Customer’s buying behavior has changed in many countries. Digitalization has been claimed as one of the factors changing customers’ behavior.
Prof. Yang Sun from Northeastern University, China, shared about the buying behavior in China in a guest lecture session held by Bachelor of Management, SBM ITB. Through a lecture entitled “China’s Buying Behavior and Consumption Habit,” Yang Sun explained the changing of payment habits in China.
“In China, you may have found previously we used a cash payment method but nowadays most Chinese use the electronic payment,” said Yang Sun on Thursday (25/11/2021) through the zoom platform.
Prof. Yang Sun revealed that most people in China used cash as a payment method. However, this method has some disadvantages, such as easy to lose, a lot of fake money, easy to break, difficult to carry, and not being accepted outside of China.
The technology advancement is changing the customers’ habits in payment methods. Yang Sun revealed that most Chinese use electronic or digital payment methods nowadays. As a result, people can now purchase through devices and pay outside of China.
“If you want to travel to China, you do not need any cash; you just need to take your smartphone, then you can use Alipay (a payment platform),” added Yang Sun.
Digital payment has many advantages, such as being easy to carry, paying anywhere, being difficult to lose, and supporting all the apps. Even if you lost your smartphone, you still use digital payment as long as you remember your password.
However, Yang Sun highlighted that although digital payments have advantages, this payment method also has disadvantages, such as data privacy.
“If you use an electronic payment method, that means the company has your data about what you’re gonna pay,” spotlighted Yang Sun. As a result, many customers lose their personal information and privacy, so customers need to control their privacy.
