Europe and the United States may be in a state of economic stagnation, but in 2020, eCommerce increased by 50 percent in the coronavirus’s country of origin. The Chinese economy had started to recover by as early as April of last year and a desire for foreign luxury goods was kept alive by a thriving middle class. In addition, by 2025 the current holder of the world’s largest eCommerce market is set to adopt a new accolade – the world’s largest luxury apparel market. Here, online shopping is driven by subsidiaries of the Alibaba Group: Taobao, Alibaba, and Tmall, with the addition of competitors, JD.com and Pinduoduo.

Even before anybody had heard of the coronavirus, 2019 eCommerce sales figures placed the US at $360m and Europe at $351.9m. China, however, amassed a higher sum than these two combined, at a whopping $862.6m. In search of why this may be, I discovered that trends in the way the Asian country’s residents shop are greatly different to that of its neighbours.

While the pandemic has caused a lag in the United States and Europe’s spending on luxury items, residents of China have taken to online websites to exercise their eCommerce usage. Wealthy Chinese nationals have been unable to travel overseas to buy luxury goods, as well as ‘Daigou’ agents, who professionally resell these items back in their home country. The country’s luxury online spending increased from 2019’s 13 percent up to 23 percent in 2020, according to management consulting firm Bain & Company in its annual China luxury report, prepared in partnership with Alibaba’s Tmall Luxury Division. Here, foreign goods are seen as that of higher quality, where the bulk of these purchases are made from a desire for beauty and makeup products, largely.

The island of Hainan has been famed for its duty-free store, attracting Chinese citizens all year round for over a decade. COVID-19’s travel restrictions allowed its business to take off considerably last year, surging by 98 percent in time for October of 2020. An attractive shopping policy change, a 300-percent increase in the annual duty-free quota per person, has contributed significantly to its success and now the island on the south coast of China accounts for 55 percent of duty-free sales in the whole country. In addition, and bearing in mind that visitors do not exhaust their annual duty-free credits, additional purchases can be made online and received via home delivery.

TV shopping channels may be considered outdated here in the UK, but Chinese consumers flock to live-streaming sales via social media, which a fifth of shoppers purchase directly from. This is especially popular on November 11’s Singles Day – a celebration where unmarried people treat themselves to gifts and presents, beating Black Friday as the largest online shopping day in the world – another example of how traditions in the planet’s most populated country differs from the western world when it comes to eCommerce.

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