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Introduction
Over the past 30 years, China has undergone drastic changes in its economy and society, which have marked the transformation of the country into an industrial reality and turned it into the most promising and fast growing developing nation (Reuters, 2015). This evidence symbolises an historical shift: China and the other emerging countries have eventually overcome developed countries, including the USA, Canada, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. The weight of western countries' GDP over the global GDP has indeed constantly shrunk in the past decades: it accounted for 60 per cent in the 1970s, just over 50 per cent in the early 2000s and is forecasted to drop to just one-third by 2025 (Jacques, 2012). On the contrary, developing nations are continuously increasing their economic size, causing the world's economic centre of gravity, calculated by weighting the national GDP over each nation's centre of gravity, to shift east at the fastest rate ever (Dobbs et al. , 2012). Among eastern countries, the dominant role played by China is mainly due to the economic growth boosted by the increasing adoption of technology. Today China is indeed the first e-commerce market in the world. With [euro]566 billion turnover from online B2C sales, it has overtaken USA's leadership (Forrester, 2015; eMarketer, 2015). Players such as Alibaba, the major Chinese e-commerce marketplace, are revolutionising the retailing industry, getting Chinese consumers progressively more acquainted to shop online (Winters, 2016). Such figures signal that China is probably the most attractive market at the moment and, due to the stagnation of the West, should be seen as an important investment opportunity by companies from all over the world. Moreover, e-commerce is possibly the most effective channel to reach China, due to the high penetration on total retail market (13 per cent) and the impressive average growth rate, which approximates +50 per cent year over year, according to the market research company Nielsen (2016). Chinese online shoppers are also inclined towards foreign products. A research by PayPal, an American company offering online payment services, reveals that over a quarter of online shoppers in China buy foreign goods via internet, not only from the USA and UK, but also from closer countries like Japan and Hong Kong (PayPal, 2014). More...