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Chinese digital philanthropist entrepreneursComments OffDiscover the philanthropist entrepreneurs in China
Source: Harvard.edu
Chinese CEO’s are turning into real philanthropists. According to Harvard.edu, TOP 100 China’s greatest donors have contributed in 2015 for 0,03% of China’s GDP, donated more than 3,8 billion USD and most of them decided to invest in Education or Environment. Also, most of them gave back to their hometown and have in average 54 years old. The most generous entrepreneur in China is He Xiangjian, founder of Midea Group, a household appliance company with a donation of 400 million USD over the year.
In 2014, Jack Ma, co-founder of Alibaba, 29th richest person worldwide, second in China, as well as his partner Joe Tsai, started the philanthropic trend in the Chinese IT industry by creating trust funds with option shares which account for about 2% of the actual total of Alibaba’s equity. M. Ma has been an active player in the charity scene in China since 2009 when he took part in some of his friends’ charities (Jet Li).
His trust fund mainly focuses on projects involving the environment (water issues) health, education, and culture. The creation of non-governmental organisations in China only started a couple of years ago mainly because of the Chinese government strict rules, unwilling to share more power with individuals and corporations. It’s very common in China to see NGO not being “officially” charities but business companies. Actually, even some NGO’s in China are run like normal businesses.
To follow their footsteps, other Chinese wealthy entrepreneurs decided to give it a go. Early last month, in April 2016, Ma “Pony” Huanteng decided to help the Chinese population by opening a trust fund dedicated to charity. His donation equals to 100 million shares from his company.
Ma “Pony” Huanteng is the CEO of the Chinese group Tencent. A social media giant in China, creator of QQ Tencent a couple of years ago and of the now well-known WeChat (Weixin in Chinese). He is a net worth of 19 billion USD, is 44 years old and graduated from Shenzhen University. He is now the third richest man in China. Tencent is a high-tech group offering several services in the IT, The Internet and social media industry. The company’s value has, since 2015, exceeded 200 billion USD.
As of today, M. Ma owns 833 million shares of Tencent. The focus of the new organisation would be education, environment, education and other fields, which needs support.
To conclude, we can see that China is not only growing economically but is also being more open minded. Another good example of philanthropy in the digital industry overseas is Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, who decided to offer 99% of their Facebook shares.
20 facts about the Internet in ChinaComments Off Key things to remember about Chinese Internet
1) 1st World Internet population
Chinese Internet users have exceeded their US counterparts in late February 2008 and since they are the world’s first internet users. With the biggest population of the world, it’s without surprise that China reaches this record.
2) 1st country in terms of Internet censorship
Ironically, China is the country of the world were the censorship is the most used on the internet. The government wants to control the distribution of all the online content and even plans to deploy police officers directly in companies. The country wants to intensify censorship to reach, by 2020, an internet said “clean.”
3) 50.3% of Chinese had access to the internet on the 1st January 2016
The percentage of China’s population with Internet access is now higher than the percentage of people who are not being connected. And it is growing up very quickly, in fact, China had “only” 225 million users in 2012. You should know that for example in Sweden 92% of households have internet access there, in France it is 83% and 61% in Italy. The country with the highest percentage of Internet users is Norway with 96, 30%.
4) There were 688 million Chinese Internet users on the January 1st, 2016
The country dominates the global Internet by being number one (as often on China in the statistics) and far from its competitors. This mad rush is then followed by India (with about 402 million users in 2016) and the USA (with 266 million users)
5) 91% of Internet users have an account on a social network
Chinese social networks (such as Youku, Weibo, WeChat) are highly efficient and allow the Chinese to stay connected with their community, which is very important to them. They are also more adapted to the Chinese market.
6) 5G
At a time were the world is making just 4G, China seriously intensify its efforts to launch a 5G mobile offer quickly. This enthusiasm is partly explained by the fact that the vast majority of Chinese access to the Internet is made via smartphone and tablets.
