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A golden marketing rule is to follow where your customers go, engage with their online behavior and use the channels they use to deliver your products to them directly. Western companies looking to break into the Chinese market often run into the issue of how to reach consumers, and a great place to start is on one of the biggest avenues of all – Baidu. But what is Baidu, and how can businesses effectively use the Baidu search engine?

What is Baidu?

Sometimes known as the ‘Chinese Google’, Baidu fulfills a very similar function. Compared to Google though, Baidu started offering to advertise first and turned its first profit within four years only. With 80% of the internet search market in China, Baidu is by far the largest search engine around in the country. While internet searches are its primary function, it also operates variety of services e.g. a music service (Baidu Music), Baidu Space (a social network), Baidu Games,  Baidu Yi (an OS), Qunar (a bookings service), a maps service (Baidu Map) and an online encyclopedia (Baidu Baike). It was founded in 2000 by two entrepreneurs in Beijing, and its name literally means “countless”.

What is Baidu’s limit?

As it is the primary search engine in China, its audience is massive – with over 600 million users. It has a similarly massive advertising roster as a result, with over 650,000 paying companies signed up. While Baidu’s online penetration worldwide is only 7.4% (in comparison to Google’s massive 80%) its dominance of the Chinese market means that if you want to reach China, you have to use Baidu. It is a massive business concern. When it went public in 2005 its first day of trading saw its shares increase in value by 354% – making CEO Robin Li a multi-billionaire and the wealthiest man in China by 2013.

What about the analytic side of Baidu?

The best method of collecting accurate analytics from a Baidu campaign is to use online analytics software, but the bad news is that Google Analytics code is incompatible with local sites and would cause them to run slowly. Luckily, there is a Baidu version called Baidu Tongji that does much the same thing. While it is only available in Mandarin and lacks some of the features you might recognize, but it’s integrated with Baidu Tuiguang (Baidu pay-per-click advertising) – and can be upgraded with features for a fee.

What are the main platforms?

Like most search engines, the main market is primarily desktop – but Baidu now earns 30% of its revenue from mobile searches and this is rapidly growing – making it a significant area of the business. Western companies should remember this, and make sure that any advertising designed for the Chinese market is mobile friendly.

Fun fact: Unlike Western consumers, Chinese online consumers do not mind online ads and actually like it. Almost 50% of users are targeted daily by internet advertising. Baidu PPC is a great source of online advertising and a big hit among businesses as it drives more return compared to Western PPC.

What about content?

Unsurprisingly, the most popular searches on Baidu in 2014 read very similarly to those in just about any other country. TV and Film, the Weather, gaming, education and travel. A surprise entry in this list is the search that took second place with 10% of searches about commodity prices (when other markets feature sports prominently in the top 10) – which suggests a high percentage of business users on the search engine. This is a good sign for marketers and a promising area for advertising.

Interesting videos about Baidu:

Beginners guide to Baidu: GET STARTED WITH BAIDU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDV5q1sK9lo

What is Baidu?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxOdFGg3Sgs

Looking for a new way to get ahead of the competition this holiday season?
Well, you have come to the right place!

On November 11, known in China as Singles Day, marketplaces e.g. Alibaba recorded $25.3 billion in gross merchandise volume. Sellers reached the accumulative of $1 billion marks within an astounding two minutes.
Similar to other shopping holidays around the globe, for instance, Boxing Day and Black Friday, people look forward to 11/11 the whole year so they can purchase from the sales. This is evident in social media users’ online behaviour e.g. frequent 11/11 hashtags on Weibo (Chinese Twitter).. The annual event kicks off on the midnight of 11 November and runs for 24 hours featuring steep discounts that are driven by the main Alibaba-owned platform, Tmall and other online platforms e.g. JD and Taobao. Offline retailers also look forward to the date and start preparing for the sales to receive happy shoppers. Usually, the preparations and sales start to peak up from late October and everyone is involved! Sellers and shoppers.

Now that’s a shopping holiday your business has to participate in.

What exactly is Singles Day?

Started by students in China, Singles Day was established in the 90s as a method of celebrating freedom and singledom on the symbolic date 11/11, it was the anti-valentines day.
As Singles Day grew in popularity, Alibaba capitalized on the day’s potential by trademarking the name and turning it into an online discount shopping event in 2009 with only 27 participants.
Last year, In 2017, 140,000 sellers listed 15 million products and processed 812 million orders — all within a 24-hour period.

On Singles’ Day 2017, Alibaba set a world record for most payment transactions during the festival, higher than Paypal. Its mobile wallet app Alipay processed 256,000 payment transactions per second. A total of 1.48 billion transactions were processed by Alipay in the entire 24 hours, with delivery orders through Cainiao (Alibaba’s logistics affiliate) reaching close to 700 million, breaking the previous record set in 2016. The event is now nearly four times the size of America’s biggest shopping days, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Although double 11 2017 broke various sales records, it does not stop there. In 2018, more records were broken and Singles Day surprised the global market one more time..

Gross merchandise value (GMV), a figure that shows sales across the Chinese e-commerce giant’s various shopping platforms, surpassed last year’s $25.3 billion record at around 5:34 p.m. SIN/HK (4:34 a.m. ET) on Sunday, and kept marching higher through the rest of the day.
In Chinese currency terms, GMV totaled 213.5 billion yuan, easily beating last year’s figure of 168.2 billion yuan and representing a nearly 27 percent year-on-year rise. That was, however, smaller than the 39 percent year-on-year growth recorded in 2017.

