In 2022, the market size of the social commerce sector in China reached approximately 2.8 trillion yuan, increasing by around nine percent compared to the previous year. China’s social commerce sector has seen steady growth over the past years.
Social media as a new marketing and sales channel
Social commerce is defined as a new type of e-commerce model based on social networking. Commodities were advertised, promoted, or sold on social media platforms.
As the millennials took over the workforce and became the largest group of online shoppers in China, the exponential surge of social e-commerce was to no one’s surprise. From 2014 to 2021, the gross merchandise volume of China’s social commerce market grew by more than 25 times.
In 2021, China recorded nearly a billion active social network users. The most popular social networking platform among Chinese, WeChat, was estimated to generate a sales value of approximately more than 13 trillion yuan through its e-commerce business by 2023.
Sharing and buying
For increasing customer engagement, many social commerce platforms allow their users to share links with their friends for securing a better price. More than 95 percent of young Pinduoduo users said that they had purchased the items their friends shared with them before.
Social media users in China not only decided what to buy by following the recommendations from their friends but also the endorsement of KOLs (influencers). Respectively, 38 percent and 33 percent of WeChat users had purchased beauty and clothing products following the recommendations of an influencer.
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