7) 98% of Internet users have a broadband connection
Chinese users have overwhelmingly a broadband connection, but paradoxically have a very weak average flow of connection. Here are the top 5 countries were the proportion of broadband connection users is the biggest:
1) Switzerland
2) Netherlands
3 ) Denmark
4 ) South Korea
5) Norway
8) 3.14 Mbps is the average connection speed in 2013
Be aware that a connection speed of 3.14 Mbps / s is very weak. For comparison, the average for France in 2010 was 17,6mbs and the United States was 4,8mbs. Here is a list of the 10 provinces and municipalities were the average connection to internet was the fastest in China in 2013:
10. Yunnan Province: 3.20Mbps
09. Xinjiang Autonomous Region: 3.24Mbps
08. Hebei Province: 3,28Mbps
07. Zhejiang Province: 3,30Mbps
06. Sichuan Province: 3,31Mbps
05. Tianjin 3,33Mbps
04. Fujian Province: 3,39Mbps
03. Beijing: 3,50Mbps
02. Jiangsu Province: 3,93Mbps
01. Shanghai 4,70Mbps
9) 2, 79 million websites based
China is one of the countries with the most websites despite the famous “great firewall of China”.
10) 74% of sites are registered under the domain “.cn”
The Chinese have much more confidence in the websites registered under the Chinese domain “.cn”. This is partly what explains the importance to register under this domain for a company wishing to operate in China.
11) 85% of users are under 40 years old
The new generations are becoming more comfortable with the internet and use it in almost every aspect of life. This trend is not specific to China but tends to be reduced in favor of a more widespread use of internet in all population categories.
12) 43% of global cyberattacks come from China in 2014
The PWC research firm estimates that the number of daily cyber attacks at 177.300 worldwide and this number is constantly increasing. China would be the most aggressive countries in terms of cybercrime, followed by Indonesia to be responsible for 15% of global attacks and the US which would be responsible for 13%.
13) 600 million subscribers WeChat
WeChat, Weixin in Chinese, is an instant messaging application popular in China that allows you to communicate in writing or orally but also to build up a profile and view those of other users, whether individuals or corporations. It also allows the QR code reading and calls by video conference.
14) 500 million subscribers Weibo
Weibo is a popular Chinese microblogging website launched in 2009. It is often presented as the “Chinese Twitter”. At its launch, it already had 5 million subscribers in a year, then 200 million subscribers two years later and now it reaches 500 million subscribers.
15) 800 million items listed on TaoBao
TaoBao is a Chinese website selling the online business to customer (B2C) and customer to customer (C2C). Created by Jack Ma, the site is only in Chinese and more than 370 million user haves account.
16) 1st global e-commerce market
The Chinese e-commerce market has a very big potential and weighs over 300 billion euros. Its expansion is favoured by the Chinese government, which wants to counter US giants such as eBay or Amazon. Currently, the e-commerce penetration in China is greater than the United States.
17) Ali Baba, global e-commerce leader
Alibaba is a Chinese e-commerce website founded by Jack Ma. Alibaba employs 18,000 people worldwide and has announced a turnover of 6, 5 billion euros in 2014.
18) 700,000 Chinese on Facebook
The fact is derisory compared to the importance of Chinese social networks here, much more suited to the Chinese people. But the main reasons why the Chinese are not using Facebook at first because you have to use a VPN, to bypass the censorship but it slowed dramatically the connection, and then the fact that there is only a very few Chinese people listed on it. Then the social network becomes meaningless.
19) 740 million web pages on Baidu
Baidu is a Chinese internet company that can search for images and text. This is the most viewed website in China! The website also offers over 80 million images and more than 10 million multimedia files. It is very suitable for Chinese people thanks to its Mandarin search technology.
20) A penetration rate of 46%
China, with 688 million users, is the largest Internet market in the world. And with a penetration rate of 46%, the e-commerce can range in an exponential way.
