China’s e-commerce ecosystem is something to take note of. Its quite different than it is in the west. As we tend to focus on search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and other strategies, the China market is quite different in its scale with social starting to lead the way in forms of influencer marketing, live streams of sales, and so on.
SeekingAlpha reports, “China’s e-commerce market has been on a tear and currently holds the crown as the largest e-commerce market in the world. China is also considered to be one of the most innovative e-commerce markets, with new trends and developments contributing to the rapid evolution of the market. One of those trends is social commerce, the merging of social networking and online shopping functionality, which is emerging as the next disruptive force in China’s blossoming e-commerce market.
Social commerce’s appeal lies in its ability to address product discovery and trust deficit issues prevalent in traditional e-commerce. Online shoppers on marketplace platforms or other branded independent e-commerce websites often have an idea about the product they are looking for, be they shoes, handbags, or electronics. Social shopping on the other hand often introduces users to products they never knew existed, and the social element of the social shopping experience which involves friends, Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) or Key Opinion Consumers (KOS) using and recommending the product, helps build trust and therefore sales.”
Retail social commerce sales in China will grow to $242.41 billion (RMB1.675 trillion) this year, accounting for 11.6% of total retail ecommerce sales in the country, according to our latest estimates.
eMarketer reports, “We expect retail social commerce sales will continue to rise over our forecast period, nearly doubling to $474.81 billion (RMB3.280 trillion) by 2023.
Social commerce has been far more prominent in China than in the US. To put that into perspective, social commerce sales in China totaled $186.04 billion (RMB1.285 trillion) in 2019—nearly 10 times the number of sales in the US, which reached $19.42 billion last year.”
