Daily Digital Pulse of China: China Luxury Retail, China Digital, China E-Commerce
China Luxury Retail
The Most Popular Luxury Brands in China
The World Luxury Index China 2013 has been published! It draws upon 680 million searches on more than 400 luxury brands. Search results were compiled from Google and Chinese search engine giant Baidu. The Index is divided into six categories by industry. Cars is the most searched category at 53.5% of total searches. Beauty came in second with 22.7%, while fashion is at 14.9%, jewelry at 6%, hotels at 1.8%, and watches at 1.1%. Many brands expected that an increase in Chinese sophistication would reduce the cultural gap with their overseas consumers. In some cases, it actually contributed to the development of unique local preferences, independent from Western tastes, thus challenging luxury brands in terms of product offering but also opening up the way for new opportunities to grow in the Chinese market. Audi, BMW and Lexus were the most popular car brands, Estée Lauder, Lancome and Dior for beauty, Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Gucci for fashion and Omega, Rolex and Longines for watches.
Source: Red Luxury
China Digital
"WeChat, we have a problem"
Why was WeChat unavailable yesterday? It seems an optic cable was damaged at a construction site in Shanghai, reducing WeChat’s online capacity by 30 percent for 5 hours. This is the first time WeChat has gone offline at all in its 2.5 year history. The Tencent-owned social platform has accumulated more than 300 million users and boasts nearly 70 million overseas users. The app has become a major communication tool among smart phone users and it has gradually evolved into a platform for articles and postings to be shared between friends.
Source: Shanghai Daily
China Digital
2.5 Million Chinese Use Yu’ebao
China’s largest third-party payment platform, Alipay launched the 7.1 version of its mobile app Alipay Wallet at the beginning of this month, making a splash in the industry with its new function of Yu’ebao, a mutual fund platform. 2 weeks later, Yu’ebao had more than 2.5 million users. More than 57 percent of them have transferred money in their Alipay accounts into Yu’ebao via smartphones. The most popular functions of AliPay Wallet 7.1 are money transfers and phone bill payment.
Source: TechNode
China E-Commerce
Taobao, Taiwan and Tax
Since setting up shop in Taiwan in 2009, Taobao has reached annual sales figures of $50 billion with 600,000 subscribers. However, the Taiwanese Ministry of Finance has announced that a new sales tax of 5% will be levied on transactions worth over $3000, along with new laws to fine street vendors who sell their goods on Taobao without a certificate. Analysts see this as an attempt by the Taiwanese government to cash in on Taobao’s success in order to balance its books. The measures are ure to provoke an interesting response from Alibaba Group, Taobao’s parent company.
Source: The China Post
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