2017年CRI Cross border E-commerce: bridging American brands and Chinese consumers（在线收听）

Reporters: Zhang Wan and Wang Xiaoyu

For Chinese consumers who are interested in "made-in-USA", online retailers in China are connecting more American brands to Chinese consumers by importing directly from America.

Thanks to these cross border E-commerce platforms, Chinese consumers are finding it increasingly easy to gain access to a wider choice of imported American products. Listen to the show and find out more.

[Photo: Bing.com]

The American Cranberry firm Ocean Spray holds a 54 percent customer awareness of cranberries in China, but three years ago, that number was only 4 percent.

Today, more than 70 percent of its sales are done through the internet, thanks to its cooperation with China's cross border E-commerce platforms. These platforms offer various channels to allow the company to get in touch with the huge numbers of Chinese online customers.

Aravind Cherukuri, vice present of Ocean Spray International, says China's cross border E-commerce platform has benefited a lot of foreign brands such as their company.

"We are pure North American company, so we don't have any subsidiary in China, so effectively, we sell our products to E-commerce customers in China, they then sell these products down stream to Chinese consumers."

[Photo: Baidu.com]

Chinese market is huge. A survey from China Internet Network Information Center shows that by 2016, China has 470 billion online customers. At the same time, imported products are attractive to many Chinese people. A statistic shows 9 of 10 families in China purchased imported products in 2016. Cross border E-commerce platforms attract consumers through retailing imported products online. Ms. Hao is a loyal cranberry customer, and buys imports quite often through online platforms.

"Imported products represent the best quality in some sectors, for example, the best cranberries are definitely from American. And shopping for these products online is easy and quick."

The pursuit of quality drives Chinese consumers to cross border E-commerce platforms, where they can find authentic products from overseas. Daisy Hong is the general manager of the Greater China Division of Ocean Spray International. She says the channels offered by cross border E-commerce platforms make it possible to sell the authentic products to Chinese customers.

"One of our E-commerce platform strategies is direct marketing. All products are shipped from the US directly. And because it's E-commerce, we can expose our latest products to most customers in a short time."

Daisy Hong adds that their company doubled its sales in 2016 compared to the year before.

[Photo: Bing.com]

But Ocean Spray's story is just one example of many American products selling on Chinese E-commerce platforms. JD.COM is one of the biggest domestic online shopping platforms in China, and its subsidiary, JD Worldwide, offers imported products to its 225 million customers.

Josh Gartner, vice president of the company, says their American outlet is the largest of its worldwide malls, providing all kinds of American imports including electronics, maternity products and food. He believes the model of cross border retail not only benefits Chinese consumers, at the same time, it benefits smaller American brands.

"For a lot of import items, such as American products they may be well-known brands in the US and other markets, but they may or may not be well known among Chinese consumers. So we can play an important role in making sure that consumers become aware of those products, especially the smaller brands. We can put in a lot of resources, including the channels that we have, such as Wechat, to make sure that consumers are aware of them and we can build brand loyalty".

China is regarded as an attractive market for many products, and cross border E-commerce is now helping American brands convert the market potential into brand awareness and revenue.

As Aravind Cherukuri of Ocean Spray says, foreign brands preparing to enter China, need to consider which platform they use to communicate with consumers, and cross border E-commerce has been effectively connecting American brands to the huge Chinese market.