Global Marketing News – 21st August 2015
Global retailer launches own social network
Tesco has launched a social network for mothers in Thailand.
The social network, called Tesco Loves Baby, aims to connect Thai mothers so that they can share stories, ask questions and get advice from other mothers.
It will also contain an online shopping channel in the hopes of encouraging ecommerce within the online community.
Tesco currently offers 20,000 different items on its ecommerce site in Thailand, with roughly 5% of its income in the country coming from online sales.
Tesco has said it hopes its social network will get over 100,000 users in the next year.
Paytm and InMobi join forces to improve Indian mobile shopping
Paytm and InMobi have joined forces in order to make mobile shopping easier for Indians.
Paytm is India’s leading mobile ecommerce site, with Paytm Wallet being the company’s own mobile payments system.
InMobi is a mobile discovery platform, meaning that they help mobile users discover products for sale online.
The collaboration means that products for sale on Paytm will now be visible on the InMobi product discovery platform, and the integration of the Paytm Wallet buy button on InMobi’s platform means that users will be able to buy products with one simple click.
The move will massively increase the reach of merchant’s selling on Paytm, as InMobi is used by a staggering 120 million Indians.
The Indian ecommerce market is currently worth an estimated 25 billion US dollars, but this could hit 250 billion by 2025 as the market grows at a compound annual growth rate of 35%.
Twitter sets sights on Asia and Middle East
Twitter has said it wants to grow its userbase in Asia and the Middle East.
It will work on developing partnerships with key Asian and Middle Eastern publishers, with the aim of getting them on Twitter to distribute their news and content.
Twitter will be promoting their Twitter, Periscope and Vine platforms as places where publishers can reach a large number of users.
A spokesperson from the social network commented on the expansion, saying: “My strategic priorities are to enable our content partners to grow their audience on Twitter, increase our engagement with emerging talent and digital natives, and bring more premium non-English content onto Twitter.”
The key countries that Twitter will be targeting will be Australia, Japan, China and India.
Tom Group attempts to reach China’s rural online shoppers
The Chinese company Tom Group has entered the battle to reach China’s rural online shoppers.
Rural communities are becoming increasingly more connected, with affordable low-end smartphones meaning that more and more rural people now have access to the internet.
With a rural population of 600 million, rural China is a key frontier for future ecommerce growth.
Tom Group, in partnership with China Post, jointly own an ecommerce site called Ule.
The partnership gives Ule an edge over competitors in terms of logistics and distribution power.
A Tom Group spokesperson said: “As at the end of June, more than 80,000 of China Post’s branded franchised stores in rural parts of most provinces across the mainland had joined Ule’s ecommerce platform.”
Its efforts seem to be paying off, with Ule having seen an almost 200% increase in gross merchandise volume in the first 6 months of this year alone.
Ule is not the only ecommerce site to turn its attention to the Chinese rural market.
Earlier this year, Alibaba teamed up with China Telecom to deliver more affordable smartphones to people living in rural China. It also announced plans to invest 10 billion Yuan in the next 5 years to build more operating centres in rural areas.
Online gaming most popular activity for Brazilian tablet users
And finally, research by Nielsen IBOPE has revealed that online gaming is the most popular activity for tablet users in Brazil.
55% of tablet users questioned said they played online games, with social networking and watching videos and TV being the second and third most popular activities respectively at 44% and 38%.
There are an estimated 21 million Brazilians who use their tablet to play games, generating 94 million US dollars for the gaming industry.
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