The term New Retail was introduced by Jack Ma in 2016 to describe a new kind of retail that was solidifying its hold in China and that Alibaba was going to dedicate itself to.
It merges the consumer experience so that people can go to a physical store, use QR codes to check where a product was made or where food was grown, buy items missing from the store online, have the items in their basket automatically checked out and deducted from an online payment system, and then have the items they bought online delivered so that they arrive at the shopper’s home around the same time they do.
Now we see that the system developed in China are changing global commerce. During a time of heightened trade tensions, there’s never been a greater demand to understand China’s market, what it demands, how it’s changing, how it operates and where it’s going.