China B2C E-Commerce Market Study 2019-2023 - Two Online Merchants Prevail; Alibaba Controlled Over Half of the Online Retail Sales Last Year, Closely Followed by JD.com

Key Questions Answered in This Report

  • What forecasts are made for China's online retail sales growth through 2023?
  • What is the projection of China's share of global online retail sales in 2019 and 2022?
  • What was the penetration rate of Internet-connected mobile devices in China in 2018 and how many of those device users shopped online?
  • Which payment methods and product categories are preferred by online shoppers in China?
  • How did the market shares of the top B2C E-Commerce platforms in China evolve through Q2 2019? china ecommerce market

China's domination of global online retail will continue through new retail and M-Commerce

Through the continued integration of online and offline retail sales, termed new retail as well as other trends, China's piece of the worldwide online retail pie, already over half, will grow even larger in the next few years. Varying sources cited in the report project continued double-digit year to year growth in online sales in China through 2023. Contributing to this growth are the trends of social media shopping and mobile commerce. Close to 80% of all mobile shopping globally takes place in this one nation. Another trend is cross-border shopping as online shoppers in China are increasingly shopping outside of their borders, and China is a popular destination for web shoppers around the world.

China's Mobile E-Commerce Market Overview and Predictions : April ...

Two online merchants prevail in Chinese B2C E-Commerce

Global online merchant Alibaba controlled over half of the online retail sales in China last year according to sources referred to in the publication, closely followed by JD.com, another China-based global seller. Both enterprises have recently advanced the move toward omnichannel or new retail as Alibaba invested in a large furniture retailer and JD.com bought into a domestic appliance chain. JD.com has also opened its first clerk-less convenience store. Both large companies have taken note of the social commerce trend and have explored a partnership with social media platforms.

Companies Mentioned

  • Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.
  • Amazon.com Inc.
  • E-Commerce China Dangdang Inc.
  • GOME Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd.
  • JD.com Inc.
  • Pinduoduo Inc.
  • Suning.com Co. Ltd.
  • Taobao China Holding Ltd.
  • Tencent Holdings Ltd.
  • Vipshop Holdings Ltd.

Key Topics Covered

1. Management Summary

2. Overview & International Comparisons

  • Overview of B2C E-Commerce Market and International Comparisons, August 2019
  • Top 5 Countries Worldwide by Retail E-Commerce Sales, in USD billion, by ChinaGermanySouth Korea, the UK, and the USA, 2019f
  • Global Retail E-Commerce Shares of Top 2 E-Commerce Markets, in %, incl. China, 2019f
  • M-Commerce Share of Total Retail E-Commerce Sales, in %, by ChinaIndiaIndonesiaSouth KoreaThailand, the UK and the USA, 2018
  • Preference of Online Shopping Over Offline Shopping, in % of Consumers, by ChinaHong KongIndiaIndonesiaJapanMalaysiaPhilippinesSingaporeSouth KoreaTaiwanThailand and VietnamAugust 2018
  • Top 10 Countries Bought From in the Latest Cross-Border Online Purchase, by AustraliaChinaFranceGermanyHong KongJapanSouth Koreathe Netherlands, the UK, and the USA, in % of Cross-Border Online Shoppers, 2018

3. Trends

  • M-Commerce Sales, in USD billion, 2018 & 2023f
  • Number of Mobile Internet Users, in millions, and Penetration, in % of Internet Users, 2012 - 2018
  • Mobile Shoppers, in millions, and Penetration, in % of Mobile Internet Users, 2012 - 2018
  • Breakdown of Devices Used for Shopping Online, in % Consumers Who Buy Daily or Weekly, 2019e
  • Shopping-Related Activities Carried Out Online, in % of Internet Users, 2018
  • Consumer Engagement Activities and Decision to Buy Online and Offline, in % of Consumers, 2018
  • Social E-Commerce Market Size, in CNY billion, and Year-on-Year Change, in %, 2015 - 2021f
  • Social Media Channels Preferred to Purchase Products and Services, in % of Urban Respondents, October 2018
  • Cross-Border Retail E-Commerce Imports, in CNY billion, and Year-on-Year Change, in %, Q2 2017 - Q2 2019
  • Number of Cross-Border Retail E-Commerce Buyers, in millions, and Penetration, in % of Digital Buyers, 2017 - 2022f
  • Top 3 Countries Purchased From in the Latest Cross-Border Online Purchase, in % of Cross-Border Online Shoppers, 2018

