The rise of Chinese Cross-border shopping

Good news for foreign brands that are contemplating to enter China: according to a recent survey from eMarketer, Cross-border e-commerce spending in China is set to expand even more. Last year more than 15 percent of the Chinese consumers purchased goods from abroad with a total of €80.7 billion in 2016. It is even expected to grow to 25 percent of the population by the end of 2020, which totals to about 325 million consumers.

The average spending of a Chinese consumer on cross-border platforms in 2016 was estimated to be around €450. Bestselling categories are skincare, food and beverages, and maternity products. Chinese consumers choose for overseas brands as they are looking for authentic and good-quality products. To illustrate; Chinese are willing to pay a premium price for imported baby products due to the widespread concerns about the quality and safety of domestic products. In addition, fashion and high-end consumer electronics are popular because they are relatively scarce or not yet released in the smaller cities and rural areas in China.

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Interesting fact: currently 14.500 Western brands from 63 countries have found their way to the Tmall Global platform, and 80 (!) percent of these retailers didn’t even sell in China before.They will serve the growing middle class, which is estimated to reach 630 million by 2022 according to McKinsey Co., which will be hungry for authentic, good-quality foreign products.