GTrusted

Nowadays most consumer electronic products are made in China.    Naturally, you would think that going to China as a tourist to load up on electronics would make a lot of sense.  While there is definitely a lot more product selection in China made up of both Chinese and foreign brands, it's surprisingly painful and inconvenient to go shopping unless you are carrying a suitcase worth of cash.  Almost all retail stores selling electronics will only accept local Chinese credit cards which is obviously not carried by most foreigners.  Many stores will ask you to bring cash but even trying to get cash is a problem given the lack of ATM's that support foreign ATM cards and standard withdrawal limits. This is in stark contrast to the Chinese consumer retail experience.  With mobile pay, near instant delivery, and online promotions and discounts galore, Chinese consumers can feel like kings. This helps explains why there are very foreign tourists in many retails stores I visited even in popular tourist areas.  Perhaps with so many years of strong economic growth, Chinese retail and payment systems were happy enough just to service only Chinese consumers getting richer by the day.  However nowadays bricks and motor retail are losing market share rapidly to online retail- catering to all the foreign tourists coming to China would be a good way to counteract this trend.  Retail stores in Japan have done a much better job at making it easy for foreign tourists to buy their products. Here are some shots of the shopping scene at Buynow in Shanghai Pudong Ba Bai Ban Area.  The store traffic was light for a weekend and it didn't seem like the store was well maintained. Suning, another electronics store in the Shanghai Pudong Ba Bai Ban area, seemed more up to the times with better presentation and more traffic.  It was great to see so many Chinese and foreign brands represented and Chinese consumers are fortunate to have so many brand choices. Huawei's Mate 8 was heavily promoted everywhere. There aren't a lot of smart watches or fitness trackers but Huwei's Android based Huawei Watch advertising is also everywhere. Despite my best attempts, I couldn't buy any products in these stores with a non-Chinese credit card.  For foreign tourists, these stores are great for window shopping but not much else.