4. Sales & Shares

  • Retail E-Commerce Sales, in USD billion, and CAGR, in %, by Two Comparative Estimates, 2018 - 2023f
  • Retail E-Commerce Sales, in CNY billion, and CAGR, in %, by Four Comparative Estimates, 2017 - 2020f & 2023f
  • E-Commerce Share of Total Retail Sales, in %, by Four Comparative Estimates, 2017 - 2023f
  • Retail E-Commerce Sales in Rural Areas, in CNY billion, 2015 - 2018

5. Internet Users & Online Shoppers

  • Number of Internet Users, in millions, and Penetration, in % of Population, 2012 - 2018
  • Number of Online Shoppers, in millions, and Penetration, in % of Internet Users, 2013 - 2018
  • Breakdown of Total Population and Internet Users by Urban and Rural, in %, 2018
  • Breakdown of Frequency of Shopping Online, in % Respondents, 2019e
  • Willingness to Increase Online Spending Compared to Offline and Traditional Spending in The Coming Year, in % of Urban Respondents, October 2018

6. Products

  • Top E-Commerce Merchant Segments, in % of Total E-Commerce Value, 2018
  • Top Product Categories Purchased Online, in % of Rural Online Shoppers, in % of Urban Online Shoppers, Q1 2019
  • B2C E-Commerce Sales of Clothing, in CNY billion, and Year-on-Year Change, in %, 2015 - 2019
  • Breakdown of Clothing Buyers by Online and Offline Shopping Channels, in %, April 2019
  • Fresh Food E-Commerce Sales, in CNY billion, and Year-on-Year Change, in %, 2014 - 2021f
  • Breakdown of Frequency of Purchasing Fresh Food Online, in % Online Fresh Food Shoppers, 2018
  • Online Flight Ticket Booking Sales, in CNY billion, Year-on-Year Change, in %, 2015 - 2022f

7. Payment

  • Breakdown of Payment Methods in E-Commerce by Market Share, in %, 2018
  • Third-Party Mobile Payment Transactions, in CNY trillion, Year-on-Year Change, in %, Q1 2018 - Q1 2019
  • Breakdown of Third-Party Online Payment by Market Share, by Players, in %, 2018

8. Delivery

  • Number of Express Delivery Parcels, in billions, and Year-on-Year Change, in %, 2014 - 2018
  • Breakdown of Reasons To Potentially Shop Online, incl. Delivery-Related, in % of Urban Respondents, October 2018

9. Players

  • Overview of B2C E-Commerce Players, August 2019
  • Top 10 Companies by Share of Retail E-Commerce Sales, in %, 2019f
  • Breakdown of B2C E-Commerce Market Share, by Market Players, in %, Q3 2018 - Q2 2019
  • Top 3 B2C E-Commerce Websites, by Monthly Active Users Net Growth, in millions, October 2017 - October 2018

 

How China is revolutionising e-commerce with an injection of entertainment

While some sectors of the economy struggle for survival in a sudden, new, harsh reality, e-commerce is again faced with massive demand. With many of us confined to our homes, we have become reliant on online shopping. And while your weekly grocery shop or a book order might seem to have changed little in recent years, there is great innovation in china e-commerce.

To find it though, look to China. There, the familiar and dull experience of buying online is becoming a thing of the past. Even before people were forced to spend more time at home, there were two key trends in China radically changing e-commerce, by adding entertainment to the mix: social buying and live commerce.