The event got off to a strong start with sales hitting $1 billion in one minute and 25 seconds. Just over an hour in, and sales exceeded $10 billion, five minutes and 21 seconds faster than last year. The number of delivery orders surpassed a billion.

Do foreign brands get involved in 11/11?

In case you didn’t know, China’s Singles Day is not just for Chinese retailers. More than 40% of last year’s sellers came from outside China, with many US brands among the day’s best-selling. Forty-seven million users purchased international brands, led by U.S. brands according to L2 data, and 82% of the sales were made via mobile devices.
Western companies such as designer brand Burberry, Starbucks, Apple and Nike participate in 11/11 and have made great profits.
For example, Starbucks Corp. SBUX, +9.70% seized the opportunity to get into the Singles Day festivities, offering a Cocoa-Java Mocha beverage exclusively for the day at locations across China. The company also sold gift sets, exclusively-designed gift cards, and limited-edition My Starbucks Rewards Cards 11/11.

In 2018 Apple (AAPL) was the top-selling mobile phone brand during Alibaba’s record-breaking 24-hour Singles Day shopping event, beating its Chinese rivals. Chinese players Huawei and Xiaomi were second and third, respectively.

Double 11 was a hit for the foreign brands that Up2China cooperates with too!

CuraLife – a global well-being company formed to help individuals fight against chronic illnesses such as diabetes, asthma, cholesterol, etc.
Up2China developed a successful cross-border e-commerce solution to help CuraLife reach the Chinese consumer directly. During double 11 Singles Day, CuraLife sold more than double the amount of bottles they sell in one month and sold most of it in almost one minute. Another brand that up2China cooperates with is the beauty brand Sensica which had a huge amount of products sold in one day due to their sales prices which reduced from 3688 CNY to 2888 CNY.

An example of the Nike sales on TMall 2018

Looking forward to next year’s Singles Day? Start planning already and stay ahead of the game, it is never too early to plan your business strategies.

In the country that has a passion for hot beverages but is best known for delicious tea, one might wonder whether the so-praised coffee culture in Western countries has a chance of market entry in China, too.
The truth is, although the current situation is miles off the prospective opportunity, the Chinese market offers a huge potential of growth for coffee-makers and brands.

However, currently, the average consumption of coffee in China stands at only four cups per person a year – an almost negligible amount compared to the 400 cups US American residents drink. Regardless, while the global coffee market grew by only 2% in 2017, the Chinese coffee consumption increased by as much as 15%.

The latter is the reason why Starbucks and the UK based brand “Costa Coffee” have radically entered the Chinese market. As of late 2017, Starbucks holds a 55% share in the 25 billion Yuan ($ 3.8 billion) specialist coffee market in China. In fact, having over 3 000 stores set up already, the coffee brand aims to hit 10 000 operating stores within the next 10 years – almost catching up to the number of stores in the US.

Surely, the rising coffee industry mostly dominated by foreign brands has attracted many national competitors, too. One rising star among them, however, is taking an entirely different approach to directly target Starbucks’ business model.

“Luckin Coffee”, established in November 2017 and famous for their royal-blue cups, has enjoyed overwhelming success since their foundation.Coming out of basically nowhere, their marketing campaign has been a big hit and led to them becoming an icon among Chinese citizens overnight. Within half a year only, more than 500 “Luckin Coffee” stores were opened.

Their strategy consists of what tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent have been embracing for months: Successfully joining offline and online advertising to gain access to the consumer.
Huge billboards on buildings, on-screen commercials throughout the public space and Key-Opinion Leadership with a few of the most liked celebrities in China have ensured the success in offline advertising.

On the online-front, “Luckin Coffee” has adapted to the Chinese perception of coffee being a “social drink” rather than a necessity to successfully start off the day like it is common in the West.
Using WeChat advertising to its fullest potential, their focus laid on WeChat friend’s circle (Moments) advertising and offering coupons like “first cup free for new users” when engaging with “Luckin Coffee’s” WeChat account.
During the trial period, customers were offered benefits such as “Buy 2 and get 1 free” or “Buy 5 get 10”. This has sparked the probably greatest marketing tool to gain and keep loyal customers: word-of-mouth recommendation.

Apart from the marketing strategy in itself, Luckin seems to really understand their Chinese customers – something brands expanding into the market regularly struggle with. Considering the Chinese love for food delivery, they have partnered with a delivery company to offer a 30-minute coffee delivery service. Although using an own App instead of the more convenient WeChat embed Mini-Programs, the correct marketing channels ensure high traffic.
The result of all that being, that customers can order-in a coffee from anywhere, anytime. Something no other coffee-provider of such scale currently offers.

“Luckin Coffee”, starting to become the local main competitor for foreign brand’s, has been actively challenging Starbucks’ stability through various legal disputes. Most recently on May 16th 2018, they brought Starbucks to court with the reason of alleged monopolistic behavior.
It is reported that in the process of cooperation with shopping malls, Luckin found that Starbucks signed contracts which contain exclusionary provisions with many properties. Even unused shops cannot be rented to “Luckin Coffee”, or other coffee-related brands. In addition, Luckin said it has recently been in contact with suppliers who are working with both them and Starbucks. These suppliers are asked to make an “either-or” choice. At present, the case has entered the judicial process.

