The value of ecommerce in China has been predicted to to reach $1.8tn in 2022 according to a new report by Forrester called ‘Ecommerce in China: Trends and Outlook for The Largest ecommerce Market in The World’.
This means that the Chinese ecommerce market will be worth more than double that of the United States and 10 times more valuable than in Japan. American and Japanese ecommerce will be worth $713bn and $159bn in 2022 respectively
Perhaps unsurprisingly Alibaba and JD.com (Jingdong Mall) continue to dominate the local market, together accounting for more than 85% of China’s ecommerce market. New companies are making strides in China too, including Pinduoduo and Xiaohongshu, as the social aspects of their offerings prove popular with shoppers.
And mobile ecommerce is crucial in China with 76% of all online shopping happening on mobile devices and mobile payments remain the most popular option. 80% of Chinese shoppers use Alipay and 66% pay with Tencent’s WeChat Pay.
And the shop for further expansion is significant because only 38% of China’s population have started shopping online so far. As the most populous country in the world, they have approximately 1.2bn people.
There are several very interesting things about these findings. And not just regrading the scale of the value of ecommerce in China, which is obviously astonishing. That Alibaba and JD.com take 85% of sales, with other local players accounting for much of the rest must irk the likes of Amazon, in particular. And the primacy of local companies perhaps explains their keenest to make great strides forward in India while that ecommerce market is still nascent.
And yet, China remains an enigma for many western merchants with many not plugging into a very tempting opportunity. There are numerous reasons for that, including the difficulty of transit, local laws and duties. The language barrier is a problem too. The comparative cost of Western goods makes them expensive (although there is a great appetite for established quality brands) and the likes of eBay and Amazon are absent.
