LEARNING FROM EBAY’S FAILURE IN CHINA

Internationalisation is a level that most companies hope to achieve amidst its plans of expansion. Being a global player in ones area of expertise is regarded as the prime point when it comes to buying and selling. Sometimes this expansion doesn’t work too well for some companies no matter how successful they are in their home countries. In this post, I’ll be sharing a few mistakes made by EBay which led them to fail in China, and how other companies can learn from their experience.

1. Having a partnership with a strong local Chinese brand. This can be established as a mode of entry since little to no hands on knowledge has been achieved. By collaborating with an already existing brand, this gives the company a boost as compared to other brands who did not.

2. Using a catchy and meaning Chinese name. There have been a lot of instances where translations made from English to Mandarin ended up being complete fails. Taobao, the competitor of Ebay in the early 2000's mean digging for treasure and this name resonated a lot with the Chinese as such played a major role in the brand recollection of the company.

3. Hiring local leadership and establishing a separate service based in China. Setting up a company in China is no small feat and having a local team that oversees activities is an essential step in being successful. The language and cultural barriers are easier bridged that when there is only one base in America as in the case of Ebay.

https://www.marketingtochina.com/ebay-failed-china/

https://medium.com/@alexlee611/a-case-study-on-international-expansion-how-ebay-failed-in-china-d762d94b9f4b

Identity theft could destroy your life

             
               Identity theft is not a new thing these days. Looking at the bar chart above, we know that the cases of identity theft are increasing year by year although there were a slight drop from 2016 to 2017. But this does not mean that hackers and criminals are not disrupting the lives of others. Last year itself, there were more Social Security numbers being exposed compared to the credit card numbers.
                Due to the rapid growth of e-commerce, many companies are storing their customers' personal information which may be hacked by certain parties. This can allow customers exposed to privacy violations which they might not be aware of. Eventually this is when the data breach takes place and many cases of identity theft and cyber crime pops out.
                The more sophisticated the technology, more and more people are taking their chances of destroying other people's life. They are able to use these victims cash for their own benefits such as personal gain or to fund a criminal activity. There are many cases like this that we may have read.
                The tendency to create more crimes through identity thefts are also easier basically due to the vast knowledge and technology savvy users. People are using the internet not for positive things anymore. They are more inclined to do the bad things to harm people who they might not even have relationships or contact with. All these people are strangers to each other but yet this identity theft is becoming popular.
     
https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-identity-theft-and-cybercrime

TRENDS IN CHINA'S E-COMMERCE LANDSCAPE

When it comes to world's E-Commerce top players, China comes to the minds of most people - if not everyone. The reasons for China rising to the top differ, from foresight, hard work, comic positioning, trends, etc. In this blog post, five major trade that project China higher and higher are discussed.

To begin the list of trends China is currently on, we have E-commerce shopping festivals. These are highly popular and have now been regarded as a global phenomenon- specifically the 11/11 sale which as the same implies, happens yearly on the 11th of November. According to Nielson China, which is a global measurement and data analytics company, 79% of consumers who responded to their survey said they planned to participate in this years 11/11 sale.

The next trend is consumption upgrade. This simply means a rise in the preference and taste of middle to upper class consumers. They now look for quality in goods and some of these standards of goods are not available domestically. Sometimes even the designs of the packaging are what attract these customers as well as their safety and environmental designs.

Thirdly, we have new retail. This is where there is a merger between offline (brick and mortar) and online. So instead of there being competition, there is collaboration. New retail was a term brought about my Jack Ma back in 2016 and had since become a common term used within the e-commerce landscape.

Lastly, there is digital payment. Having had a hands on experience from visiting China, I witnessed the real deal of a cashless society. From the street vendors to the plush high-end stalls, payments are made through the touch of a screen. Transactions are done from the mobile phone, even when using vending machines. Alipay and Wechat are the two driving forces behind this cashless society with others also on the rise.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/china-ecommerce-what-we-can-learn/