After years of explosive growth, is China’s livestream shopping industry slowing down?
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2023
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In just a few short years, shopping by livestream has become all the rage in China. Think QVC online and on steroids. Influencers, brands and retailers have swarmed apps like WeChat and Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok — to hawk everything from makeup and clothes to cars and beef jerky. Viola Zhou and Caiwei Chen, reporters at Rest of World, have been writing about this $500 billion market and how it’s changing in a stagnant Chinese economy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Live stream shopping meets belt tightening in China. |
| 0:05.0 | From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech. |
| 0:08.0 | I'm Lily Dramale. Forget the mall, |
| 0:12.8 | shopping by live stream, has been |
| 0:15.0 | forget the mall, |
| 0:20.0 | forget Amazon. In just a few short years shopping by live stream has become all the rage in China. |
| 0:26.7 | Think QVC, online and on steroids. |
| 0:30.7 | Hello, hello, hello, hello. |
| 0:32.8 | Daja, Ha jao. steroids. Hello, hello, hello, D'Jha, |
| 0:33.8 | D'Ja ha, |
| 0:34.4 | D'Ja ha, |
| 0:35.1 | Wulel like, |
| 0:35.8 | or |
| 0:38.4 | influencers, brands and retailers have swarmed apps like We-Chat and Doe-In, |
| 0:42.4 | the Chinese version of Tik-Toc, to hock everything from makeup |
| 0:45.8 | and clothes to cars and beef jerky. |
| 0:48.9 | Vayola Joe and Cy Wei Chen, reporters at Rest of World, have been reporting on this $500 billion market |
| 0:55.8 | and how it's changing in a stagnant Chinese economy. |
| 0:59.5 | Saai Wei Chen started by explaining how live stream shopping took off an explosive fashion during the pandemic. |
| 1:06.3 | During that time China was under lockdown. |
| 1:08.9 | A lot of people were trapped at home. |
| 1:11.2 | They cannot go out. |
... |
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