ACBC Insights Centre

Daigou, pronounced 'dye-go', means 'buying on behalf of', and is an e-commerce channel between mainland Chinese buyers and overseas professional shoppers. This network of shoppers buy goods in New Zealand or Australia which may be expensive, hard to find or unavailable in China. Categories like mother and baby, beauty, high-end food and beverage and nutraceuticals may make their way from New Zealand supermarket or pharmacy shelves to China via Daigou, sometimes without the brand owners being aware of the scale of the movement. Almost all purchases are mediated by social media or e-commerce platforms, which make a relationship driven channel viable over long distances and with large numbers of buyers. A lot of Daigou trading takes place via WeChat, China’s largest social media platform. WeChat includes Facebook and Twitter-like functions, and also features online stores and direct payments between users. WeChat’s importance as a social media platform in China makes it an ideal place for part-time and full-time Daigou to do business with friends, family and other contacts. Daigou also establish their own personal stores on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao. Consumers can browse, shop and review individual sellers on these platforms.

WeChat Subscription Account / 订阅号 subscription account wechat features Content centric consumer activation and interaction. Limited features, but best content reach 1 push articles per day No push notifications to users, only a red dot beside the thumbnail Piling up in “subscription ghetto” Content is searchable on Sogou search engine (搜狗) Original content can be certified and re-shared by other accounts with mention to the original publisher Revenue from reader “tips” and display ads on articles Only frequently read account appear on the top of Subscription screen WeChat Service Account / 服务号 ? service account wechat capabilities features 4 push articles per month (up to 8 eight articles each time) Push notifications send to users as regular chats Appears as how regular friend chats display Content not searchable on Sogou search engine (搜狗) There are more API and JS-SDK access that gives more flexibility to customized development. Eg.: native eCommerce features (shops, coupons and loyalty programs), WeChat login, WeChat payment, QR code tracking, follower input processing, geo-localization WeChat Enterprise Account / “WeChat Work” – 企业号 ? entreprise account wechat capabilities features Office automation system embedded in WeChat and limited access for internal use No limit for push articles Push notifications sent to the users as regular chat Appears as how regular chats display Other than API provided to the service account, there is more office-automation-related API access such as to clock in, and to issue fapiao. It’s been gradually updated to a separate application named WeChat Work (but also allowed to connect with Wechat)