Further readings
Here’s How Growth In The Chinese Internet Ad Market Will Impact Baidu
The rise of e-tourism in China
Electronic devices market in ChinaComments OffThe market for traditional products of consumer electronics in China is maturing, more than in the whole world. With the rapid development of information communication technology, China has become the largest manufacturing centre in the world for electronics, including televisions, computers, telephones and DVD players.
Here’s electronic devices market in China.
Market development in China
China became in 2013 the first market for electronic devices ahead of the United States. The spending in Asia reached $ 282 billion, and the world 1,068 billion dollars. The bulk of the expenditure was made by console video games, and televisions. In 2014, it is 1024 billion dollars that were spent in electronic devices around the world, including a three dollar spent in China. Shenzhen is the Chinese city that produces the more electronic devices in the world. In 2014, the city had a gross domestic product of 171 billion, largely due to its electronic production. Giants like Apple, Dell and HP make assemble and build their electronic components in this city.
The different categories
Equipment suppliers
Filcontrol is the technology leader in equipment products for textile machine industries. It is present in the Chinese market since 2005.
Phone
Huawei was founded in 1988 in Shenzhen in China. It is a company that provides services in the information technology sector and communication including phones. Its services are present in 140 countries, representing one third of the population. It achieved a turnover of 28 billion euros in 2014.
ZTE was founded in 1985 and also offers telephone services.
Xiaomi is the start-up that had the best start in the world. It was founded in 2010 and was valued at $ 45 billion in 2014. It sold up to 61 million units last year.
Computers
Lenovo is a Chinese company founded in 1984 by Liu Chuanzhi. Lenovo mainly manufactures computers, telephones, workstations, computer servers and connected TVs. However, the bulk of sales of Lenovo is done through computers, especially since he bought the PC division of IBM. However, it wants to focus on phones especially abroad, where it is still not very present. He recently bought Motorola Mobility. In 2014, its sales in the last quarter business was 10.8 billion.
Televisions
Skyworth or Hong Kong Skyworth Digital Holdings Company was founded in 1988 (From Bloomberg). It designs, manufactures and sells televisions and audio-visual products.
Maxpac is an electronics company including LCD TVs.
Mobile operator
In the area of ??mobile operators we can find China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.
China Mobile is the largest mobile operator in China. It was founded in China in 1997. It has over 720 million subscribers. This is the largest mobile operator in terms of subscribers which is normal given that China is the most populous country in the world, however it remains only used in China.
China Unicom is the second on the China market. It was founded in 1994 in Beijing. It serves over 80 million subscribers.
China Telecom is the third. It was created in 2002 and has a network of over 70 million people.
Appliances
Haier was founded in 1984 by Zhang Ruimin in Qingdao. This is a home appliance company but it also manufactures TVs. It makes refrigerators, air conditioning machines and washing machines. Haier’s goal is to position itself as a premium brand but is in many countries a low-end brand. However, the company operates in several countries in Europe and also in the United States.
Hisense is a company of electrical equipment. It was created in 1969 in Qingdao. It is the result of the consolidation of brands Combines, Kelon and Ronshen. It is present in the whole world. Its turnover has exceeded $ 16 billion in 2014.
Development in the future
This will undoubtedly increase in the coming years due to the growing middle class: in fact, nearly 220 million households will be part of this class of 2022 according to estimates. China’s new middle class that have a lot of requirements and applications in the high-tech world: some products that they could not buy are now within their reach and they fully intend to enjoy it. So they try to have the latest electronic devices. New categories appear as 4K televisions that everyone is trying to produce and sell in bulk. The Chinese are particularly equipped to sell as much as possible: Chinese companies dominate the market for 4K TVs. Chinese company for Seiki example sells 39-inch 4K TVs for $ 499, which is low compared to what can be found in the market. Leading brands like Hisense, Skyworth and TCL are all trying to build televisions 4K high standard, always keeping the lowest possible prices. Connected objects are also on the agenda, and China hopes to equip its electronic products.