Regardless whether the accusations turn out to be true, Luckin Coffee has yet to establish itself as an overly dominant competitor. Their approach towards the “Internet-Coffee” model certainly made a high impact and had Chinese customers talking for months.
Whether they can really profit from the currently small, but constantly rising coffee consumption in China in the long-term, however, is uncertain. Not only will they have to compete against big brands like Starbucks and cheaper alternatives offered by KFC and 7-Eleven, but also against the rising trend of independent high-end coffee shops that focus on the best possible quality.
Certainly, a difficult task!

Nowhere else in the world is the QR Code as popular as in Southeast Asia. In China for example, everything is done via the black and white patterned box. From shopping on- and offline, exchanging personal information and connecting with advertisements to mobile payments – there is nothing the QR Code isn’t capable of.

Originally invented to replace the barcode, this new machine-readable optical label is older than one might think. And even though the technology to support the QR Code wasn’t caught up when first created in 1994, it was looking towards a promising future.
Why was this handy code destined to overtake the popularity of the traditional barcode, though?

Capability beyond Imagination

Quick Response Codes hold their name for a reason. They are read at quadruple the speed it takes for a barcode to read, can be scanned from all angles, positions and distances, store more information in a much smaller space and can hold more than 7000 characters – as opposed to merely 20 characters of the barcode.

For industrial purposes, there is an even more tempting reason to adapt to the technology: data restoration. When a barcode is damaged through scratches or dirt, it becomes unreadable in its entirety. A QR Code can still be read with information often being fully restored.

Struggling in Western countries …

When the Japanese invention first got popular in 2002, European and American companies were quick to adapt the new technology. Solely because fearing that they would fall behind against competitors, advertising firms implemented QR Codes with barely any strategic planning on how and where to use it.
Additionally, back then, mobile internet in Western countries was only two things: Slow and costly. The few phones that had an in-built camera had issues displaying data-heavy websites in a correct and quick manner. The newly adapted 3G-network offered a solution, however, only very few users picked up on it because of bad network coverage and hefty monthly costs. Understandably: 3G internet in the United Kingdom was priced at more than 90 USD per month. Ouch!

Due to disappointing ROI, both companies and consumers were soon fed up on the invention and the idea of using QR Codes broadly for consumer advertising got trashed quickly, although the initial concept was revolutionary. The surrounding technology simply wasn’t ready for it yet.
Since then, QR Codes have had many troubles to prove themselves again to companies and consumers alike, suffering from its bad reputation.

… but successful in the East?

However, when looking at Southeast Asian countries, the story has taken an entirely different turn.
The main difference was the faster mobile internet: Japan – on the forefront of technological innovation – released 3G multiple years earlier to a fair price and with a sufficient infrastructure to support the network. The overall increased willingness among the public to take on the latest technologies resulted in a fast conversion of users.

When China caught up with mobile network technology, there was no holding back anymore. Smart advertising from companies like Alibaba and Tencent made the QR Code an essential part of everyday communication – even more in these days.

They serve a universal purpose, especially in China. For using the immensely convenient mobile payment options, ordering food at most restaurants, bike sharing and even posting and replying to job boards, there is one simple solution: QR Codes.
Its nearly unlimited field of application and clever publicity has proven to be a goldmine for advertisers and marketers. To put it into scale, an event conducted on Alibaba’s marketplace Taobao has resulted in more than 200.000 scans of the QR Code – within one single minute. This being just one exemplary illustration of its sheer capability.

Conclusion

The good news for Western companies are: It works. The QR Code has proven to be far more successful than the barcode in Southeast Asia, being not only used in consumer advertising but also finding broad utilization in the industrial sector.
If the – in its core – impeccable technology will arise in the West again is questionable, however. There is no doubt that recovering from a once flawed image is hard in the ever-unforgiving world of customers.

Apple did its first step towards this goal when iOS 11 was released in late 2017, finally including a built-in QR Code Reader in its camera function – more than 15 years after comparable features were part of Japanese smartphones by default.
Following the motto “Better late than never”, it remains a mystery whether the European or American market could ever benefit from the usage of QR Codes like China does. The broad infrastructure built around this technology has manifested it deeply in the Chinese market.
Is the West too far behind?

“Rebuild the Intimate Relationship between People and Food”

This is probably the most romantic conclusion of fresh food e-commerce. In the blink of an eye, it has been ten years since the niche market entered our life. Nowadays, food e-commerce in China is already a billion-scale market; however, only a few major dealers survived while others ended up with bankruptcy or transformation. Is the romantic ambition of fresh food e-commerce fading away?

Overview of the Current Situation

In China, Food E-Commerce is constantly rising in popularity. Nowadays, online retailers already offer a wide variety of goods, from vegetables to dairy products to even sensitive ingredients like fresh meat. Such a diverse assortment surely is the right step to ensure continuous growth.

With the steady growth of consumption expenditure of Chinese residents in general, the consumer demand is going upwards, which motivates the development of the fresh food e-Commerce sector.

According to a report from Chinese consulting firm “iResearch”, the fresh food e-Commerce industry in China grew by 59.7% to the staggering amount of 139.1 billion RMB (22.1 billion USD) in 2016-2019. It is expected to grow by yet another 40% to almost 200 billion RMB until the end of 2018 – reason for that being the increasing popularity and convenience for customers. Shopping food online is becoming a new trend!