Social buying

Alibaba is China’s largest ecommerce company by far. Number two is a company called PinDuoDuo (PDD). PDD was only founded in 2015, yet today its valuation of just under US$40 billion makes it worth more than eBay or Twitter.

PDD’s meteoric rise has taken many by surprise. By 2017 it had attracted 200 million active users, in mid-2018 it floated on the Nasdaq at a valuation of US$23.8 billion.

 

Through PDD, consumers can buy a product immediately at a market price, or they can enjoy lower prices by inviting their contacts through social networks to form a joint purchasing team. The more people sign up, the larger the discount – sometimes as high as 90%.

PinDuoDuo’s business model is similar to US-based Groupon. But Groupon has fallen on hard times as it struggled to convince people to register and download its app. PDD, by contrast, piggybacked on the almost one billion people already using the WeChat messaging app. Its owner Tencent is PDD’s principal shareholder.

Founder Colin Huang Zheng, a former Google engineer, has described PDD’s business model as “a combination of Costco and Disneyland”. PDD’s tag line is “Together, more savings, more fun”. The Chinese word pīn means to group together, a reference to the company’s aim to provide a more social shopping experience. It regularly offers time-limited deals (often under two hours) and competitions.

Manufacturers and factories are also seeing benefits. So-called “Pin factories” have popped up to produce huge quantities of single products for sale on PDD. Due to the scale of their operations, they can afford to offer bulk discounts.

Live commerce: infomercials rebooted

Infomercials are a long way from their heyday in the 1970s. Today, they only exist on fringe cable channels, trying to sell items few people need, typically fronted by D-list celebrities. The format is in desperate need of a makeover – and once again, China has offered it.

Live commerce is the convergence of live steaming and e-commerce, and it has become very popular with Chinese consumers. During China’s Singles’ Day festival last year, Alibaba’s Taobao Live contributed around 20 billion Yuan (US$2.86 billion) gross merchandise volume, or about 7.5% of the company’s total sales. According to Chinese financial services firm Everbright Securities, the live commerce market was worth 440 billion Yuan (US$63 billion) in 2019, a 220% increase on 2018. Around 25% of consumers are daily users, while 71% watch a live commerce event at least once a week, according to research from iiMedia. Interestingly, the live commerce sales conversion rate is much higher than traditional content-driven platforms. Recent evidence suggests that the popularity of live commerce in China has increased during the COVID-19 crisis as people stay away from shops and showrooms.

Live commerce in China is celebrity driven, not by traditional stars of film or television but by online celebrities. These include Austin Li “the lipstick king” (22.1 million followers), and Viya (18.1 million followers). While boasting their own fanbases, from time to time they invite celebrities to join them: in November 2019, Viya welcomed Kim Kardashian-West, who took only a few minutes to sell 15,000 bottles of her KKW-branded perfume.

This approach can also sell high-value items like cars. In one live event featuring Geng Shuai, a kitsch creator dubbed “China’s useless Edison”, the hosts engaged with 4.5 million viewers and sold 1,623 cars in two and a half hours.

 

Live commerce hosts use limited-time discounts to encourage quick orders, often with a limited number of products available to increase the sense of urgency for shoppers. Prize draws are also a popular way for hosts to engage with viewers, with some giving away high-value goods to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

But despite the boom in Asia, live commerce has got nowhere in the West, where livestreaming focuses on gaming via platforms such as Facebook or Twitch. Amazon launched its Amazon Live, but it lacks many interactive features and has so far failed to connect with consumers.

So behind China’s booming e-commerce sector are evolving tools and services that are radically changing online shopping by making it more exciting for the Chinese buyer. Perhaps there is an opportunity now for Western companies to refresh their approach to online shopping.

Baidu SEO: Tips and Must Know About The Chinese Google

Why is Baidu SEO should still be an essential part of your marketing effort in China? Chinese consumers are particularly cautious when purchasing online or investing money in a service. The majority of this research is done on Baidu (China’s answer to Google), as a result of the Great Firewall and the language barrier. Not only for exposure but also for brand awareness you will have to make sure to be easy to find on Baidu. Let’s see Why and How to master Baidu SEO.