The electronic market is exploding in China since it is very tighly linked to online activities, something Chinese have come to see as part of their lifestyle. These past few years, numerous local companies have started challenging foreign companies on their own turf: High Quality reliable goods. However, the edge is still in favour of first. Why? Two reasons :
Simply put : trust. Too many scandals have gone between Chinese consumers and local companies in all kinds of industry and the electronic market is not an exception. Besides, it is also a matter of prestige. Foreign companies are often seen as giving more face, the typical Chinese social rule of showing how successful you are to be respected. In this matter for now, in the mind of a large part of Chinese mobile users, there is no possible comparison between Apple, Blackberry, Samsung and say Lenovo or Xiaomi. Ask a Chinese to exchange his iphone for a local brand, something still true even though you can find good phones sold by Chinese brands. Oneplus or the latest Xiaomi have received much praise for their features. Alas, the cliché is still present, much to the benefit of the Foreign brands.
Finally, promoting products via e-marketing and the latest inbound marketing strategies has never been the Chinese companies’ forte. They are brilliant at doing business and getting the best deals but yet again, foreign companies have more experience in marketing. So, to be successful, a foreign newcomer in the Chinese market must use the services of a foreign inbound marketing agency that knows the Chinese market very well in order to get that big edge it would need (here for a list of good marketing agencies in China)
More about phone manufacturers on Business Internet in China here
TOP 10 CHINESE SMARTPHONE BRANDSComments OffOver the last years, the smartphone market has grown due to the increase of disposable income and the falling prices of smartphones.
In China, the smart phone market share is dominated by a few companies, however, most of these brands are locals.
Here we will have an overview of the main Chinese smartphone brands meeting success in both their domestic and the global market
Huawei
Huawai is a Chinese telecoms equipment giant founded by Ren Zhengfei in 1987. Nowadays, is one of the largest smartphone manufacturers worldwide since 2013. As a result of its growth, this year its market global share rose to 6.9% from 4.3%…
During the first half of 2014, Huawei shipped a total of 64.21 million devices of which 34.27 million units were smartphone. Due to its popularity, Huawei has experienced a growth of 62% in comparison with the same period of 2013.
ZTE:
ZTE is a Chinese company of telecommunications equipment, network solutions and mobile devices, which was founded in 1985. These days is considered as the world’s fourth-largest mobile phone manufacturer.
Xiaomi:
Xiaomi is the world’s third biggest smartphone maker after Samsung and Apple and due to its powerful digital communication equipment has become a worldwide revolution. This Chinese brand was created in 2010 by Lei Jun.No doubt that the little rice (Xiaomi means small rice in Mandarin) has grown big!
In China, Xiaomi sells more devices than Apple and it expected to rise up to 60 million unit sales in 2014, which mean double’s 2013. The first half of 2014, Xiaomi sold up to $5.5 billion, which means more than the whole sales of 2013.
Mi3 is its flagship smartphone and which has been sold in China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.
Coolpad:
Coolpad is one of the top smartphone brands in China founded in 1993 by Yulong Computer Telecommunication Scientific Co. This brand has realized a big inversion in R&D in order to develop inexpensive but powerful and sophisticated smartphones.
Lenovo
Lenovo has become the largest computer company in the world with 20% market share of the PC industry. Recently, the brand has began to sell smartphones around the world and now due to the mobiles devices reaches up to 45 percent of the world’s demography. Nowadays, the company sells more smartphones and tablets than computers, becoming the world’s third-largest smartphone manufacturer in terms of market share in the third quarter of 2013.
OPPO:
OPPO Electronics Co, is a Chinese technology brand founded in 2004. This brand is considered as one of the most important smartphone manufacturer in China, with a market share around 15.2%. OPPO has launched the Find 7 series with high- quality image-capture functions and rapid charging features. Thanks to its technologic progress, OPPO has a strong presence in the Chinese smartphone market.
