Many take advantage of U.S. holiday to tout imported products for cross-border consumers
Major Chinese e-commerce platforms are offering promotions for the Black Friday shopping event, which follows the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, providing a new channel for Chinese consumers to buy imported items at a discount.
Thanksgiving falls on the fourth Thursday of November each year, so this year's shopping bonanza takes place on Friday. Most sales for Black Friday start on Thanksgiving Day and run through the weekend into Cyber Monday, a major online shopping day in the U.S.
These back-to-back sales are regarded as the start of the Christmas shopping season, and they often feature massive discounts.
Many e-commerce platforms in China such as tmall.com, taobao.com, jd.com, meilishuo.com, ymatou.com and amazon.cn launched their promotions ahead of the Black Friday event, with each stressing its advantages to attract more consumers.
For instance, Amazon China said its promotion runs from November 18 to December 5, and it will offer millions of items from 40 countries and regions and provide reductions of up to 50 percent in shipping costs from Europe, according to a statement Amazon e-mailed to the Global Times on Thursday.
Jd.com, run by JD.com Inc, on Wednesday signed a cooperation agreement with domestic delivery service provider EMS, which is offered by China Post and other companies, to improve its logistics services, according to a press release from the company on Thursday.
"With growing market demand and the government's support policies for cross-border e-commerce, more e-commerce platforms are taking part in promotional events to gain market share," Wang Xiaoxing, an industry analyst at consultancy Analysys International, told the Global Times.
The number of cross-border online shoppers in China may reach 35.6 million by 2018, with transactions of 1 trillion yuan ($156.53 billion), according to a report from China Internet Watch, a Singapore-based consulting company, on Monday.
The government's measures to encourage e-commerce are helping drive up transactions, a report by the Xinhua News Agency said in June.
For instance, the government lifted China's overseas online single transaction limit from $10,000 to $50,000 in January, the report said.
Also, many Chinese consumers believe foreign products offer better quality at a lower price than items sold domestically.
"I like to buy overseas products because I find the prices of high-quality goods at domestic shopping malls are unreasonably high," Wei Xiao, a 26-year-old Beijing resident and the mother of a 1-year-old baby, told the Global Times on Thursday. For instance, a baby jacket costs about 300 yuan domestically but only 70 yuan when it is offered at a discount overseas, She said.
Jin Jing, a 35-year-old Shanghai resident, told the Global Times on Thursday she prefers to purchase overseas products through domestic e-commerce platforms like tmall.com and jd.com because of possible problems with returning goods when shopping directly on global websites.
Domestic e-commerce platforms do have an advantage when it comes to returns and exchanges, Wang said. But the brand selection on domestic e-commerce platforms is still limited, Wang noted.