Although, clearly, it is not easy to build a working system for efficient food e-Commerce, no other country is as far ahead as China in that aspect. Good infrastructure and already existing mobile payment options have leveraged the industry. Many Chinese consumers fully rely on food delivery services like JingDong Daojia and Eleme for anything they might need in the kitchen. Why wouldn’t they – it is incredibly easy to do.

By the simple click of a button, the order has been placed. Payment is made via phone, using the already common mobile payment methods in China. Then, the delivery arrives within a maximum of 24 hours, but usually takes a couple hours only. JD Daojia for example offers one-hour fresh food deliveries.

From there, it will be stored in collection boxes, that are commonly located in front of apartment blocks. A quick barcode-scan and you have finished grocery shopping for the week! No wandering in stores, no hassle and the carrying of heavy bags restricts itself to your apartment stairs.

With so much convenience, no wonder the market is booming in China!

Opportunities for further development

Food Safety

Without doubt, food safety is one of the most constricting aspects when dealing with fresh food E-Commerce in general. But particularly in China, there is a lot of room for improvement. As food safety becomes a growing concern in Chinese agriculture and therefore could limit the rapid growth of Chinese food E-Commerce, it is mandatory for the government to put regulations in place and work with agriculturists. Since the fresh food e-Commerce relies on said fresh food, to ensure further growth of the industry, changes must be made soon.

Profitability

Although cold chain, storage and distribution usually are an issue when dealing with food e-Commerce, China’s online retailers heavily invested in the infrastructure from the start, which also meant trading in the possibility to make a “quick buck”. In fact, as for now, 88% of fresh food e-Commerce companies are losing money and an additional 7% are suffering from heavy losses.

Seeming shocking at first sight, investments going into sustainable logistics and the establishment of cooperation agreements between e-Commerce platforms and distributors are forming a basis for a rapid development in the near future. Being prepared to tolerate short-term losses, no wonder many companies make this visionary decision.

In fact, just recently one of the biggest e-Commerce websites in China, JD.com, signed a major deal with Air China to try a new business model for the direct delivery of fresh goods.

Open-Source Cold Chain?

As mentioned, the logistics are very good in China already. However, supply chain costs account for most of the expense for fresh e-Commerce food, limiting the possibility of high margins. Currently, the cold chain logistics distribution is divided into two types: one is the self-built logistics model, such as ShunFeng Optimization (顺丰优选) and Miss Fresh (每日优鲜). The other is the third-party logistics model represented by Miao Tmall (喵鲜生)，BenLai (本来生活), ShikeFood (食恪生鲜) and others.

To possibly reduce cost and further push the development of the business sector, the fresh food logistics need to be centralized and possibly even shared among different providers to be able to suit a wider range of consumers at lower cost. Whoever claims or partners with other, like-minded companies first, will be victorious in the race for the number-one online food supplier of the country.

Conclusion

Although being still in its early stages, the fresh food online market has a bright future ahead. Rising customer demand for both domestic and foreign foods has boosted the development of the relatively new business sector. Without doubt, the development of the fresh food segment will mark a new era of convenience for consumers.

However, the system is not perfect, yet. The high costs to ensure punctual delivery and the freshness of goods currently outweigh the low profit margins by far. Being extraordinarily challenging for smaller enterprises, it is still written in the stars whether those can quickly turn profitable to prevent an early bankruptcy. But the worrying numbers of nearly 5000 fruit, vegetable and flower e-Commerce start-ups closing by the end of 2017 are a clear indicator, that the winning spots might be, yet again, reserved for Alibaba and JD.com.

Clearly, this market offers great opportunities but risks alike, which both need to be addressed accordingly to kick off this revolution of “how we buy food” and ensure a continuous, steady growth for a healthy economy.

If you have been following the news lately, chances are that you have heard about the so called “Facebook-Scandal”. What exactly happened? And how does it affect China? We have prepared the most important points you need to know.

Facebook has been in suspicion of collecting, exploiting and selling its user’s data for quite some time now, but nobody was aware of the dramatic scale until a news report broke ground on March 17.

“The New York Times” and “The Guardian” exposed a data leakage, which accuses Facebook of forwarding personal information from over 80 million Facebook users without their permission to “Cambridge Analytica”, a company that specifies in mass-data collection and analysis to influence and predict potential voters in the electoral process. This has raised concerns about Cambridge Analytica’s involvement in important public decisions such as the 2016 US election and the Brexit referendum. However, so far there has been no official confirmation from either side to support the latter.

Needless to say, Facebook’s apparent dubious practices violate both US and European privacy agreements and an investigation is pending, which, if confirmed, could lead to a much-needed amendment to diminish information gained by internet services.

Given the public outrage on Facebook’s data leak, it even seems more fitting today that the social network was blocked from Chinese authorities following July 2009. At first, there was an outcry from national and Western media for “freedom”, condemning the internet censorship. But Chinese government was well aware of the amounts of data Facebook is gathering and wasn’t willing to exchange national data integrity for the limited amount of features Facebook offers compared to national social networking powerhouses like QQ, Weibo and WeChat.

Besides, it was commonly believed that after Google’s problems to introduce themselves into the Chinese market, Facebook wouldn’t stand a chance against “Renren”, a Chinese platform with very similar features.

Following the recent data leakage, it seems like a good choice to keep Facebook out of the country.