Meizu:
Meizu is a well-known Chinese smartphone maker created in 2003. Its designs are focused to provide to the costumer a simple and intuitive mobile experience. While being among the pioneer of the Smartphone industry in China, in 2010 the company has faced legal problems, due the similarity of its devices with the IPhone. Since then, Meizu has developed new designs in order to differentiate them.
Gionee:
Gionee was established in 2002 as one of China’s largest mobile phone manufacturers. The Chinese brand is considered as a high tech enterprise which is focused on the R&D, production and sales of mobile devices. Since 2005, the brand has the mobile phone production license of GSM and CDMA. In comparison with last year, Gionee has increased its market share from 1.5% of 2012 to 4.7% of 2013 in China.
TCL:
Established in 1981, TCL is one of the biggest consumer electronics producers in China. TCL has a global presence and the brand cover many areas in the Smartphone industry like: design, development, manufacturing and product sales (mobile phones, computers and multimedia electronic s amongst others).
In 2010, it was the world’s 25th-largest consumer electronics producer and third-largest television maker.
K-Touch:
K-Touch was created in 2002 and is recognized as one of the most well-known consumer brands in China. This mobile phone manufacturer has its own R&D centre in Beijing and has developed a global top lab for mobile research.
Because of its top of the line R&D department, the brand is considered as a local smartphone brand with the most growth potential in China. K-touch is expected to experience the fastest growth in the coming years
K-Touch sells its mobile devices in 22 countries over the world.
We can talk about China as a connected country where people have developed a kind of mobile dependence.
Companies, particularly Chinese brands are tapping this tendency and they are developing modern smartphones to satisfy the Chinese people needs and therefore be an important part of the Chinese market.
The reality is Chinese shoppers prefer homemade brands, due to its high quality and its lower price.
Further readings
Going mobile is the next step for netizens in China
e-commerce has to adjust to e-mobile
Xiaomi choose the aggressive approach when it comes to digital marketing
5 key players of the e-commerce market in ChinaComments Off
E-commerce is about to reach 10% at the end of commerce market in China this year. It has easily become the largest online market place in the world since it China’s online B2C exceeded the American one in 2012. The online B2C is indeed the more important part of the market in China.
Here are the most successful players of the e-commerce in China:
Alibaba
The e-commerce in China is clearly dominated by the Alibaba group. It was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, the original website of Alibaba offered a B2B platform for Chinese companies. Alibaba owned a 44.82% market share in the B2B online market in Q2 2014.
Over the years, several websites and services were created to meet the needs of the Chinese citizens online.
Taobao
The group therefore created Taobao, a C2C website in 2003 which benefited from an enormous success among the online Chinese shoppers. Mostly because the website adapted to the Chinese way of shopping. Taobao therefore allowed its customers to bargain online and to pay only after they had received and inspected the quality of the goods they ordered.
Tmall
A B2C website came in 2008: Tmall, which owed a 57, 36% market share of the Chinese B2C online retail market in Q2 2014. The B2C platform allows local Chinese and international businesses to sell quality, branded goods to consumers in mainland China.
The Alibaba group also created its own payment system, Alipay, in 2004. The group is owned by Yahoo at 40% since the American internet giant helped them develop in the mid-2000s by investing one billion dollars in Alibaba in exchange for a 40% stake in the company. A good bet since Alibaba is now famous all over China.
Jindong
As for this B2C retailer, it was created in 1998 in Beijing under the name of 360buy.com, which changed last year in JingDong. It was ranked second largest player of the Chinese B2C online retail market with a 21.22% market share in Q2 2014. The e-tailer offers to its 60 million registered users a range of 12 categories of products from home appliances to clothing. In 2013 more than 500 000 orders were placed on the website every day. Chinese online shoppers like this website because it is like a wholesaler, they can address directly to JingDong if a problem occurs. Which differs from Tmall where sellers are all individual companies.
