Amazon to up the ante with Black Friday sales

Yang Xiaoxing, a 27-year-old white-collar worker in Beijing, said she is getting ready to shop for Black Friday. "I shopped mainly for my parents on Nov 11. Most of the foreign brands I was looking for haven't opened stores on Tmall Global. So I will certainly try my luck on Black Friday sales to see if I can grab some good cross－border deals," she said.

Cross-border shopping on the rise

About one-third of China's online shoppers made cross-border purchases this year, a new report said on Wednesday.

The joint research released by PayPal Holdings Inc, a United States company which operates a global online payments system, and Ipsos, the Paris-based market research company, said that about 35 percent of the online shoppers in China have made cross-border transactions this year.

The second global cross-border commerce report from the two companies said that 26 percent of Chinese online shoppers made cross-border purchases in 2014.

Despite the rapid growth in cross-border shopping in China, Ireland, Austria and Israel are the most active cross-border shoppers with 86 percent, 85 percent and 79 percent, respectively, of online shoppers having made cross-border purchases in the past 12 months.

The research, which investigated the online and cross-border shopping habits of more than 23,200 consumers in 29 countries, showed that China's overall online shopping population seems to be approaching its peak, with 81 percent of the online adults making purchases in the past 12 months, compared with 80 percent in 2014.

Among all the respondents, shoppers from China were the most mobile savvy in cross-border shopping. About 34 percent of the Chinese online shoppers made purchases via mobile devices in the past 12 months compared with a global average of 16 percent.