Global Marketing News – 21st March 2016
Chinese ecommerce market now the biggest in the world
China’s internet penetration has broken the 50% barrier for the first time ever.
The news was announced by the China Internet Network Information Centre, which confirmed that as of the end of 2015, 688 million people used the internet in China, equivalent to 50.3% of the population.
The rise in internet penetration is being driven primarily by increasing smartphone adoption. Around 90% of Chinese internet users, equivalent to 620 million people, use their smartphone to access the web at least occasionally. 18.5% said that they only ever accessed the internet using their smartphone.
The report also revealed that China now has the largest ecommerce market in the world. The Chinese ecommerce market was worth 673 billion US dollars last year, a staggering 41% increase on the previous year.
This is substantially more than the American ecommerce market, which was worth 347 billion US dollars in 2015 after seeing yearly growth of just 8%. The US had previously been the world’s biggest ecommerce market.
What items do Latin American women like to buy online?
Research by Linio has revealed what kind of items Latin American women are most likely to buy online.
The study found regional differences in both the kinds of products bought and the age of the average online shopper.
In Ecuador, Argentina and Mexico, technology products were bought more often than any other product category. This trend was strongest in Ecuador, where 56% of all items bought from ecommerce sites were tech items.
In Chile and Colombia, in contrast, health and beauty products were the most popular product category.
In Peru, accessories were the product type most likely to be bought online.
When looking at the age of female online shoppers, Peru had the youngest demographic, with two-thirds being aged 34 and under.
On the other end of the spectrum, however, 18 to 34 year olds accounted for less than half of Argentina’s female ecommerce population.
Digital payments hotting up in India
The world of digital payments is hotting up in India.
Two of India’s biggest banks, State Bank of India and ICICI Bank, are working on mobile payments technologies.
State Bank of India has announced that it is currently developing a system similar to Apple Pay, which will allow customers to link their credits cards to their smartphones. ICICI Bank is also developing a mobile payments app.
Both systems will rely on host card emulation and near field communication technologies, whereby smartphones placed near a card-reader can communicate with the card-reader just like a card.
The lack of widespread card-readers in India could be a potential stumbling block, although neither bank has commented on this.
Separately, the social media giant Facebook has partnered up with the Indian online payment gateway company CitrusPay.
Currently users can only use CitrusPay to spend money on Facebook games, but it is assumed that users will eventually be able to buy items from ecommerce pages on the site.
The Indian ecommerce market is currently worth 11 billion US dollars and is growing rapidly, with online sales expected to reach 220 billion US dollars by 2025 according to estimates by Merrill Lynch.
Indonesia’s export market saw an improvement in February 2016
And finally, Indonesia’s export market saw an overall improvement in February compared to the previous month.
Exports of 17 out of Indonesia’s 24 commodities saw increases in February, bringing in over 10 billion US dollars, an increase of almost 9% on January.
Looking at the main markets that Indonesia exports to, exports to China and Japan both rose, by around 7% and 5% respectively. Exports to the US fell by around 7%, however.
The figures show a decline in exports compared to this time last year, however, by about 10%. The Indonesian government hopes that the recent upturn in exports will help to reverse this negative trend.
Most of these sales take place offline, but the proportion taking place online is increasing. The Indonesian ecommerce market is growing rapidly and is expected to be worth 4.5 billion US dollars in 2016.
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Cal O'Connell
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