With China’s seasonal mid-Autumn festival seafood sales rush approaching, seafood importers should ditch distributors and tap into China's online shopping craze, according to a veteran Chinese seafood marketing executive. Sales of seafood online surged by 400 percent year on year in 2012 in mainland China, according to Fan Xubing, CEO at Beijing Seabridge Marketing, a consultancy advising firm shipping seafood to China.
Currently delivering an online marketing campaign on a Beijing-focused retailer for Canadian coldwater shrimp, Seabridge has switched away from traditional retail channels to target shoppers via online retailers and e-malls such as Taobao, explained Fan.
“People shopping online are more educated and more affluent, so it makes sales more efficient,” he added. Fan has been assisting cold water shrimp and lobster importers get their products onto websites like Jindong as well as setting up shops on Taobao and Tmall, platforms popular with multiple independent retailers who set up online stores on the portals.
Seabridge assists clients with Chinese-language online advertising, to push sales and awareness. Others should follow the lead of Canada’s lobster exporters, said Fan, who believes many importers are unfamiliar with the power of online retailing in China.
“If exporters of U.K. and Irish crab for instance were willing to invest in marketing and an online sales presence they would be successful in China,” said Fan, pointing to the marketing-driven success of Norwegian salmon sales (currently in a rut due to China’s offense at a the 2011 Nobel peace prize). “Exporters can now take a shorter route to success by bypassing the traditional stores.”
Opportunities have arisen with the surge in local prices, making imports an affordable option, particularly at the high end of the seafood market. Fan points to local demand for hairy crabs, promoted as a delicacy in China. Imported wild brown crabs are currently sold for CNY 100 (USD 16.34, EUR 12.32) per 500 grams in Beijing seafood markets, whereas the renowned Yangcheng Lake sells at CNY 250 (USD 41, EUR 31) to CNY 400 (USD 65, EUR 49) per 500 grams, said Fan.
“Imports usually taste better than the local, farmed crabs and the price is better but not everyone in China knows this, so marketing is essential,” said Fan.
Supermarkets currently dominate China’s grocery retail landscape with a market share of around 44 percent, according to Euromonitor. Although this dominance is likely to continue, Euromonitor estimates that online food and drink will also power ahead from USD 485.6 million (EUR 366 million) in 2011 to USD 3.1 billion (EUR 2.4 billion) in annual sales in 2016.
High logistics costs and weak transport infrastructure pose hurdles for retail and distribution companies in China, particularly those servicing lower-tiered cities. While online shopping is a popular option for consumers in the country’s traffic-clogged cities, the surge in orders generated by online retailing has overwhelmed China’s express delivery companies — and increased costs for online retailers. Some online retailers have opted to establish their own express delivery services, though there are no examples of a seafood-focused online retailer with delivery capacity.
Retail spending in China is powered by growth in per capita disposable income of urban households, which reached CNY 21,810 (USD 3,564/EUR 2,687) in 2011, up by 14.1 percent year-over-year in nominal terms and was 2.8 percentage points (ppt) higher than in 2010. The per capita net income of rural households amounted to CNY 6,977 (USD 1,140/EUR 859) in 2011; the nominal growth was 17.9 percent, outpacing the growth of per capita disposable income of urban households. Urbanization in China means some of these rural consumers will likely ultimately be drawn into the urban consumer category.
Meanwhile, one of China’s retailing challenges is trying to extend retailing and cold-chain logistics to the vast western regions, currently experiencing stronger economic growth than the rest of the country due to preferential policies. Suppliers meanwhile like the independence afforded by online retail as opposed to traditional large-scale retailers that have been accused of levying cumbersome slotting and marketing charges on suppliers.
