Chinese etailing giant Alibaba says it will launch 11 ‘country pavilions’ on its Tmall Global online marketplace to boost cross-border eCommerce trade.
At the same time, Alibaba’s group-buying platform, Juhuasuan, is joining the company’s cross-border drive. Alibaba has entered into partnerships with the embassies of 26 countries on marketing and promotion of their country’s products via Juhuasuan.
On Tmall Global, 11 countries – the US, New Zealand, Australia, Switzerland, France, Britain, Spain, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Turkey are working to build out their pavilions – described as “curated, vertical shopping sites designed to promote popular products and authentic specialties from selected SMEs from each country”, as well as provide travel and cultural information to China’s online shoppers.
South Korea’s government became the first country to launch an official pavilion on Alibaba’s Tmall.com in May.
“Alibaba Group has been incubating this country pavilion project for some time now,” said Jeff Zhang, president of China retail marketplaces for Alibaba Group, calling the 11 sites launched this week as the “first fruit of this ongoing project to make global trade easier.”
Merchants that are already selling on Tmall.com and Tmall Global marketplaces can opt to join their country’s pavilion if they meet certain requirements, according to Alibaba.
Alibaba Group in recent months has been aggressively promoting the growth of cross-border online shopping with government officials and business leaders around the world. Earlier this month, Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma visited the US to talk about Alibaba’s international strategy and how small businesses can use the Web to sell directly to Chinese consumers, who are increasingly looking for high quality, imported products.
According to a recent report on cross-border eCommerce by Accenture, China is expected to become the world’s biggest cross-border B2C market by 2020.
Meanwhile, the companies joining the Juhuasuan initiative are the US, Canada, Russia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Italy, Australia, Thailand, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Greece, Mexico, Singapore, Finland, Indonesia, Norway, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Costa Rica, Brazil, Chile, Nepal, Israel, South Africa, and Malaysia.
First published on Alizila, the Alibaba-funded independent news network.
