KUALA LUMPUR, March 19 (Bernama) -- 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, according to the 2017 Tmall Global Annual Consumers Report, jointly published recently by Tmall Global, the cross-border platform of Alibaba Group’s B2C marketplace Tmall.com, and CBNData, a big data-based business research and integrated marketing communications strategy platform.
 
The report showed that in 2017, Malaysia was among the fastest-growing exporters to China on Tmall Global, ranking seventh after niche countries[1] such as Greece, Chile, Poland, Hungary, Spain, Brazil, Austria and Denmark measured by year-on-year growth. The biggest group of purchasers of imported products from these countries were those born in the 1990s. The most popular Malaysian product categories are Food products, Coffee and Mother & Baby products such as baby strollers and prams.
 
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% in transaction volume and a market scale of RMB620 billion by 2019. 

[1]Niche countries are defined as countries outside of the Top 5 countries, whose sales as a percentage of Tmall Global's total sales is bigger than or equal to 0.02%. 

Other highlights of the report include:
 

• Tmall Global hosted more than 16,400 brands (a 13% increase from 2016) from 68 countries on its platform in 2017. Its penetration rate, calculated as a ratio of Tmall Global users to Alibaba’s total number of users, increased across the country, showing that more people can now afford imported products.

• Between 2015 and 2017, the total number of Tmall Global customers has tripled, with more than 30% of them spending more on the platform. Consumption upgrade will continue to be key for the growth of Tmall Global and cross-border e-commerce in China.

• In 2017, sales of products from countries other than the top three seller countries rose above 50% for the first time, reflecting more diverse product origins and showing that consumers were more willing to explore products from less conventional import countries. An interactive shopping experience has proven to be a key driver of sales conversion. Tmall Global offered product search, official recommendations, community recommendations and merchant-initiated communication to enhance the customer experience. Mobile live broadcast and celebrity recommendations have risen to become the newest and most effective ways of engaging customers and generating sales. 

• The top 5 countries selling cross-border to China in 2017 on Tmall Global are Japan, U.S., Australia, Germany, and Korea.

• In 2017, consumers aged between 18-27 (those who were born in the 1990s) accounted for nearly 50% of the total number of Tmall Global users and contributed nearly 40% of total sales. The three major motivations for this group to buy imported products are trying new things, aspiring to own luxury items and aging anxiety.