However, Facebook’s issues haven’t gone unnoticed, even in China. Investors fear the dawn of increased regulations over social media companies which led to a huge stock sell-off. Facebook’s share alone dropped by more than -16% within two weeks after the reports were published, carrying along various other technology and communication providers on their downward trend like Snapchat, Twitter and Tencent.

Tencent, which has been dubbed the Chinese Facebook, experienced a heavy drop following the Facebook disaster, too, as their share went down almost -14% as of April 2nd. Although some of that came from their biggest shareholder, Naspers Ltd., that surprisingly sold USD 9.8 billion worth of stock, Tencent’s announcement to trade short-term margins for large investments in artificial intelligence and mobile payments has left many investors confused and influenced them to sell shares.

Additionally, the dilemma around Facebook raised concern about the amount of data Tencent is collecting themselves as both their business structure is very similar. With super-apps like WeChat, that support functions from vendor payments to bank transfers, railway and flight ticket booking, reserving a hotel room and various other features, clearly, there is a lot of information being transferred to the tech giant. One can assume that the firm could paint a very clear picture of their users if they wanted.

Although being an annoyance for the privacy concerned users among us, the amount of data collected is pure gold for marketing intents. Companies that have access to such comprehensive data can easily identify suitable target groups and plan their marketing strategy by precisely monitoring consumer behavior.

Considering the advantage this can give, all the fuzz around Facebook’s data leakage is not expected to have any impact on current Chinese privacy laws. Also, through China’s well audited internet it is unlikely that any potential regulation for Facebook could have impact on Chinese social media.

Moreover, although Tencent’s investments in future technology might slightly reduce the company’s revenue in the next few years, it is certain they will be beneficial in the long-term to assure Tencent’s future growth and the development of the Chinese technology market overall.

Maybe your website is compatible for the Western market, you possibly even come up top on the Google search engine, have a strong Facebook, Twitter and Instagram following… But unfortunately, that means absolutely nothing in China. Chinese social media platforms are an entirely different ball game and ensuring that your brand is visible on Chinese social media platforms and accessible to the Chinese market is critical. This blog post will outline the key features you need for your website when looking to expand into China.

What is Google?

Google, as you most certainly know, is the largest search engine worldwide. If you have a question, want to find directions or look up a brand/company, then all you need to do is “Google it”. Therefore, being present and visible on Google is, most certainly, a great advantage for your company – as long as you’re not looking to target the massive Chinese market. Keep in mind that Google is inaccessible to the Chinese market and, in most cases, also unknown. Therefore, being present on Google means nothing if you haven’t considered Chinese search engines, too.

 

Baidu is the Chinese alternative to Google, so if you want to be known in China, Baidu is your friend. In fact, Baidu controls around 80% of the Chinese online search market share with Google only owning about 10%¹. Therefore, it is critical to get your brand out there on Baidu to increase traffic to your site, improve brand awareness and gain access to the masses of Chinese consumers.

Social media

Of course, Chinese search engines are important, but so is social media. It’s all great having lots of likes on Facebook, followers on Instagram and Twitter – but again, this is pointless if you’re looking to access the Chinese market. The social media landscape is very different in China compared to the Western world.

Interestingly, the average internet user in China spends 5-6 hours more time online per week than US Americans. Moreover, Chinese users spend an average 90 minutes per day on social networks, and 38% of consumers make product purchase decisions based on recommendations they see on social networks. As a result, ensuring your brand is present on Chinese social media is essential if you want to access the Chinese market and gain access to the large number of potential customers and the substantial amount of online purchases they make.

In theory, it is still possible to access popular Western social media platforms, undermining the governmental restriction. But even so, the slim number of users is a drop in the ocean compared to the Chinese alternatives. For instance, the number of Facebook users in China was around 53 million in 20162. Compared to the 938 million active users on WeChat, it is more than obvious that Western social media has very limited influence on the Chinese market. Therefore, growing exposure on Chinese networking websites instead will most certainly prove useful to your business.

So what are the social media platforms to consider?

We have presented WeChat earlier as a great option to join the complex Chinese market and have a more detailed post about WeChat’s functionality on our website, so we will not go into detail here. Besides obviously WeChat, what are other social networking websites to consider? Although this depends entirely on your business and the type of consumer you aim to target, we will present a couple options here:

Weibo

Weibo serves as the Chinese alternative to Twitter and has 340 million active monthly users – a lot, compared to only 10m Twitter users in China⁴. Considering Weibo solely targets Chinese consumers, it is apparent that the platform has an extremely large audience.Using Weibo to market your brand is most certainly a good way to market your firm, get access to a big number of consumers and allow you to gain access to the Chinese market effectively.

 

Youku and Tudou

Youku and Tudou act as alternatives to YouTube. YouTube has 1.5 billion active users per month⁵ while Youku has 580m users. Although Youku’s absolute user count is far lower, it reaches a substantially bigger relative audience, since it caters to Chinese-speaking countries only.
Furthermore, there is an important main difference between Youtube and the Chinese alternatives: YouTube is more based on user-generated content whereas Youku and Tudou are rather focused on films, TV programs and legal copies of domestic TV and films. Using Youku and Tudou to market your brand can help you accessing the Chinese market effectively, although this very much depends on the sort of marketing you plan to engage in.

