With more and more Chinese embracing ecommerce, it is time for a large number of multinational companies to wake up from their deep slumber and understand the uniqueness of the Chinese market that is if they are interested in knowing how to sell online in China. This is because China is by far the largest untapped market for a variety of online businesses.

The Stats

Do you know that there are close to 450 million internet users in China, which is twice as much as Japan and the United States combined. The best part is on an average the Chinese spend close to three hours online everyday. Just imagine the number of people who are glued to blogs, games, mobile applications and ecommerce sites. Put together, the Chinese spend around one billion hours everyday online, which is twice as much as the US.

Until now, most western multinationals have not been able to get into the Chinese market. This is because there are many Chinese companies which actually dominate a rapidly growing ecommerce industry in China.

Put simply, the Chinese have been able to out think and out smart most western internet based multinational companies. Even the consumer product organizations as well as the services based companies have missed out on the action.

Ready Market

The Chinese market is such that today there are literally millions of people who are readily accepting online shopping. This means it is time for most of the western organizations to think beyond regular advertising campaigns. In order to succeed in the Chinese market, most western companies have to stop assuming that what may have worked in the western markets will work in the Chinese market. It is time they really understood how the Chinese use the internet and feel the pulse of a huge online consumer base.

Why

If you want to know how to sell online in China, you should first understand why the local Chinese companies succeeded. This was because most Chinese internet companies understood the pulse of their own people. They understood the habits of their consumers so much so that today there are quite a few companies that have a market capitalization worth billions of dollars and which puts these companies ahead of most internet companies looking to break into the Chinese market.

The Difference

In order to know how to sell online in China, it is important to understand some of the crucial differences between the Chinese markets and other western markets. Consider this – most consumers in the US, Japan, the EU countries and other nations make use of the internet either for searching information or for email purposes.

However, in China, close to 87% of the users use internet to communicate online via instant messaging. Similarly, more than 80% of the users also use the internet for downloading movies and music, in comparison to 23% in Japan and 38% in the US.

Think Like The Chinese

If the western multinationals want to succeed in the Chinese market, they have to start thinking like the Chinese do and develop a deep understanding of how the Chinese interact on the web and come up with new and innovative products and services that meet the requirements of an evolving market.

Another option to sell online in China is to hire local Chinese talent and empower them to run media campaigns that have Chinese flavor.

When you can become a Roman when in Rome, why not a Chinese when in China?