Weblog with daily updates of the news on a frugal, fair and beautiful China, from the perspective of internet entrepreneur, new media advisor and president of the China Speakers Bureau Fons Tuinstra
Paula Macaggi, the founder of OFFBounds, sets off for her first trip to Shanghai and questions e-commerce expert Sharon Gai, the author of Ecommerce Reimagined: Retail and Ecommerce in China on what she can expect on her journey. Key Takeaways: • The super app experience with WeChat • How China’s retail is about content and entertainment • Unique consumer behaviors and retail experiences only found in China • The rise of sustainable consumption in Chinese e-commerce.
E-commerce expert Sharon Gai explains how AI is helping her industry transform challenges into opportunities, speaking at Mike Allton’s podcast on strategic marketing with AI. Gai has extensive experience in China and uses her insights to help e-commerce stay competitive in a fast-changing industry.
Former Alibaba executive Sharon Gai explains how AI is changing the retail industry beyond recognition. Amazon was the pioneer in this field, although now nobody can ignore the change AI is causing globally.
E-commerce expert Sharon Gai started her career at Alibaba and now explains to the rest of the world how consumer platforms in China work differently from the West, and why also newcomers like Shein and Temu work differently. A discussion on Retail TouchPoint.
AI and e-commerce expert Sharon Gai discusses what companies can learn from their competitors in China at a conference in Europe. China explained for non-Chinese marketeers.
Former Alibaba executive Sharon Gai looks at Drugstorenews back on how the company conquered retail in China, focusing on pharmacy with Alibaba Health. “What this medical doctor app did was digitize that entire process,” she said.
Drugstorenews:
Gai took the discussion to Alibaba Health, noting that China only has about 1.8 doctors per every 1,000 people compared to 2.4 in the United States and 2.8 in the U.K. “This means that resources in health care are very strained in China. When there’s a lot of competition, it breeds innovation. That‘s exactly what Alibaba Health has in terms of its growth trajectory,” she said.
AliHealth started as a cloud pharmacy, but its product managers recognized that people were searching for grocery and skin care items, OTCs or certain drugs. “Ali pharmacy was pulled out of Tmall and a separate app was created,” she explained
“The product managers noted that there were people searching to buy contact lenses and prescription eyeglasses, they needed eye exams and physical exams, they were looking for sexual health products, or wanted to do STD tests or pregnancy tests. This became a snowball effect and the number of services this app started to cater to. Today Alibaba Health is a full fledged telehealth app.”
Gai also discussed how a medical doctor app was created for traditional Chinese medicine, a huge Chinese sector that she described as “a very old school brick and mortar place to play.” “What this medical doctor app did was digitize that entire process,” she said. “You open the app, consult with the Chinese medicinal doctor and he will tell you what you need and an entire packet of ingredients will be shipped right to your doorstep.”
Addressing the last pillar of Alibaba Health, a business to business pillar in which the creators built out a health knowledge map and traceability code, Gai said, “AliHealth set a standard in creating a QR code that every single brand would need to stick on their packaging so when this product is shipped to the end customer, they can scan it and see exactly where this medicine came from. This is the interface of the telehealth app, where you also can see the balance on your health insurance card, nearby hospitals, a doctor for an online experience, get medicine delivered in around 30 minutes to an hour, order vaccinations, get eye exams, mental health services and medical beauty.”
The app also features short-form videos that offer health advice from doctors, who are becoming influencers. “As a user, you’re constantly learning about health care in general. What AliHealth really did, the big innovation, is consumerization of healthcare services,” Gai said.
Lastly, Gai said that AliHealth is good at “new retail,” a term developed by Jack Ma in 2016. “It’s basically the unification or the synchronization of online and offline services,” she said.
Sharon Gai, a China-born Canadian who is an expert in e-commerce, digital transformation, and AI, and worked as head of Global Key Accounts at Alibaba. She explains what lessons she learned about cultural fluidity in business and society to IKNS Conversations That Matter, in places where different cultures meet, and how cultural intelligence can help.
Sharon Gai is an e-commerce author, keynote speaker, and former head of global key accounts at online retail giant Alibaba.
She says the way retail apps are designed in China is “fundamentally very different” from businesses in the West, which tend to focus more on search functionality.
“So their primary goal is to get you into an app very quickly, and then out of the app very quickly as well,” Gai said.
“In China, shopping apps are oriented around discoverability — how long can we keep you inside the app, how long can we entertain you, [and] how many new brands or products or trends or styles can you discover?”
Gai also said China’s huge domestic ecommerce market — which recorded almost $3 trillion in sales last year — enables platforms like TEMU and Shein to find the best formula for attracting new customers.
But while Chinese apps have been able to adapt their models to dominate US, UK and Australian markets, Western apps are struggling to achieve the same success bringing their business to China.
Last week, corporate social media giant LinkedIn announced it was shutting down its China service, InCareer, after pulling its main platform from China in 2021.
According to Gai, what sets Chinese and Western apps apart is how fast they are able to respond to the market’s needs
She said at Alibaba, the team motto “changing the motor of the aeroplane, when you’re flying in the air” means moving fast to address the market.
Gai says it’s this speed that has allowed Chinese companies to adapt to Western markets and become the preferred platforms for shoppers worldwide.
Shein, Temu and TikTok have become winning platforms on the internet, and for a good reason, says e-commerce expert Sharon Gaiat the Rest of the World. “Globally you have an economic slowdown, so a lot of consumers are also spending less per platform,”
The Rest of the World:
When Temu launched in September 2022, it also drew people in with low prices. In February, it broadcast an ad during the Super Bowl encouraging viewers to “shop like a billionaire” and fill their virtual carts without having to worry about the cost. That weekend, Temu racked 426,000 app downloads in the U.S., according to digital analytics company Sensor Tower.
“Globally you have an economic slowdown, so a lot of consumers are also spending less per platform,” Sharon Gai, the former head of global key accounts at Alibaba and author of Ecommerce Reimagined, told Rest of World. “When there’s a low-cost e-commerce platform that’s emerged out of nowhere, they are obviously going to like it.”
