Friday, November 18, 2011

E-Commerce in China

As an eCommerce business owner, I’ve frequently considered targeting the Chinese market. But how? I’ve traveled to China, and while a fascinating place, I left with my head spinning. How could I possibly tap into the 800 million people who will claim China’s middle class in the next 20 years? According to Acquity Group, this translates to a $2.7 trillion online market. While there is certainly a lot of poverty, the reality is that there are already more Chinese connected to the internet than people in the United States, so now might be the time to start making moves into the market. Fast Company recently published an article called, “New Study Offers Roadmap for E-Commerce In China”, but other then the connectedness cited, the roadmap kept me lost.

How does one go about setting up a site that caters to a foreign language? Bidu (China’s largest search engine) and Google work quite a bit differently, so how does that come into marketing decisions. Clearly, rank among a search engine is one of the best (and only) way for a new company to gain awareness, and this details wasn’t discussed. Stay tuned as I look for a better, more complete strategy for entering China’s market.

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