You may believe being on Baidu is overrated, that you have many others options to drive visitors on your website and that clearly spending resources on SEO won’t be that efficient. You would be wrong to believe that. Netizens, are still using Baidu to look for information on products, services, brands and companies.
In 2019, your goal with Baidu SEO should not only be to drive organic traffic to your website but also to spread information about you via the Baidu ecosystem and any websites where peoples are susceptible to look for genuine answers. This is what we call Undercover SEO.

BAIDU SEO VS GOOGLE SEO

If Baidu was created using Google as a base, it has evolved to be unique and is now very different in the way it works but also in the way peoples are using it.

THE MAIN DIFFERENCES:

• Because Baidu supports only Chinese mandarin language, it’s Keyword algorithm is very precise. If your content is not very specifics, you have no chance to rank.

• Repetition of keywords increases your ranking on Baidu.

• Avoid sensitive topics. In every aspect, it would be a very bad idea to post sensitive content.

• The homepage is very important for SEO

• Constant updating of your content is important. Posting regular, original content plays an important role in your website ranking.

WHY IS BAIDU SEO STILL EFFICIENT IN 2019?

There are many reasons leading peoples to think Baidu SEO is not a good investment. It takes time to rank, nothing new here, SEO is a slow process. It is hard to rank on your keywords because of the competition but not only. Remember that if your content is not ultra specifics your chances to rank are dropping quite significantly. Another reason would be that your website is not in mandarin and/or not hosted in China, HK or Singapore. This was only about ranking your website and getting traffic, which is, if you remember well, is not the top priority anymore.

UNDERCOVER SEO ON BAID

– BAIDU AS A TOOL FOR THIRD PARTY INFORMATION

Most of the foreign entity attempting to do SEO on Baidu do not understand the importance of its ecosystem as well as the reasons that push netizens to use Baidu. Peoples are looking for genuine information, answers to their question which they won’t find on your website.

– WHERE DO THEY LOOK FOR THIS KIND OF INFORMATION?

Because they want honest response to their questions, useful information, consumers and businessmen are going to look at what peoples say about you, if you are a legit company. Do you have social media? Are peoples talking about you on forum, is there any press release about you? Are your social media alive and peoples interacting with your brand/business etc

Use Baidu Zhidao (Q&A), use Baidu Tieba (Forum) , use Baike (the Chinese Wikipedia), be on the platform where peoples will be looking for information about you.

Not only it is an excellent way to let peoples know about what you stand for but being everywhere they are looking for you makes you look reliable, it gives you credibility and is perfect to build your e-reputation.

 

baidu tieba - seo tool

BAIDU SEO SOLUTIONS: OUR AREAS OF EXPERTISE

We will optimize your website in two ways:

ONSITE SE

A) Title tag

  • Baidu gives a lot of importance to the title tag
  • Having an optimal positioning on the title tag is enough to position even with illogical content.

B) Meta

  • Baidu gives a lot of importance at the meta tag <meta description> and <meta keyword>.
  • We act on the choice of tag/meta according to the most research keywords on Baidu and on the competition.

C) Home Page in Chinese 

  • Baidu places importance to the home page of a website. Have pages that you absolutely want to rank? Link them to your homepage (it can be anywhere on the homepage)
  • Make the most out of the header and the footer.
  • D) 100% Chinese

    • Priority goes to websites that are 100% in Chinese, preferably hosted in China, ending with “.cn”.
    • Few websites will get this extension because you have to have a company register in China, and the procedure takes months.
    • Have a website in simplified Chinese, distinct from the English version. It needs to cater to the Chinese audience and adapted to mobile phone viewing.

