REFORMING THE CULTURE OF GIFT
China’s e-commerce market is the biggest on the earth, producing billions in income and surpassing that of the United States.
Giving cash and items is a crucial a part of Chinese tradition, and in 2014 WeChat launched digital crimson packets linked to its digital cost service.
Virtual crimson packets have been a giant hit amongst customers who acquired sums of cash within the type of transactions rapidly and conveniently by way of their apps and have digitized a deeply rooted Chinese custom forward of the New Year.
It additionally gave Tencent an edge within the digital funds battle in opposition to e-commerce rival Alibaba’s Alipay system, trade consultants mentioned.
In 2017 alone, WeChat customers exchanged roughly 46 billion digital crimson packets over the New Year interval in January.
Just as WeChat modified the best way individuals handed out conventional crimson packets, can it do the identical with its new “present supply” characteristic?
“Gift-giving is one thing deeply rooted in Chinese tradition, similar to crimson packets are,” mentioned Li Jianggan, managing director of Singapore-based enterprise capital agency Momentum Works, including that folks’s spending habits and habits Gifts from younger Chinese differed considerably from these from the aged.
Analyst Dave Xie of worldwide enterprise consultancy Oliver Wyman known as the brand new characteristic “a strategic transfer” by Tencent.
“China’s e-commerce panorama has undergone vital transformations lately, pushed by rising platforms, evolving shopper behaviors and strategic variations by established gamers,” Xie advised CNA.
WeChat’s “massive” person base and established social connections might present a singular benefit in driving e-commerce engagement, he added.
With greater than 1.3 billion energetic month-to-month customers, WeChat is a “highly effective device” and has one thing that “none of China’s e-commerce platforms have,” Li mentioned, an enormous person community and a dependable social map.
“As WeChat progressively deepens into social commerce and stay commerce, there’s a good probability that the aggressive panorama of e-commerce (in China) will probably be reshaped.”
But it’s nonetheless “troublesome to foretell” whether or not the brand new gift-giving characteristic will probably be as in style and extensively used amongst WeChat customers as digital crimson packets, Li mentioned, including that it’s “secure to imagine” that it could have much less use as in comparison with cost.
“That mentioned, we imagine that gifting is only one of many makes an attempt to successfully incorporate social commerce into the WeChat ecosystem.”
