Rising digital economy offers consumers new shopping experience

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03:02

With the digital economy of China expected to grow 15 percent this year, customers shopping experiences will continue to change, with challenges arising.

In 2018, China became the world's second-largest digital economy behind the U.S. Experts say by 2025, with the continuous expansion of the digital economy, China's digital literacy will have reached the average level of developed countries.

The digital economy is also reshaping China's employment landscape and creating new business models such as sharing economy and mobile payment.

At one of the Hema Fresh of Alibaba Group, they promise fresh and high-quality products from both domestic and overseas markets, of course under a very strict quality control system based on big data and technology. The store was defined as a "Pathfinder of Alibaba's New Retail" through technology and data in a bid to merge online and offline retail.

One of the customers said that the freshness of the salmon imported from Norway is one of the products her family usually buys on the store's app.

VCG Photo

Alibaba's researchers have found that China's middle-class population continues to rise, so does the number of those using cross-border e-commerce, while the post-1990 and post-1995 generations who grew up with the Internet have gradually become the main consumers.

Cross border e-commerce makes products flow with guaranteed quality and timing.

Hu Haihe, deputy general manager of Hema Network Technology in Beijing says, "Hema Fresh is a digital enterprise from aspects of procurement, distribution, sales as well as returns, and we are operating based on digitization. In the future, based on the same business model, we need to bring more regional characteristics to it."

All over the world, more and more people are using cross-border e-commerce. By 2017, Chinese shopping site Tmall had ten times as many international consumers as it did three years prior, and the numbers are still growing.

According to the World Economic Forum, China now accounts for 42 percent of all global e-commerce, boasting one-third of the world's most successful tech startups, and conducting 11 times more mobile payments than the United States per year.

Ouyang Cheng, director of Ali Cross-border E-commerce Research Center of Alibaba Group, said that the future of international trade is digital trade. Through digital management, people realize the logistics, brands, and marketing of digital operations to reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Cheng held that it's actually the credit information and trading records online that bring business opportunities to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as foreign brands

Experts say over 90 percent of enterprises are earning more profits after utilizing digital technology. Yet, large variations remain at different sectors' digitization levels in China. Therefore, protecting property rights and ensuring efficient markets remain high priorities for the future.