Clearly, to succeed in China, it is required for you to consider marketing on social media platforms like Weibo and Youku, too, depending on your marketing strategy and your company’s target group. We offer personalized strategies for your business to enter the vastly different world of networking social media in China and find an ideal way to promote your business.

 

References:

1 – https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/051215/baidu-vs-google-how-are-they-different.asp

2 – https://www.statista.com/statistics/558221/number-of-facebook-users-in-china/
3 – https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-39947442

4 – https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/05/twitter-estimates-that-it-has-10-million-users-in-china/
5 – https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/22/youtube-has-1-5-billion-logged-in-monthly-users-watching-a-ton-of-mobile-video/

You’ve most certainly heard about Amazon or eBay, and it’s very likely that you’ve made purchases using them. In fact, I’d be more surprised if you hadn’t. Perhaps your business has a presence on either of these platforms, but why are there no customers buying off your sites from China? That is because although these online retailers exist in China, neither took off nor threatened the dominance of established ones like Taobao or T-mall or JD.com. So, in order to succeed in China, forget about Amazon and eBay and focus on the Chinese alternatives that dominate the market.

Online purchases

Consumers are becoming more and more likely to purchase products online³. his trend for online shopping is seen in China too, with 467 million Chinese making an online purchase in 2016¹, that’s more than a third of the entire population of China. The online purchasing market in China is massive and is still booming,⁸because shopping online provides a simple, convenient and practical way to purchase products. It allows consumers to easily compare prices and have the product delivered to them, with minimal effort or hassle. Interestingly, 71% of shoppers believe they will get a better deal online than in stores², which is the result of lower costs when selling online for manufacturers.

 

Not only is e-commerce an appealing proposition for consumers, it is just as rewarding for vendors and businesses. Selling online on websites like Taobao is a great way for your business to distribute your products and gain brand awareness while attracting a wider range of consumers from a variety of locations, without the same costs of having a physical store.
Additionally, selling online allows consumers to leave feedback and rate the quality of the product and customer service, which can be used as a great marketing tool to gain new customers and keep existing ones coming back. Just make sure you have good feedback! Negative feedback could harm your business, your credibility and the popularity of your brand, losing you customers and sales!

Let’s outline a scenario to help you understand how useful online purchasing can really be. Imagine you are at home and about to make yourself a cup of tea. But to your complete disarray you find out your favorite mug has cracked. You have lots of mugs, obviously, but this was your preferred; perhaps it has sentimental value or you simply just like the color. The option of leaving your house is unappealing and unnecessary, as you have the option to purchase the product online. You can browse the exact mug you are looking for across a range of different retailers, allowing you to easily find the cheapest, or best quality item – no afternoons wasted searching in physical stores or markets.

In addition to this, online shopping in China offers a variety of ways for collecting the item aside from home delivery. It can be collected from a post office or from large electronic collection boxes, which are often located at the bottom of apartment blocks or business buildings. The latter offers a lot more flexibility, meaning that you can collect your required mug at any time you please – simply scan a barcode or enter a code you have been sent prior.

Taobao, Tmall and JD.com

So, having the importance of online retail established, what are the Chinese alternatives to eBay and amazon that you should be aware of? There are many different sites that offer similar services, but the main three to consider are: Taobao, T-mall and JD.com. Unlike Amazon and eBay, each of these Chinese websites are very different; they sell different sorts of products and cater to different types of consumers.

Taobao

There is no doubt that you would have heard of Taobao before. Taobao is operated by the tech giant Alibaba, being China’s largest ecommerce site⁸ and one of the largest in the world with 369m monthly active users⁹. However, in terms of gross sale volume, Taobao has outsold eBay and Amazon combined.

To understand the sheer size of Taobao in China, it is important to note that the retailer is China’s largest creator of jobs (9.7 million) since it was opened. Taobao is China’s third most visited website in China (after Baidu and QQ)⁵ and the 11th most visited in the world¹⁰. Their business model consists of mainly providing a C2C (consumer-to-consumer) e-commerce platform. Therefore, it allows individuals to open their own online store at a cost but only if they meet certain requirements. As a result, Taobao offers a wide variety of products with over 7 million vendors and 800 million items⁴.

Taobao offers a variety of features that allow for an easier shopping experience. Users can purchase products by using their phone camera, which will bring up a variety of vendors selling the same or similar products.
Users can also access the seller’s profile to view the ranking and feedback from other customers, assuring them in the buying process. To increase consumer confidence even further, it is possible to contact the retailer at any time before, during or after a purchase if any questions should arise. Therefore, to guarantee success in the online retailing market, excellent customer service and quality products to guarantee positive feedback is crucial – especially if you have direct competitors.

 

Looking back at our mug analogy, you will be able to find the mug with ease, generating an abundance of sellers offering that same product. Based on price comparisons and customer feedback, you place your order. That easy!

Due to the Taobao app’s high functionality, it is essential to properly design your Taobao store. This includes having high quality photos, so the camera function on the app can detect your product. It also means ensuring that you use the correct buzz words, in the correct language. Otherwise, as competition on Taobao is tough, slacking in those points will most certainly cost you sales and lose you potential customers.

Tmall and Tmall global

Many people consider Tmall (Taobao mall) and Taobao to be the same thing. They both dominate the Chinese e-commerce market while being very different, however. Tmall was set up by Alibaba as a separate platform to Taobao, with the intention of preventing the distribution of fake goods and increasing consumer confidence. This approach essentially removes the risk of unscrupulous sellers with products of dubious quality. Therefore, Tmall guarantees authenticity and high quality in the products sold on its site. This is supported by certificates of authenticity, which can be found on each seller’s page.

