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lion people watched as Kim
Kardashian West opened a
mah-jongg set on screen,
displaying the domino-like
tiles of the popular Chinese
game.
“My friends play all the
time,” Kardashian said. “I’m
the only one who doesn’t
know how to play. ... Now I
have to learn.”
The Los Angeles-based
reality TV celebrity was
speaking on a livestream
channel run by Chinese in-
fluencer Viya, a spunky,
bright-eyed woman in her
30s with more than 9 million
followers on China’s e-com-
merce platform Taobao,
many of whom are die-hard
fans who call themselves
“women of Viya.”
Every night, the
livestream shopper hawks
cosmetics, purses, apparel
and snacks online, speed-
talking and showcasing
everything from Gucci
purses to Chinese spice
packages for sour fish soup.
This is what’s known
in China as “social com-
merce,” a full fusion of
social media and online
shopping. In China’s online
ecosystem, where e-pay-
ments, livestreaming and e-
commerce are fully inte-
grated — as if Amazon, In-
stagram and Paypal all ex-
isted on one platform —
influencers such as Kar-
dashian have become a ma-
jor driver of consumption.
That drive is ramping up
as Nov. 11, China’s “Singles’
Day” and the largest shop-
ping day of the year, ap-
proaches. It raked in more
than $30 billion on that day
last year on Alibaba’s two
online platforms, Taobao
and Tmall, alone. That’s five
times the online sales for
Black Friday in the United
States last year.
This year, Chinese sales
are expected to increase, de-
spite the Chinese economy’s
slowing growth rate, inflated
pork and other food prices,
and the impacts of the U.S.-
China trade war. But as Kar-
dashian’s appearance dem-
onstrates, American prod-
ucts — and celebrities — still
have cachet here despite
heightened tariffs and geo-
political tension.
One consulting company
found in a survey this year
that 78% of respondents
thought their consumption
of U.S. brands would be af-
fected by the trade war.
More than half of them said
“national loyalty” would be
their main reason for not
buying American brands.
But it seems unlikely that
such patriotic consumption
habits will materialize into a
broader boycott of U.S.
brands during Singles’ Day,
analysts said.
“Typically, they will say
something patriotic or na-
tionalistic,” Shaun Rein,
business analyst and found-
er of the China Market Re-
search Group, said of the
Chinese survey respond-
ents. “But when it comes to
actually buying something,
they don’t care about that so
much. They care more about
quality, price and value.”
Tmall Global, an online
shopping platform owned by
Alibaba, the internet giant
that also owns Taobao and
Alipay, announced Wednes-
day that it plans to recruit
and train 2,000 influencers in
a “Global Influencer Ecosys-
tem” to sell international
goods to Chinese consum-
ers. It already has 500
recruits from 10 countries,
Kardashian included.
There is a trend of rising
Chinese preference for Chi-
nese goods, Rein said, par-
ticularly in consumer elec-
tronics, where Huawei
mobile phones have taken
over Apple’s market share in
China. But patriotism still
isn’t as important as getting
a good deal when it comes to
consumer decisions, he said.
“If the product is not
comparable quality, they
won’t boycott. It’s just like
people still want to buy Can-
ada Goose, because there’s
nothing comparable in
China,” he said, referring to
the Canadian parka brand.
In a show of nationalism
similar to the criticisms lev-
ied against Houston Rock-
ets general manager Daryl
Morey and the NBA for his
comments supporting Hong
Kong last month, Chinese
social media users had
posted calls to boycott Can-
ada Goose after Huawei exe-
cutive Meng Wanzhou was
arrested in Canada last year.
But when mainland Chi-
na’s first Canada Goose
store opened in Beijing the
same month, shoppers lined
up out the door, waiting for
more than an hour in freez-
ing temperatures to buy the
$1,300 down jackets.
Chinese consumers are
still big fans of U.S. products.
Nike shoes and Supreme
tees fill the streets of Beijing
(though many are fakes).
Coach bags and Tesla cars
are status symbols for Chi-
nese consumers, who ac-
count for a third of spending
on luxury products world-
wide.
And celebrities are still
eager to sell to the Chinese,
despite the potential restric-
tions of political censorship.
Rihanna is marketing her
makeup brand Fenty Beauty
on TMall Global. Taylor
Swift is headlining the
countdown gala for Singles’
Day next week.
Like much of life in China,
online shopping is a cut-
throat competition. On
Viya’s channel, you can only
buy the products she adver-
tises in limited-quantity
waves. You grab a coupon
first, wait for her to count
down, then click. But click
fast: If you miss it, they sell
out.
Sometimes Viya begs the
producer to release just a
few thousand more pieces of
the product, available for
just a few seconds. She
ramps up the psychological
pressure. The clicks come
flying in.
Meanwhile, you watch
Viya demonstrate every-
thing she sells. She dabs lip-stick on her wrist. She chugs
a fiber supplement drink.
She steams buns in an oven,
fires up a vacuum cleaner,
wipes off makeup, slurps a
bowl of noodles; she can go
for six hours at a time with-
out missing a breath.
At her peak last month,
she sold $49.7 million of
goods in one day.
Kardashian appeared on
Viya’s livestream Thursday
to promote her signature
KKW fragrances, packaged
in bottles shaped like full red
or hot pink lips.
“Very sexy,” Viya said,
wiggling one bottle in front
of the screen.
She sold 150,000 bottles of
the perfume in a matter of
seconds, according to an Al-
ibaba report.
The two influencers ban-
tered, with Kardashian call-
ing in from abroad on a
screen within Viya’s screen.
Viya asked about Kardashi-
an’s favorite Chinese food.
Kardashian said her sister
Khloe was trying to learn
how to make dumplings.
Viya said she’d sent Kar-
dashian a gift: a mah-jongg
set embossed with Tmall
Global’s logo.
“Next time you come to
China, we can have hot pot
and play mah-jongg to-
gether,” Viya said through
an interpreter.
“I would love it,” Kar-
dashian smiled.Kardashian
makes her
pitch in China
Despite the trade war,
influencers like her
are a major driver of
online consumption.
By Alice Su
AMERICANproducts and celebrities, such as Kim Kardashian, still have cachet in China, where e-commerce
activity is ramping up in advance of “Singles’ Day” on Monday, the country’s biggest shopping day of the year.Dimitrios KambourisGetty ImagesMost Chinese
say the trade war
will affect their
consumption of
U.S. brands. But
it seems unlikely
that such patriotic
shopping habits
will materialize
into a broader
boycott of U.S.
brands.
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