In March this year, the e-tailer signed a partnership with Tencent, to allow users on both platforms to transit from one to the other directly allowing JingDong to enter the mobile market more easily.JingDong also owns a C2C platform called PaiPai.com that is currently planning to launch a mobile app enabling individuals merchants to create micro-shops directly from their smartphones.
Yihaodian
The company based in Shanghai and created in 2008 quickly became one of the top online retailers of the country. The company developed quickly thanks to an always larger range of product classes.This rapid growth was made possible thanks to an agreement reached with Wal- Mart in 2011. The American distributor agreed to invest in the development of the Chinese online retailer against a 51% stake. Yihaodian since managed to build a base of more than 60 million customers. Those e-shoppers placed an average of 300,000 to 400,000 orders per day in 2014.
Apart from the affordable prices and the large range of products offered, the e-tailer is also popular thanks to the speed of its deliveries that is guaranteed within an hour in Shanghai. Its efficient customer service is also very appreciated by the shoppers.
Chinese e-commerce is therefore largely dominated by B2C websites such as Tmall, JingDong and Yihaodian but most of them also have C2C platforms of their own to play on the two branchs of the market. More rarely some have B2B websites like Alibaba, the market’s leader that is number one on every branch that e-commerce has to offer. Recently another battlefield has open for the different players of e-commerce to have fierce competition on: m-commerce. M-commerce indeed went from inexistent in 2009 to 10% of the e-commerce in 2013 and experts said it will reach 20% by 2016. The major players of e-commerce therefore have to adapt their strategies to this channel.
To go further:
Les Echos
China Internet Watch
Chinese e-commerce expertise to help you understand the market
The next evolutionary step for e-commerce in China is e-mobileComments OffThe day the e-commerce will go mobile
When the e-commerce industry in Western countries is becoming mature, in China, it is a huge market that has a lot of untapped potential! The opportunity of having a 600 million clients visibility is attracting businesses from all over the world so why not you ?
Maybe some numbers will help: in 2013, it is 618 million Chinese that were using Internet with a penetration rate of 46% of and it is not even half of the population. Within this population, 300 million of them were already shopping on-line last year.
Who is controlling the Chinese Internet?
The three giants on the Chinese Internet are well known in the Industry : Baidu (the favorite search engine of Chinese), Tencent (which owns WeChat and SnapChat) and Alibaba (which owns Weibo and Tango). They all have a net profit of at least 1,465 billion euros and enjoy a growth of sales and turn over very advantageous.
A huge potential in the B2C Market 2013
If Internet used to be the place where customers were making business with customers the trend is now turning around. In 2010, only 13.7% of transactions were from Business to Customer. And the Customer to Customer type of transactions ruled 86.3% of the Internet. Now, B2C represent 35.1% of the market and this is far from over. In 2017, experts expect that they will be more B2C transactions (52.4%) than C2C transactions (47.6%).
The opportunity of smart phone on e-commerce
In 2013, if the Internet users were 618 million, the mobile Internet users were already 500 million. The penetration on this sector has a 83% growth! It is the highest of the world(followed by South Africa and Hong Kong). Concerning tablet, it is the first one in the world as well with 39% (followed by Mexico and Singapore). What does that mean? It means Chinese will more likely buy through their Smart phone that any other nationality.
Indeed, there are already 69% of Chinese that bought a product on their mobile compared to 46% of American. China passed the hurdle mid 2013. By this time, more people were shopping through their smartphone (81%) than their computer (70%). On Double 11, which is on Nov 11 nicknamed Bachelor’s Day by Chinese, 127 million consumers spent 650 billion euros on Taobao Mobile. It is 560% more than in 2012 and convered 21% of all Taobao’s transactions. This website is one of the favorite of Chinese, 2/3rd of netizens (400 million) used it in 2013.
