Quality Concerns Drive Cross-Border Commerce in China

Cross-border digital shopping is popular in many countries around the world, and depending on where they are, digital shoppers make purchases from abroad for a variety of reasons. In China, research suggests quality issues are driving digital buyers to look elsewhere.

The China Internet Network and Information Center (CNNIC) found in December 2014 that cross-border shopping is a fairly niche activity in China. Only around 5% of digital buyers had made a purchase from abroad in the past six months.

Among those who had, the leading reason was quality assurance. Nearly two-thirds of cross-border buyers thought foreign merchants could assure better quality. And almost as many respondents said that there were too many counterfeit goods in China to buy online domestically.

Both responses were more common than citing cost.

Most digital buyers who made cross-border purchases did so from US firms, followed by retailers in South Korea and Japan.

Earlier research, conducted by PayPal in October 2014, found that 74% of digital buyers in China purchased 100% of their ecommerce items domestically. The rest had a varying mix of cross-border and domestic shopping, and shopped abroad most often for apparel and accessories (45%), cosmetics (38%) and consumer electronics (31%).