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The Future Of Shopping

July 13, 2020 By Mark Andrews

Alibaba is rapidly expanding its new offline retail food store chain, Freshippo (Hema in Chinese), with stores operating on cutting-edge innovations.

Filed Under: All Articles, China, Consumers, eCommerce, Retail Tagged With: Alibaba, Freshippo, Online Shopping

Delivering Convenience

March 10, 2020 By Matthew Fulco

South-East Asia has become the latest battleground for e-commerce companies. Can China’s tech giants win by proxy?

Filed Under: All Articles, Belt and Road Initiative, China, eCommerce, Globalization, Retail Tagged With: Southeast Asia E-commerce

Can China’s New E-commerce Law Tame the World’s Most-Disorderly Online Retail Market?

July 2, 2019 By Matthew Fulco

Adidas’s Yeezy sneakers designed by rapper Kanye West have been among the world’s best-selling footwear since they were released in 2015, and a pair of Yeezy Boost 350 V2s retails for up to $1,000 on most e-commerce sites. But on Alibaba’s Taobao site, the world’s largest online marketplace, vendors offer the same pair of sneakers for as little as RMB 300 ($45). That sounds too good to be true, and it is. They are counterfeits.

Filed Under: All Articles, Chinese Economy, Consumers, eCommerce, Policy and Law

How China’s E-commerce Boom Pushes Automation to the Next Level

January 8, 2019 By Dominic Morgan

Compared to other sectors, Chinese e-commerce firms are among the first batches of firms to embrace automation. China accounts for nearly half of global demand for AGVs, enabling one warehouse to process up to 100,000 orders a day with a staff of 20 human workers, work that previously would have required 300-600 people, according to Beijing-based startup Geek+, a leading domestic robot maker in logistics industry. Other tech giants, like Alibaba and JD.com, have also announced plans to invest billions of dollars to roll out next-generation technologies including totally unmanned warehouses and last-mile delivery robots and drones.

Filed Under: All Articles, China, eCommerce, Logistics

How Online Platform Yiyaowang is Reshaping China’s Health Sector

September 25, 2017 By Liu Sha and Deng Yuanyuan

Medical spending in China is increasing every year, and people have started to buy medicine online, with nearly 3 million people buying medicine through mobile apps, among which the largest one is Yiyaowang–the”No.1 pharmacy.” Set up by Yu Gang and his partner, the founder of China’s first large online supermarket, Yihaodian, Yiyaowang is also a key part of a healthcare ecosystem that combines an online hospital, a drugstore and patients. Yu, an experienced businessman and a scholar, tells how he built the ecosystem, how it simplifies the medical process and gives patients access to cheaper drugs.

Filed Under: All Articles, Conversations, eCommerce, Entrepreneurship, Q&A, Supply Chain Tagged With: B2B2C, Online healthcare, online pharmac, Yihaodian, Yiyaowang

NetEase, China’s Online Underdog

August 14, 2017 By Tim Ferry

NetEase is the Chinese internet pioneer you have probably never heard of. Founded in 1997, before its bigger and better-known Chinese internet peers Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (collectively known as BAT), it is largely unknown outside of China. NetEase is currently making big pushes into many new businesses: e-commerce, online learning, music streaming and a host of other businesses, but it still has a long way to go to climb back to the top of the China tech tree. Analysts note that NetEase lacks the breadth of its rivals’ businesses, and that will likely stymie its growth, unless it can continue to diversify successfully.

Filed Under: All Articles, China, Consumers, eCommerce, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Know China, Technology Tagged With: Alibaba, BAT;, NetEase, online games, Yahoo

China Retail, Retold

May 29, 2017 By Helen Roxburgh

At the enormous Pacific Department Store on Shanghai’s Huaihai Road, barriers block the street entrances and windows are shuttered. The store, which was one of the largest on one of the city’s busiest shopping streets for nearly two decades, closed in January. The shell of the store now sits incongruously opposite the K11 mall, which has been thriving ever since implementing a smart re-think of the shopping mall concept a couple of years ago. The lesson of the different fates of these two shopping centers is clear—adapt or die. Retail is not declining in China, it’s just changing.

Filed Under: All Articles, Consumers, Digital Economy, eCommerce, Know China, Mobile Commerce, O2O, Retail Tagged With: commercial real estate, Retail, Shopping

Will e-Commerce Replace Brick-and-Mortar Stores?

February 27, 2017 By Yuanyuan Deng

After incredible growth in recent years, e-commerce in China seems to be slowing down. One reason behind this is the high penetration rate. By 2016, 62% people in Tier 3 and 4 cities were shopping online, while the number in Tier 1 and 2 cities stood at 89%. On the other hand, consumers in China have also changed over time, now the middle class are shifting their money from cheap products to premium services and goods where experience and recognition ties take priority. So does it mean online retail will go gloomy and physical stores may return to the spotlight?

Filed Under: All Articles, Best Practice, China, Consumers, eCommerce, Know China, Retail Tagged With: O2O, Online retail, Retail

Who Benefits from Alibaba’s Singles Day?

November 18, 2016 By Brian Viard

It is a good time to reflect on Singles Day, a shopping carnival initiated by Alibaba that has just yielded a record-breaking sales of $17.8 billion, exceeding that on “Black Friday” in the US. It looks like everyone benefits: vendors sell, buyers get cheap goods and Alibaba profits through advertising fees and transaction commissions. But consider: to sell more, vendors lower product prices and sacrifice per-unit margins, yet they might not be able to make up on volume, as most of the items purchased are durable goods and therefore most of the increased sales on Singles Day are probably shifting sales from earlier or later periods.

Filed Under: All Articles, China, Consumers, eCommerce, Invisible Hand Revealed, Marketing Tagged With: Alibaba, COnsumer, Invisible Hand Revealed, singles day sales

Chinese Express Delivery Companies Deliver a New Way of Life

November 3, 2016 By CKGSB Knowledge

Each year Alibaba breaks a new record on Singles Day, the 24-hour online shopping extravaganza has now become a celebratory annual event. The rise of online ecommerce has transformed the way Chinese people shop. According to 2015 e-commerce stats, 46% of Chinese people buy groceries online, 30% people made impulse buys, and $ 333 billion purchase were conducted on mobile devices. The online shopping phenomenon, on one hand, is hurting retail, on the other is fostering a multi-billion dollar express delivery business. With 8,000 express companies national wide, China’s express delivery market was worth $ 42.1 billion in 2015.

Filed Under: All Articles, China, Consumers, eCommerce, Infographics, Retail Tagged With: express Delivery, JD.com, Taobao

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Information, analysis, and interviews about the Chinese economy and doing business in China, from the people who know it best. Presented by the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, China's leading business school.


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