The mobile shopping market in China has showed incredible growth and opportunity. In 2011, it generated “only” 1.37 billion euros transactions, in 2012, already 7.44 billion euros and in 2013 almost 20 billion euros. In 3 years, this sector has experienced a huge boom and by 2017, transactions should reach 117 billion euros. How come ? Thanks to the new means of mobile payment, the penetration of smartphones in the countryside, the increase of the 3G coverage and the WIFI hotspots and the Offline to Online tools.
Who will be smart enough to catch this wave though ? Taobao Mobile already has 81.45% of the market share and Jingdong Mobile 6.67% but trend can still change.
What are the trends expected in the future?
In addition, the forecasts are all very optimistic when it comes to the evolution of this sector. In 2012, the total transaction value was equal to 354 billion euros and in 2013 over 218 billion euros. With a 40% growth, from one year to another, the sector should expect to reach 488 billion euros transaction by 2017. It is the biggest on-line e-commerce market in the world. Experts predict that by 2020, it will be bigger than the e-commerce of USA, Great Britain, Germany, France and Japan combined.
Sources
China, made for e-commerce
E-commerce in China changes the shopper habits
Techinasia site
The trend of online supermarketsComments OffThe trend of online supermarkets
With the apparition of Internet, we saw new ways of consumption via the e-commerce. Indeed, now on the Internet you can buy pretty much everything such as books, music, movies, clothes etc.
One sector rather forgotten is the food. Maybe because people get used to go to supermarkets to find products they want. But recently big brands of retailing and new actors open grocery stores online. It’s a new way for them to make business.
5 facts to know about online grocery shopping:
1. Consumers don’t hate online grocery shopping, it’s just that they need time to getting used to it. The success factor is to provide a good user experience, with a nice navigation, an easy search and online help for example. You have to show to you customer that it’s a time-saving experience.
2. The online and offline baskets are different. For example, when you analyze the repartition of goods between online and offline, you notice that is much larger for F&B (food and beverages) with $80 online and $30 offline and for health and beauty purchase with $30 online and $10 offline. Generally, you see a greater mix of products with online shopping.
3. The purchase behaviors and the consumer perceptions are really different if you compare online and offline shopping. Indeed, the experience when you walked into a supermarket and when you surf on the Web. Online, you have to have a guideline to help you make your shopping easy, because generally on the website there are a lot of different options.
4. When you talk about online, all the rules are new. Indeed, it does not matter if you are a big brand physically because everything is different online, the codes, the habits etc. It is thus interesting for small players to try to modify the “game” online.
5. One key success factor online for small and large brands is to make combination online and offline and to provide the best user experience as possible. For example you have to be interactive by using smartphone applications or social media connections.
3 examples of online supermarket in 3 different countries
India: Aaram Shop
AaramShop is an Indian online start-up which has pioneered the concept of hybrid e-commerce. AaramShop is a hybrid online retail platform that enables small independent retailers to get a web-front to their physical store. The company allows customers to provide at local neighborhood stores (kirana); it means grocery shopping, via the Internet. AaramShop links e-retailers with their final customers by shop on web and mobile devices.
The company was founded by Vijay Singh in 2011. Originally serving 162 local shops in Delhi, over 1,900 retailers across 26 cities in India, use AaramShop as their e-commerce platform this year.
How does it work?
Customers use AaramShop’s website or log on using their Facebook or other accounts and create a shopping list or groceries for the products and brands they want to buy. Then, they can choose their nearby kirana from the listing and specify their preferred delivery time. Finally, the company use SMS and e-mail to direct the order to kirana about the order and the time of home delivery.
Visit the store
France : Carrefour
The global strategy of the group of hypermarkets Carrefour is currently turning around the web portal CarrefourOnline. Since 2008, the e-commerce strategy of Carrefour focus on e-commerce as a way to increase sales because many customers use cyber markets to compare brands and prices and buy on- line then get delivered. Carrefour top management decided to focus on e-commerce as 19% of French customers purchase on-line in 2013.
