Media Updates, page-9353

I think it is partly about supply but also about trust and the shopping experience. The daigou end customers place a premium on having a personal shopper working on their behalf. They can trust the product as it is their proxy making the purchase, sometimes even filming themselves in Woolies buying it, sends the Woolies receipt, and so on. And they can request that person to go and get all the other luxury items they want as well.

The English label product can be bought through CBEC channels, but there's a degree of hysteria about fake products etc. and no personalised connection/product recommendations, which seems to be something that people are prepared to pay for.

If the main source of revenue was through product that they personally took back themselves, I don't think that would have been as viable for student daigou to earn an income (simply because of the amount of travel that would have been needed). Tourists definitely, but I think students would have been shipping product before. Just one student can have a very large network of potential customers through extended family, friends and acquaintances. And people's willingness to pay is likely higher when it is someone they know shopping on their behalf. Prior to COVID a lot of students were also working as shoppers on behalf of the larger corporate daigou operators, who also ship the product in bulk.