Australian sales to China thriving: Tmall report

The 2017 Tmall Global Annual Consumers Report has revealed Australia has moved into third spot, on the list of importer countries into China, on Alibaba’s business-to-consumer (B2C) platform. This is up from fourth spot in 2016.
Led by strong demand from Chinese consumers for Australia’s health and nutrition supplements, baby products and milk powder, Australia ranked behind only Japan and the United States, and ahead of Germany and South Korea.
Managing Director of Alibaba Group, Australia and New Zealand Maggie Zhou said: “Since opening our ANZ headquarters in Melbourne last year, we have worked harder than ever to support the success of Australian businesses in China. These incredible results for Australian merchants demonstrate that we are succeeding in our mission to make it easier for local businesses to do business anywhere.
“With 515 million annual active consumers now using our China retail marketplaces the opportunity for Australian businesses remains enormous, and we are excited to be part of the China journey for even more local brands in 2018.”
The 2017 Tmall Global Annual Consumers Report was jointly published by Tmall Global and CBNData, a big data-based business research and integrated marketing communications strategy platform. Elsewhere, it found that Chinese post-millennials have become the main purchasing power for imported products, with content and emotional interaction becoming a major factor in driving consumers’ decisions when buying imported products.
The report highlighted that people born in the 1990s have now become the biggest spenders on imported products, which come from a more diverse range of countries and are consumed more frequently throughout the year.
Tmall Global sustained its position as the largest B2C e-commerce platform for imported products in China, with a market share of 27.6% in the fourth quarter of 2017. There is still significant untapped potential in this sector, with the report estimating annual growth of 20 per cent in transaction volume and a market scale of RMB620 billion by 2019.