The retail website of Carrefour, CarrefourOnline, was launched in 2008. It was previously named Bookstore. The web portal was created by e-merchant, subsidiary of Pixmania Company. In 2012, the website registered 1.5 million unique visitors a month, which is 50 to 60% more than the year before, for a turnover increasing by more than 50%.
The website offers a certain number of shops, among them beggaries products, fitness, nursery, toys, sports and leisure activities, garden and open air, house and office, electronics and household electrical appliances. CarrefourOnline proposes 8,300 on-line references and specializes around high-tech products.
More information on the website
China : Epermarket
Based on the fact that it’s sometimes really hard to find products from other countries for expatriates, Epermarket which was founded in 2011 launched an online supermarket in Shanghai.
The website is in four languages (German, English, French and Chinese) and provide more than 2000 different products for everybody. Indeed, you can find snacks, fruits, vegetables, seafood, meat, wines etc. It’s a win-win situation because the expats community can appreciate all the food that they missed and this is the occasion for chinese people to discover new kind of food.
Their goal is to provide reasonable prices. They also focused on high quality products with an effective warehouse management system for the conservation and the delivery of the products.
From their side, everything is made in order to facilitate your online shopping and enjoy the food that you like.
Discover this online supermarket in Shanghai
The Chinese e-commerce market go over $190 billion in 2012Comments OffThe figures
The CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) has recently published the figures for the e-commerce in China in 2012 and they are very massive. In transactions, the CNNIC announce that the Chinese e-commerce market has reach 1,2 trillion RMB that is to say 190 billion of dollars over the course of the year. It’s so huge because it represents more than 1000 billions of RMB.
The organism also remind that there is 242 millions e-shoppers in China for the year 2012. It’s a big number but the population of China is around 1,4 billion people so there is a significant potential of growth in the next years especially if the economy of China is still growing.
What are Chinese buying ?
When you look precisely what is bought on Internet, the most common items are cloths (this include shoes and hat also) with 81,8% of people who bought at least one clothing item. The daily necessities follow with 31,6%. And the third of the podium are the computers and other digital electronics with 29,6%.
Mobile: a growing trend
Another interesting trend is that 40,7% of e-commerce users are using a smartphone to access the e-commerce websites. In addition with this number, 53,6% are using an app connected to an e-commerce platform (Taobao, Tmall etc.). This is a significant increase compare to 2011.
More information
The essentials of Weibo
Top digital trends in China
EBay Cross-border Trades(0)”Over time, we will look for opportunities to partner or joint venture or work together with Chinese companies,” Donahoe, 50, said in an interview in Hangzhou, China. “We’ve, in essence, exited the domestic market.”Cross-border trades will probably rise more than 80 percent to $4 billion this year, Donahoe said. EBay is counting on PayPal and partnerships with local companies to help it expand revenue from China after failing to gain a local foothold to compete against entrepreneur Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.Donahoe said Alibaba Group and its Alipay system shouldn’t be seen as rivals to eBay and PayPal.
Source : Konaxis
Alibaba Buy Auctiva(0)The Chinese company said it has entered into an agreement to buy Auctiva, which provides listing and marketing tools to vendors on e-commerce websites like eBay.Chief Executive David Wei said he is keen on more acquisitions to add technology or already-proven commercial applications to Alibaba’s lineup.Alibaba said buying Auctiva would help it reach U.S. businesses and connect them with suppliers outside of the country.Wei said buying Auctiva would help Alibaba target the more than 90 percent of U.S. online merchants who continue to source their products offline.The acquisition, which closed on Aug. 18, is part of a $100 million investment plan for AliExpress that Alibaba announced in April. Auctiva will operate as a new business unit and will retain its own brand and operations.In June, Alibaba bought Vendio Services Inc in its first major U.S. acquisition to further its strategy of expanding its global footprint.
Source : Konaxis
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