GMV of social e-commerce industry China 2015-2025

In 2023, the gross merchandise volume (GMV) of China's social commerce sector reached approximately 3.42 trillion yuan, increasing by around 19.7 percent compared to the previous year. China's social commerce sector has been proliferating over the past decade. 

Social media as a new marketing and sales channel

Social commerce is defined as a new type of e-commerce model based on social networking. Commodities were advertised, promoted, or sold on social media platforms.

As the millennials took over the workforce and became the largest group of social commerce users in China, the exponential surge of social e-commerce was to no one’s surprise. From 2015 to 2023, the gross merchandise volume of China’s social commerce market grew by more than 712 times.

In 2022, China recorded over a billion social media users. The most popular social networking platform among Chinese, WeChat, generated a global in-app purchase revenue of approximately more than 71 million U.S. dollars in 2023. 



Sharing and buying

For increasing customer engagement, many social commerce platforms allow their users to share links with their friends for securing a better price. More than 95 percent of young Pinduoduo users said that they had purchased the items their friends shared with them before.

Social media users in China not only decided what to buy by following the recommendations from their friends but also the endorsement of KOLs (influencers). According to a survey, most of the followers would purchase the products promoted by an influencer.