[photopress:shopping.jpg,full,alignright]Retail shopping online is moving forward in China. Perhaps this aspect of Internet use has been more prominent in other countries but China is galloping to catch up.
There are different types of shopping on the Internet and, of course, they have their own jargon: B2B (Business to Business),B2C (Business to Customer) and C2C (Customer to Customer.)
Many online shoppers now search for bargains on such C2C websites as http://www.taobao.com and ebay.com.cn. On offer are goods available only online and goods that, at least appear to be cheaper online than offline.
The top three types of products with the largest online consumption volume are clothes and bags, 36.6%; IT products, 36.1%;digital products, 4.2%.
Surveys suggest 37.9% of netizens state they will do shopping through C2C websites in the coming year. Another 43.1% say they are likely to go shopping online. But a worrying 11.6% say they will not shop online due to problems with security during the shopping process.
In March 9, 2006, eBay.com.cn signed a cooperation agreement with Yongle Household Electronic Appliance Store, one of the three largest household appliance chain retailers, which marked the first step of eBay.com.cn towards B2C.
Relying on http://www.taobao.com, Alibaba.com formally opened the Taobao Shopping Mall, a wholly new form of B2C. eBay.com.cn also announced that it would start its B2C business with flagship stores.
How big is the market? Best estimates are that the trading volume will have reached RMB46 billion by 2010 and there will be 38 million B2C shoppers in 2008.
Source: China Economic Net