Own the Future: 50 Ways to Win from The Boston Consulting Group

Chapter 14

China's Digital Generations 3.0: The Online Empire

David C. Michael, Christoph Nettesheim, and Yvonne Zhou

China may still be classified as an emerging market, but on the Internet it has arrived. It already has one of the largest online retail markets in the world at the time of writing, with more online shoppers than any other market, including the United States.

Although China is a huge online market, it is not an easy one. Consumers are rapidly gaining sophistication, but they have their own patterns of online consumption and behavior that are different from those of consumers in the West. Companies that want to succeed in China's consumer market must understand both these new consumers and their rapidly evolving digital lifestyles. They also need to learn how to reach, sell to, and retain these consumers as they create the world's most important consumer market of the future.

A Massive Mass Medium

Increasingly, the Internet is becoming a staple in the everyday life of Chinese consumers across a wide spectrum of lifestyles and incomes. In fact, the Internet has spread so widely and so quickly that two new groups can now be considered legitimate Internet market segments: seniors (defined as individuals aged 51 and older) and rural residents.

Rural residents have joined in the online world at an accelerating pace and are expected to join the urban senior segment as the fastest-growing segments in China's online world.

As of 2011, Chinese consumers spent 1.9 billion ...