Haitao: the Chinese online shopping experience
Haitao means overseas in Chinese and today this term identifies a movement of mainly young Chinese consumers, who buy their products online from Western companies…overseas.
The Chinese millennials, especially those belonging to the so-called middle-class, are the heirs of the economic boom that has changed the needs of consumers in the last twenty years. The demand for this category of consumers was more attentive to quality and susceptible to the added value of the brand.
So many blogs and online forums were born over time, where new Haitao consumers exchanged views both about products and, above all, about the reliability of Chinese shippers, necessary intermediaries given that many Western e-commerce sites do not they ship their products to China.
Consequently, companies have sensed the great potential of the Chinese Haitao movement. According to a recent research by the consulting firm Frost and Sullivan, Chinese consumers will spend a trillion dollars online in 2018 and of these 125 billion will be generated by the Haitao economy.
The Haitao movement has therefore become a fundamental point of reference for retail companies that aim at conquering the Chinese market. It will no longer be necessary, nor useful, to rely on Chinese platforms to sell their products in the East. In fact, Chinese consumers are looking for a unique shopping experience that is more engaging and prefer to buy directly on the company’s website rather than on aggregate product portals such as the giant Alibaba.
The Haitao economy, thanks also to the growing diffusion of technologies in China, is destined to intervene in a relevant way on the company’s choices given the unstoppable growth of the phenomenon that is approaching Chinese consumers to the West.
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