Taobao Global: Merchants play increasingly important role in China online shopping spree for foreign products

          Taobao Global, Alibaba's e-commerce platform, has successfully bridged Chinese consumers to a variety of niche and innovative foreign goods via a strategy that focuses on its platform's merchants, small-and-medium sized enterprises (SMEs), and content marketing.

          Taobao Global helps SMEs enter China, while enriching choices for Chinese consumers

          Rising incomes across China have been the main catalyst behind the strong demand for high quality products among Chinese consumers. Taobao Global focuses on helping SMEs establish presence in the Chinese market to give local consumers a diversity of options. The platform presents SMEs "simple, low-risk and low-cost solution" for businesses to establish new sales channels in China. So far, the platform has successfully introduced nearly 400 international brands into the market. In 2018, it plans to scale up and introduce thousands of global SMEs into China.

          Merchants Network to strengthen the connections between SMEs and Chinese consumers

          While providing global SMEs solid solutions to enter China, Taobao Global platform has more than 10,000 merchants around the world to facilitate and accelerate its expansion efforts. The merchants are considered opinion leaders in the cross-border retail e-commerce industry, have an in-depth understanding of Chinese consumers, and are experienced in bringing foreign brands to China. They have access to 100% authentic products in overseas markets, rich experience in attracting and entertaining their followers. On Taobao's own social channel, they have accumulated an aggregate of more than 200 million followers.

          To optimize resources and better manage merchants from each region, five merchants networks are established for Australia and New Zealand, Japan, the United States, Southeast Asia and South Korea. Taobao Global works closely with regional Merchants Networks to empower global SMEs to enter China. The Korea Power Seller Association (KORPSA), a merchants network in South Korea, was launched in July 2017. In its year-end meeting held in Seoul on January 25, 2018, Mr. Zhao, President of KORPSA, said "KORPSA shares and integrates resources with merchants, such as SMEs connections, supply chain solutions, and insights on the e-commerce industry in China. At the same time, it hosts seminars and training programs for merchants and local SMEs to improve the shopping experience on Taobao Global."

          Strategic content marketing, the key to engage with Chinese consumers

          With the change in Chinese consumer behaviors, Taobao Global has shifted to a more innovative approach to keep in touch with these consumers. The deployment of strategic content marketing tactics such as livestreaming empowers the merchants and SMEs and attracts the attention of a large number of Chinese consumers, leading to increased sales volume within a short period of time.Expanding to a foreign market could take up to several years, today, with the emergence of Taobao Global, foreign brands can now effectively establish and expand their presence in China.