Singles Day: Chinese Consumers Set to Splurge on Foreign Brands

Glancing across the ecommerce landscape, it’s impossible to not recognize the digital cathedrals of shopping malls and towering skyscrapers of platforms home in the Middle Kingdom. China is the largest ecommerce market in the world, with yearly sales of $672 billion.

China is also the fastest-growing ecommerce market, ballooning 35% each year, as well as the country with the highest ecommerce share of total retail sales of 16%.

In short, China matters. And Chinese consumers are not only buying Chinese brands and products. According to Alibaba, foreign products are set to be a big hit with consumers during Singles Day – the world’s biggest online deal event that originally celebrated bachelors and single people. It’s held on November 11th, of course, because the 1 resembles, well… One is the loneliest number.

Led by Tmall and JD, November 11 receives incredible amounts of online traffic and deep sales over a 24-hour period.

This year, the majority of those who had been hoping to travel outside of mainland China will not, given the pandemic and travel restrictions. Chinese consumers who usually buy foeign goods during their holidays are, instead, turning to ecommerce.

For the middle and upper classes that are used to high-end products from abroad, they’re going to be heading towards the ecommerce sites of foreign brands.

When you’re a retailer or brand with wide reach, when you market and sell your products across multiple regions and require separate sites for multiple languages, online operations can quickly become complex and complicated.

That’s why they have a strong tendency to use the ecommerce platform of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, which was built specifically for high-volume online retailers. It was also built for complex solutions, like multivariate and A/B testing, the ability to show users different versions of your website depending on location, which ads to display and where. 

And not only that, but it is capable of almost anything that relies on the jurisdiction, for example, legal requirements, plus it has a whole universe of extensions (“cartridges” in Salesforce speak) such as payment gateways.

So my educated guess would be that for Chinese consumers this Singles Day, they’re going to be heading towards those brands with international appeal, with a foothold already in the country, that are able to provide good online experiences not only in English but in multiple languages. And those brands swing heavily towards using platforms like Salesforce Commerce Cloud.

PS: ArganoUV is one of the world’s leading Salesforce Commerce Cloud (Demandware) development & strategy teams. Contact us to see how we can work together.