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| C2C market thrives. |
A report from the iReach Consulting Group, a Mainland marketing firm, says online shopping in Shanghai achieved a number of firsts last year. For a start it led all cities on the Mainland with a record annual turnover of Rmb16 billion and per capita annual spending of Rmb2,200.
iReach also pointed out that the Mainland had 120 million registered online shoppers in 2008, up 185% year-on-year. Among them, 80 million users actually used the service for shopping, showing a rapid increase of 4.5% compared to 2007.
There are currently over seven million registered online shoppers in Shanghai, about 67% of whom have actually shopped online. Annual spending of these online shoppers is Rmb2,200 per person.
Online shoppers are known as the "online shopping generation" in China. The iReach report has it that online shoppers are mostly young, with people aged between 16 and 32, accounting for 83% of registered accounts. The ratio of male shoppers is 10 percentage points higher than female shoppers. Men love to buy electronic products and tend to spend more than women.
Continuous monitoring by iReach showed a stable C2C market in 2008, with taobao.com having a market share of over 80%. The new platform of eachnet.com also began to show its integrated effect, with market share showing an increase for the first time since 2003. The turnover and market share of paipai.com also steadily increased.
Since B2C commerce gives people an impression of better quality assurance, Shanghai shoppers much prefer B2C to C2C than netizens in other cities.
People of the "online shopping generation" are active shoppers who are prone to impulse buying, but they are inclined to choose stricter and more transparent credit systems for payment purposes in an indirect form of transaction like online shopping.
What are the things that the "online shopping generation" loves to buy? The report cited as example taobao.com, the largest online seller. The 15 best selling categories of products in terms of sales volume on this online shopping website are clothing (140 million items), mobile phones (13.66 million units), cosmetics (71.48 million items), household goods (47.39 million items) and outdoor sports goods (32.22 million items).
Taobao.com also has many shoppers that look for and purchase PC and peripherals (14.48 million items), jewellery (30.24 million items), notebook computers (11.8 million units), small home appliances (13.28 million items), store value cards (31.3 million cards), food and health care products (23.46 million items), maternity and infant products (31.78 million items) and cameras and video cameras (6.12 million items).
iReach predicts that online shopping will grow in popularity among Internet users and that online shoppers will account for more than 40% of Internet users by 2010.
from Joan Huang, Shanghai Office
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