中国在零售业的全球扩张：高管们需要知道什么

Chinese e-commerce players are outgrowing theirdomestic market—as Singles Day 2025 is set to show. By Weiwen Han, Melanie Sanders, Derek Deng, and David Yang Acknowledgment The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Emma Gu to this brief. China’s Global Push in Retail: What Executives Need to K now At a Glance In Bain’s third Retail Holiday Newsletter of 2025, we preview the world’s biggest shoppingfestival, Singles Day, which is becoming more international amid China’s economic slowdown. Its cross-border expansion is part of a global push that has seen Chinese retailers build strongpositions in Southeast Asia and a foothold in the US, aided by disruptive capabilities. However, China’s e-commerce giants must now contend with tightening global regulation,formidable incumbents, and deep-lying differences in how some nations shop. Singles Day has a decidedly international flavor this year at Taobao. The Alibaba-owned e-commerceplatform is running simultaneous Singles Day promotions in 20 countries—a noteworthy expansion Taobao’s move is just one sign of the increasing globalization of Chinese e-commerce—a trend thatreaches well beyond promotional set pieces such as Singles Day, which reaches a peak on November 11, Consider Southeast Asia. In Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines, Chinese-owned players—led byAlibaba’s Lazada and ByteDance’s TikTok Shop—account for as much as half of business-to-consumere-commerce(see Figure 1). This strong position has been built up through a combination of organic Progress has been made by Chinese retailers in other regions, too. In Latin America, the Middle East,and some parts of Europe, the likes of AliExpress (Alibaba’s global third-party marketplace), Shein,and Temu (part of PDD Holdings, which also owns the Pinduoduo platform in China) have established This international expansion has been fueled by China’s preeminence in e-commerce and the speedwith which the domestic market continues to evolve. Although South Korea’s e-commerce penetrationis higher than China’s, its domestic market is a fraction of the size(see Figure 2). Only the US comes Crucially, the dizzying progression of the Chinese domestic market—from old-school e-commerce towardnew frontiers of social media–driven retail and near-instant fulfillment—has given Chinese players China’s Global Push in Retail: What Executives Need to K now China’s Global Push in Retail: What Executives Need to K now These homegrown capabilities include: •rapid product innovation,exemplified by Shein’s “test and react” approach, in which clothing designs •creative demand generation,showcased in TikTok’s use of must-watch content to spur impulse •accelerated fulfilment,honed in a domestic market where delivery times are increasingly a matter •visionary expansion of digital ecosystemsthat both enriches the customer experience and opens • skillful use of artificial intelligencein applications such as Temu’s recommendation engine, However, for all their progress so far, Chinese e-commerce groups now face challenges that will makethe next phase of their global expansion both more important and harder to achieve—as this year’s China’s Global Push in Retail: What Executives Need to K now Singles Day or Singles Month? Known for deep discounts from a wide range of retailers on everything from beauty products to electronicgadgets, clothing, pet care, and furniture, the Singles Day festival is easily the biggest shopping event in Singles Day has developed a strong international component since it was launched in 2009, featuringprominent marketing campaigns and promotions in other parts of Asia. Last year, for instance, Alibaba Nevertheless, Singles Day’s once-stellar growth has been maturing for several years, held back byincreased competition from a proliferation of rival sales events, the difficulty of increasing Chinese The event has also succumbed to a certain middle-age spread—in its duration, at least. Last year, thepromotional period for Singles Day more than doubled from 11 days to 28 days. The headline revenuemetric for the festival, gross merchandise value (GMV), duly rose 27% to RMB 1.442 trillion in 2024, On one level, the 27% growth rate is a throwback to the punchy 35% compound annual growth that SinglesDay achieved between 2015 and 2019. However, the 2024 surge was massively inflated by the expansion Figure 3:Last year, Singles Day sales were artificially boosted by the festival’s China’s Global Push in Retail: What Executives Need to K now of the festival period: Average GMV per promotion day fell by half, even with the early impactof government economic stimulus measures offering trade-in subsidies for home appliances, How will Singles Day sales turn out this year? On one level, the festival may continue to benefit fromstimulus subsidies in 2025. The ongoing consumer incentives boosted sales during this year’s 618 festival,helping to increase GMV by 15.2% to RMB 856 billion,