Unlike Taobao, Tmall solely offers a B2C (business-to-consumer) platform and is China’s largest third-party platform for brands and retailers⁸ and the most visited B2C platform in China¹⁷. To ensure that businesses aiming to sell on the website are of legal entity, they must provide an array of documentation and paperwork. With having a market share of 55%, there is no doubt Tmall dominates the Chinese B2C market; Only followed by JD.com, Tmall’s main competitor, with 33% market share⁷

Over 70,000 official stores exist on Tmall all owned by known brands such as Nokia, Adidas and Samsung. Therefore, Tmall and Taobao cater different customer needs, with Tmall offering less variety, but guaranteed authenticity.
The costs of selling on Tmall are inevitably higher, coming from using the Taobao infrastructure, investing more in marketing, offering authentic products and providing evidence of authenticity. Consequently, this means a premium for consumers, but it guarantees quality products. Even so, Tmall typically offers lower prices than physical shops due to lower costs of operating online rather than in physical stores.

Opening a Tmall account is considerably costly as it stands approximately at 160,000 RMB, in addition to the mentioned requirements above. Even though 100,000 RMB is a refundable deposit, 60,000rmb is the yearly fee to use the Tmall platform.

Tmall global

Tmall global was set up in 2014 to enable overseas brands to sell directly to Chinese consumers. The branch aims to remove the concern of Chinese consumers about fake goods by supplying products via direct mail or bonded warehouses as it offers international brands to enter China with lower barriers.

Tmall global’s platform truly is an all-in-one package for foreign brands. It allows them to enter the Chinese market in a comparably cheap way, not needing a Chinese business license or a Chinese legal entity to join the platform, nor being required to register a Chinese trademark or worry about warehouse and shipment logistics.

JD.com

JD (京东 Jingdong), which is Tmall’s closest competitor, is also targeting the B2C e-commerce market. Initially offering only electronic products, JD has scaled and sells almost anything now, with 85% of JD.com’s revenue still coming from electronics¹¹.Therefore, JD is the go-to site for Chinese consumers looking to purchase electronic items to this day.

JD offers its own shipping platform and is linked to their own logistics company. This is fixed, meaning the seller cannot chose to distribute the product with another delivery firm. On the upside, the delivery service provided by JD.com is quicker than those of other online retailers, and goods are often delivered within a day.

JD.com generally charges slightly higher fees than Tmall, which is inevitable given the nature of its products and knowing the fact, that profits from electronic devices and home appliances is greater. Their transaction fee is between 5-8%, whereas the transaction fee for Tmall is 3-7%11.

Comparing each of these platforms to Amazon/eBay

Clearly, these online retailers offer greater functionality overall, but especially in their apps, which is something that appeals massively to Chinese consumers. The so called “super-apps” enjoy immense popularity in China, whereas the western websites offer simplistic and clutter-free sites with fewer functionality.

In addition to this, the Chinese counterparts typically offer a wider variety of products and services that are not available for online retail in the West. For example, on Taobao one can easily purchase digital services, but also large physical items such as an air conditioning system.

Overall, being successful on any of these platforms isn’t solely a matter of having your item listed, but rather of using the correct pictures, the correct key words and an effective marketing strategy, as well as excellent customer service and high-quality products. Do each of these things right and Taobao, Tmall or JD.com can be your ticket to the Chinese market, giving access to Chinese consumers and increasing your sales and brand awareness.

References:

1 – https://www.statista.com/statistics/277391/number-of-online-buyers-in-china/

2 – https://www.seosolutionsindia.com/blog/2015/02/23/amazing-facts-about-worldwide-e-commerce-online-shopping/
3 – https://www.nchannel.com/blog/retail-data-ecommerce-statistics/

4 – https://www.wsj.com/video/what-is-taobao/69BD4B54-0417-4075-A54D-5FC895B5B3F3.html
5 – https://daxueconsulting.com/success-of-taobao-on-chinese-internet/
6 – https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/19289/online-shopping-q3-2016/
7 – https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/22338/online-b2c-retail-q2-2017/#ixzz4tlltOAtL
8 – https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/tag/alibaba/
9 – https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/taobao-statistics/

10 – https://goodyfeed.com/10-facts-taobao-probably-didnt-know/
11 – https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2014/02/04/jd-com-isnt-the-next-amazon-of-china-its-the-next-dangdang-of-china/
12 – https://www.chinasalesco.com/services/exporter-tips/110-how-does-alipay-compare-with-paypal
13 – https://www.statista.com/statistics/218493/paypals-total-active-registered-accounts-from-2010/
14 – https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/19551/alipay-2016/
15 – https://www.statista.com/topics/2411/paypal/
16 – https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnnyjet/2017/09/25/how-to-maximize-online-shopping-portals/#1af29dfb71c4
17 – https://ehubnordic.com/actual-difference-tmall-tmall-global-china/

Last week, over 60 Israeli companies gathered in Mianyang in Sichuan province for three days as part of a high-tech expo celebrating the 25-year anniversary since China-Israel bilateral relationships. Israel was the honored host and the expo had a record breaking number of Israeli firms, more than have ever taken part in any expo in China. This confirmed again China’s increasing diplomatic ties with Israel. Overall, over 700 firms from more than 40 countries attended the expo.

