news, but household balance sheets don't replenish in a day," Kong said, adding that "brands and policymakers who assume consumer confidence will rebound as quickly as oil prices risk misreading the recovery entirely." ■