     

    E) Host in China

    • Hosting locally, optimizes the browsing experience.
    • Baidu gives a generous bonus to the websites hosted in China and a penalty to the ones outside China. If the government wants to control the information, it is more efficient if they can contact the Internet hosting service.
    • To avoid “surprises”, the content on your website should stay far away from topics discouraged by the Chinese government.

     

    F) Interesting and quality content

    • To increase the number of visitors, you need interesting and SEO-friendly content for both Baidu and visitors. The Chinese search engine will give an essential importance to big websites, to websites with a huge amount of web pages.

    G) Users friendly

    • Optimize your website. You want it to be loading fast and working smoothly
    • Easy access to contact information (phone number, wechat QR code etc) and preferably a live chat.

    .

    OFFSITE SEO

    BACKLINKS : 80% OF SEO WORK IN CHINA

    • Baidu will prioritize websites with the most backlinks
    • Baidu appreciates highly trustful links from newspapers or government websites
    • The anchor link is not so important
    • The URL also doesn’t have a lot of importance
    • The origin of links doesn’t have a big influence
    • Research has shown that the “Like” button of Baidu has no influence on the SEO in China.

     

    We generally spend 80% of our time/budget “off site”, to guarantee a quality SEO on Baidu.

     

    BAIDU SEO: CASE STUDY

    DAMAC

    damac-wechat-account

    DAMAC Properties one of the leading luxury developers in the Middle East. They contacted-us to develop their network in China. Having a strong digital presence allowed them to be more visible and attractive to investors.

    Our solutions for Damac were the following:

    – Baidu SEO

    – E-reputation

    – Promotion on Real Estate Platform

    – WeChat and Weibo management + Quality Designs on Accounts + Events

    – New website

    Within the first few months of working with us:

    – Double traffic from SEO with 13 main keywords

    – Good position from off-site and on-site promotion

    – Top 1 on Juwai with 海外房产网 keyword

    – +1100 followers on Weibo and + 400 on WeChat

    – Over 120 leads in one month on contact page

     

     

    .

    SEO AGENCY IN CHINA

     

    KEY PLAYERS IN THE BAIDU SEO IN OUR AGENCY:

    1. Strategy is made by Olivier (You don’t know Oliver? click About Us)

    2. Philip will then manage and follow the project

    3. Our Chinese team will be in charge of the execution

    The Minimum duration for Baidu SEO is 6 months of service. The reason for that, is that less than 6 months, you’ll be wasting your money, and we will be wasting our time.

     

    REMINDER : KEY FIGURES REGARDING CHINESE INTERNET

     

    • The number of Chinese Internet users is still increasing: more than 800 millions in 2018
    • 610 millions Chinese Internet users shopped online in 2018.
    • Few foreign websites rank visible on Baidu

     

    Baidu SEO expertARE YOU LOOKING FOR A PROFESSIONAL SEO AGENCY SPECIALIZED ON BAIDU ?

    If you have a serious project, do not hesitate to contact us, we will be more than happy to listen to you and guide you.

     

Ultimate Guide to Baidu SEO

Baidu is the undisputed leader in China search. To be truly successful in China SEO, you’ll need a deep understanding of how to optimize for the search giant.

However, optimizing for Baidu using the same approach used for Google is unlikely to find your site ranking near the top of page 1. Baidu SEO comes with its own unique and challenging environment of complex language issues, cultural differences, user behavior, legal issues, censorship, and technical considerations.

While the internet is full of guides on how to do SEO for Google, few resources exist in English (or Chinese for that matter) for Baidu SEO. What guides do exist are generally superficial and merely cover the basics. That’s why we’ve created the definitive guide to Baidu SEO to share with the world the expertise we’ve curated through years of developing SEO tools for both global and Asian markets.

This massive, in-depth guide will cover all aspects of Baidu SEO, providing you with everything you need to rocket your site to the top of the rankings and master the complex world of SEO in China. We’ll go deep into all of the unique considerations that must be kept in mind when optimizing for Baidu rather than Google.

Let’s begin with an introduction to Baidu SEO and how it’s different than Google.