America’s internet in many ways is aging more quickly and it never really had a chance to really influence our culture beyond being a remake of mid-Century Television. When one looks at what made Web 1.0 so successful, it was the ecommerce aspects. Companies such as Amazon and Ebay managed to survive the Dot Com bubble bursting in early 2000. They were able to get through this stormy time because they had a business model which wasn’t offering the sky to investors and customers; they were offering a place to sell and buy products through electronic means. This was a successful model which was more sustainable than other companies that offering a cyberspace which was more talk than actual reality as seen by the stock prices in that age.
China was still in an economic transition. Many people did not own cars and many still relied on bicycles. Ecommerce was something one saw in the trendy cities such as Shanghai, which was always more Western in comparison to other cities in China. However, China’s government has actively been encouraging Ecommerce while America’s government has been rather hands off on the internet. This means that China has been reaching almost 50% of Ecommerce having market share in retail space, while America is only at 16% in market share of retail sales.
Seeing that shows you that sometimes being online can give you a myopic world view. One has to understand many people do not do alot of research on the internet. For many, going on Amazon is ecommerce. The internet has a size that is not seen in real life and yet people treat it more like a shopping mall where you only have a small number of stores available to you. Amazon was once the shopping mall on the internet. Now, China is starting to bring Ecommerce brands such as Temu, Shein, and Aliexpress to the United States. Even TikTok now has a shop in the USA.
These Chinese Ecommerce companies have gained much market share in America.
Why is that? This is a question that is asked by many who are analyze ecommerce in the United States.
The Chinese ecommerce experience is more sophisticated in comparison to that in America, even though America was the country that had the most exposure to it in the 1990s.
The times have been changing and China’s ecommerce experience is more sophisticated in comparison.
In China, the usage of drones for delivery is actually a part of daily life in the top tier cities in the nation. In America, they have been talking about starting such services but they are slow in the rollout and the nation too spread out for such services to useful outside the big cities.
Mobile commerce in China is also much more part of the culture in the nation. Many apps such as Wechat, allow for Chinese youth to buy items easily from social media, without needing to go on separate apps.
Another important element is delivery times in China. With China’s huge cities and dense population, delivery systems can more easily bring items to one’s house in a reasonable amount of time, allowing for greater integration of ecommerce into the culture. While America may have been the hare, China was the tortoise here.
American culture in many ways is weighed down by its past. Because of the length of its dominance in auto manufacturing and its retail centric car culture, it is having issues with adapting to China’s rise in these areas. America did begin with ecommerce eagerly and but many of the more tech shy people in the country were not willing to adopt it with the same attitude as the Chinese.
What must change for us to adopt Ecommerce at the same amounts as the Chinese?
China just simply has a more urban culture than America. While America may have more urbanites than China, American urban culture is no longer as vibrant as it once was. Our culture is too dependent on the car and it is clearly having effect on our mental health as well as our spirituality. We are unable to have communities that are real anymore, especially in the suburban areas.
Even on American ecommerce sites such as Etsy, which are made in reaction to Amazon’s globalizing mentality, are now being flooded with stores which are deceiving users. I have had a couple times on the site where a seller was shipping from China. It is clear that China is getting a big advantage here in ecommerce only a couple years after Temu came into the United States.
In order to compete with China in ecommerce, we need to have a real urban culture again. Suburbanization was nice but it is time we start paying attention to our cities.
Ecommerce is the future of retail in many respects, and America needs to change to be able compete with China.
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