Global Marketing News – 3rd March 2016
New tax rules coming for businesses selling in China
China has announced drastic changes to the way purchases from foreign ecommerce sites will be taxed, with the changes due to come into effect in April.
Import duties will be scrapped for all goods bought from foreign websites, up to a value of 2,000 yuan.
However, in its place, a sales tax of 11.9% will apply.
This will benefit companies that sell items that are currently subject to higher sales taxes, such as clothing, electronics, alcohol and cosmetics.
However, it will be bad news for companies that sell items that are currently subject to lower taxes, such as food and children’s items.
The new rules will apply to foreign companies that sell items from their own sites, as well as foreign companies that sell their items on Chinese online marketplaces such as Alibaba, JD and Amazon China.
The Chinese ecommerce market totalled 589 billion US dollars last year.
AO launches ecommerce site in the Netherlands
The kitchen appliances company AO has launched an ecommerce site in the Netherlands.
The country is AO’s third market, with the company already having a strong presence in the UK and Germany.
AO allows users to buy products online, and have them delivered to their homes for free. Customers can also trade-in their old appliances.
It will face stiff competition in the Dutch ecommerce market, with other appliance companies such as Media Markt, Coolblue, Bol and Wehkamp already being established household names.
The Dutch domestic appliances market is lucrative, worth over 2 billion Euros annually, making it an appealing market for appliance companies.
Internet marketing is rising in popularity in Vietnam
Internet marketing is rising in popularity in Vietnam, according to research by VECOM.
The study asked Vietnamese businesses what marketing channels they had used at the end of 2015.
Search engine marketing and social media came in at joint first place, cited by 47% of respondents. Online news sites came in at second place, followed text and email marketing. Offline channels such as newspapers and TV only came in at fourth and fifth place respectively.
Search engine marketing was viewed as being more effective than social media marketing, with around a third of respondents saying they found search marketing highly effective compared to just a quarter who said the same for social media marketing.
The rise of internet marketing is also facilitating the rise of ecommerce in the country; 55% of Vietnamese businesses said that over 20% of their sales were made online.
The Vietnamese ecommerce market was worth an estimated 4 billion US dollars in 2015.
JNE aims to increase revenues by 30% in 2016
The Indonesian logistics and courier company JNE has announced that it aims to increase its revenue by 30% this year.
To achieve this, JNE will launch an Android app called MyJNE to allow customers to track the location of their parcels, locate the nearest JNE centre and connect buyers and sellers. It will also improve its website.
On a physical front, it will expand its fleet of trucks and build new warehouses.
JNE is also partnering up with DHL to ship items to Europe, and SF Express to ship items to Asia.
The Indonesian ecommerce market is growing rapidly and is expected to be worth 4.5 billion US dollars in 2016.
Amazon to sell Morrisons food in the UK
And finally, Amazon will start selling food from Morrisons to customers in the UK.
It makes Morrisons the first UK supermarket to form a partnership with an ecommerce site.
Amazon users in London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Newcastle will be able to order Morrisons food using Amazon’s Prime Now and Pantry services.
Amazon and Morrisons hope that it will increase online grocery shopping in the UK. Last year, online accounted for just 7% of all grocery sales.
The UK has a digital buyer penetration rate of 88.2%, the highest in the world.
In 2015, the B2C British ecommerce market was worth a staggering 123 billion US dollars.
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Gemma Houghton
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