American Amazon launched a Chinese version of its Japanese web shop, hoping to capture part of the Chinese market currently dominated by the Chinese Alibaba Group.
Cheaper shipping
It is no surprise it chose to translate its Japanese website into Chinese, because plenty of Chinese consumers are looking for “Made in Japan” products. Chinese items have gotten a bad reputation recently following several scandals.
Not only did Amazon translate the site into Chinese, it also increased the number of items people can order from Japan and ship to China. It also lowered its shipping costs, making it ever more interesting for Chinese customers to shop with Amazon Japan. It costs three times as much to ship from Japan to Australia than it does to ship from Japan to China.
Amazon has been trying to capture a part of the Chinese market for a while. It has its own Chinese web shop, mainly filled with local items, and even a Tmall.com web shop, but it is still very difficult to break Alibaba’s hold on the country.
