The Chinese shopping app Temu has gained immense popularity worldwide, enticing customers with incredibly low prices for products shipped directly from China.
Here are five points on Chinese shopping app Temu:
According to Politico, Temu is a Western offshoot of one of China's biggest e-commerce platforms, Pinduoduo, selling heavily discounted products like sneakers, kids' toys, and surveillance cameras, most often shipped from China to Western markets.
Temu expanded its operations to Western countries in the last year, starting with the United States in the fall of 2022 and then over a dozen EU countries, including Belgium, France, and Germany, in April 2023.
According to SBS News, shopping platform Temu's popularity has skyrocketed since launch. The total value of products sold went from $4.7 million in September last year to $627 million in April.
Gamified experiences, lightning deals and limited-time offers, discounts and free shipping, a loyalty program, search engine marketing, and an AI-powered promotional strategy are the sales promotion tactics for this popular online platform.
But amid the booming success of Temu, experts have flagged concerns about privacy and cybersecurity. "It's nearly impossible to guarantee that data won't end up in China," Lindsay Gorman, head of the German Marshall Fund's technology and geopolitics team, told German news outlet DW."Chinese platforms have just been more brazen about snooping on users," she further said.