 

The Israel-China relationship has strengthened in recent years with 2017 being the first year of the China-Israel innovation partnership. In the first half of 2017, Chinese companies invested almost $40m into Israel and vice versa Israel’s investment into China is growing constantly, too. Currently, China is Israel’s third largest trading partner.
The expo and the growing relationship between the two countries in general acted as a great way to promote coordinated development and allowed the Israeli consulate and Sichuan province to agree on a plan of action to promote cooperation in ten different industries.

Up2China attended the expo and represented ourselves and five clients of ours, namely Zero gravity, Natural Sea Beauty, Curalife, Botanifique and Acoustiguide. We reached out to each of these companies to make them aware of the expo and designed individual booths and catalogues for each company.

 

We also had two of our employees working at each booth, providing demonstrations of the products and pitch sales. This increased awareness of our clients’ products, promoted the brands and increased sales volume. Within only three days of the expo, we reached a total sales volume of more than 60,000CNY.

   

In addition to this, we also worked with an array of our other clients whose booths we did not run, but we organized for them to be there.

Furthermore, we organized B2B meetings with distributers, increasing our exposure and visibility and improving business relationships.

 

Each stall gained a lot of attention as we set up a game prior to the expo which allowed individuals to scan each of our QR codes to enter a raffle and win a prize. This increased overall exposure and sparked interest in our clients.

 

Overall, the Mianyang expo was a very successful three day endeavor that enabled Up2China to successfully promote many of our clients, increase visibility, improve brand awareness, as well as a great opportunity for us to reach out to distributers and to understand even more about the Israel-China relationship.

 

Background
China is, arguably, the largest economy in the world with many sources claiming that China has, in fact, overtaken the United States to claim this title. Whether or not you agree with China being number 1 or number 2, you cannot question China’s global importance, impressive growth, and staggering trade volume. China’s rapid development has resulted in China becoming an appealing destination for many businesses.

Evidently, China is a very large and important player in the international market. Thus, in order to take your business to the next stage and expand internationally, getting access to the Chinese market is clearly an important consideration and would most certainly prove to be rewarding. The sheer size of the market and vast population size allows firms to gain access to a greater market and a large pool of consumers.

What makes China stand out?
Not only is China one of the largest economies in the world, but it has connections with countries all over the world. However, the interesting feature here, and the reason that China is so different to any other country, is the fact it is so closed off. This makes China a very difficult market to tap into and our future blogs will provide useful tips and key considerations in doing so, particularly in terms of the differences between Chinese and Western social media and marketing platforms. Being able to tap into the large Chinese population, the growing middle class and their rising western tastes is most definitely an appealing proposition. However, to get your brand out there you need to go beyond the great firewall and the closed nature of China!

Considerations
In light of all this positivity on expanding and marketing your brand in China, a crucial question you need to ask is “Will my brand have any influence on Chinese consumers?”. To ensure that it does, marketing must be effective and needs to target the correct market in the correct way.

A perfect example for the complex difference of the Western and Chinese market is the extent to which social media platforms differ. WeChat, a multi-feature application, is used widely in China, with approximately 963m active users² who spend 40 minutes (on average) on the app per day³. Using WeChat is a great tool to access the Chinese market and help grow your business. This is clearly very different to the Western world and is one of the many modifications that you will need to make to be successful here. As a result, expanding into China can be a difficult, but rewarding task and using WeChat to market your company is one of the many ways to access millions of Chinese consumers.

Another example is WeChat pay. WeChat pay is a very popular payment feature on the WeChat application. The feature has over 200m users5 and is a brilliant and convenient way to make payments without using paper money and coins. China is rapidly moving away from physical cash, and this sort of innovation is an important consideration for any business that desires to expand into China. This is one of the many ways you need to alter your marketing strategy to appeal to Chinese consumers. We will discuss this, and other, payment features in future blogs soon, so stay tuned!

Not only is it critical to market yourself on the correct Chinese platforms, it is also essential to ensure systems are compatible with Chinese phones and available in the Chinese language. China has become the “undisputed leader in mobile transactions”⁶ so don’t miss out on this trend as it is a great way to leave a lasting imprint in the Chinese market!

Clearly, the social media and marketing landscape is very different in China compared with the West. However, if you are looking to grow your company, then expanding into the Chinese market is an important move and doing so in the correct manner is critical. Smoothing out the apparent disparities is something we constantly work on to help you start your business. In future blogs we will continue to provide valuable content to make sure you get an insight into the diverse Chinese market. Stay tuned!

References:

1 – https://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/8th-brics-summit-goa-declaration-here-is-the-full-text-adopted-by-the-member-nations

2 – Q2 2017 – https://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-wechat-messenger-accounts

3 – Apr 15 – https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/wechat-statistics

4 – Peterson, 2015, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wechat-better-than-any-social-mobile-app-comes-out-silicon-peterson and Werner, 2017, https://www.cultofmac.com/430119/wechat-is-more-than-a-messaging-app-it-might-be-a-mobile-os

5 – Jan 16 – https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/wechat-statistics
6 – https://www.applause.com/blog/mobile-payments-global-adoption
7 – Xiao, 2017, https://www.techinasia.com/fake-qr-code-scams-china and Benji, 2017, https://www.marketingtochina.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-qr-codes-in-china