Deloitte’s annual Global Powers of Retailing report identifies the 250 largest retailers around the world. JD.com ranks on top of all Chinese companies in the Top 250 retailers list.

14 Chinese companies including China and Hong Kong who made it to the top 250 list include:

• JD.com, 36
• Suning Commerce Group Co., Ltd., 46
• A.S. Watson Group, 51
• China Resources Vanguard Co., Ltd., 54
• Gome Home Appliance Group, 69
• Dairy Farm International Holdings Limited, 85
• Shanghai Bailian Group Co., Ltd., 121
• Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group Limited, 128
• Belle International Holdings Limited, 145
• Yonghui Superstores Co., Ltd., 146
• Vipshop Holdings Limited, 157
• Chongqing Department Store Co., Ltd., 192
• Dashang Co., Ltd., 195
• Nonggongshang Supermarket (Group) Co. Ltd., 214

Retailers based in China and Hong Kong generated the strongest growth in the region with combined revenue up 12.9% in FY2015 although they posted a slight growth of 0.7% net profit margin.

Vipshop (1), JD.com (2), Yonghui Superstores (13), and Suning (48) are among the top 50 fastest-growing retailers for FY2010-2015. JD.com (2), Suning (5), Vipshop (8), Dangdang (47) were also in the top 50 e-retailers for FY2015.

In 2016, the national online retail sales of goods and services in China was 5,155.6 billion yuan, increased by 26.2% YoY.

Also read: What are consumers buying for Chinese New Year 2017?

China’s top 4 B2C websites, JD, Jumei, Dangdang and Vipshop announced financial reports in Q2 2015, JD further inproved its business scale while suffering from greater losses. Jingdong lost over 1.8 billion yuan in the past year.

JD in Q2 2015 gained a revenue of 45.9 billion yuan (about US$7.4 billion), an increase of 61% year-over-year, mainly due to the increase of active users and orders; Vipshop totaled a net revenue of 9 billion (US$1.5 billion), 77.6% increase compared with 5.1 billion in the previous year; Jumei got a revenue of 1.963 billion yuan (US$308.1 million), 100% growth compared with US$154.4 million the same period last year; and Dangdang got a revenue of 2.312 billion yuan (US$373 million), a YoY increase of 29.8%, which was the slowest among the four companies.

Also read: China Mobile Shopping Market Value Exceeds RMB36 Bln in Q1 2015

In 2014, China internet users were active on Weibo, 82% Sina Weibo users bought online in Q3 2014, which made Weibo top among social apps in the world according to data of Global Web Index. The top 3 e-commerce campaigns on Weibo were Tmall’s “Let Hongbao Fly”, Jingdong’s “618 Party On”, Dangdang’s “Gan Zuo Gan Dangdang” in 2014.

Related: China’s Top 10 B2C Websites on Weibo in 2014

No. 3 CeDangdang’s Weibo Campaign

Celebrating its 15 year birthday on 20 October, Dangdang used this opportunity to re-brand itself as a complex B2C e-commerce platform. This 15-day campaign attracted over 40,000 Weibo users to participate.

Also read: WeChat, Weibo or Alipay? Who Won Hongbao War in 2015?

According to Weibo’s daily influence index, Tmall, OKHQB, and Dangdang performed best on Weibo among 1,613 active Weibo accounts in B2C e-commerce category in 2014.

Also read: Travel Industry Performance on Weibo 2014

By the end of Q3 2014, Dangdang’s traffic on mobile device had already surpassed traffic via desktop computers, accounting for over 60% of total traffic with an increase of 25% QoQ. At the same time, orders on mobile device accounted for over 40% of Dangdang’s total orders. It is estimated that by the end of 2014, orders on mobile device will account for 50%.

Mobile shopping showed great strength in Q2 2014. Total transaction value on mobile Alibaba accounted for 32.8%. During period of “6.18” promotion, orders on mobile Jingdong accounted for 25% and Vipshop accounted for 46%.

Dangdang believes that there are several reasons for its increase on traffic and orders on mobile device.

1. Part of Dangdang users transferred from desktop to mobile device.
2. New Dnagdang users add powerful strength.
3. Dangdang carried out various kinds of promotion.
4. Improvement on mobile device has been made to make it more competitive among China online shopping websites

Also read: Dangdang GMV Had An Increase of 81.6% YoY in Q2 2014  & 7 Charts on China Mobile Shopping App Market

Recently, homepages of Tmall, Jingdong, Dangdang and Vip.com are almost those ones related to “Fashion” in China.

These four popular online retail websites in China are now all promoting heavily the clothing and apparel category and associating their brand with “fashion”.

As Li Guoqing, Dangdang’s CEO, once claimed in an internal e-mail that Dangdang is going to become the website featured with fashion elements through clothes and apparel program. What’s more, Tmall and JD both have programs for fashionable websites building. Besides their common goals for clothing selling, these four websites have their own features.

Tmall

Consumers can buy custom made products that are specially made for Tmall. Tmall has recently attracted many international brands to open flagship stores, such as Burberry, Estee Lauder, ASOS, Muji, ZARA, etc. With experience of establishing these international brands in China online market, Tmall definitely has an advantage.

Dangdang

Dangdang also offers brands with heavy discounts within limited sales period though most of those brands are not well-known ones.

Dangdang’s total net revenues in the second quarter of 2014 were RMB1,960.8 million ($316.1 million), a 31.3% increase YoY.

Jingdong

JD.com has developed attractive promotion program for selected and high-quality international brands like Armani and Nautica; however, the selection of well known brands is quite limited; so are the inventories.

JD.com had approximately 38,000 merchants on its online marketplace as of June 30, 2014 and a total of 62,061 full-time employees as of July 31, 2014.

Vipshop (Vip.com)

Vip.com are always promoting its special discount on various brands and the prices are very competitive. And now, it is extending to cosmetics and home supplies with attractive discount.

Also read: Vipshop Active Customers and Total Orders More Than Doubled in Q2 2014

It matters to Chinese consumers that they get fast delivery. Tmall’s delivery depends on the logistic companies which it cooperates with while Dangdang and Jingdong have their own Logistics team which are controllable.

Besides, flexible refund policy is important for Chinese online users’ online shopping experience. Tmall has 7-day unconditional refund policy; and, so does Dangdang, which even provides a written promise.

Dangdang’s total net revenues in the second quarter of 2014 were RMB1,960.8 million ($316.1 million), a 31.3% increase YoY. Dangdang had approximately 8.5 million active customers including approximately 2.9 million new customers, in the second quarter of 2014, representing increases of 12% and
23%, respectively, from the corresponding period in 2013.

Total orders for the second quarter of 2014 were approximately 16.5 million, a 10% increase from the corresponding period in 2013.

Like Jingdong, Dangdang also had a good growth in the second quarter. When B2C leaders like Tmall and Jingdong were battling in tier-1 and tier-2 cities, Dangdang focused on lower tier cities and saw great results.

In addition, they made strong progress in mobile shopping this quarter. Mobile orders were 17% of total orders for Q2 2014 and this rose to 22% in June. They expect mobile orders to increase throughout the year.

Dangdang Second Quarter 2014 Highlights

• Gross Merchandise Value (“GMV”) from the marketplace in the second quarter of 2014 was RMB1,431.4 million ($230.7 million), an 81.6% increase from the corresponding period in 2013. Total net revenues for the second quarter of 2014 were RMB1,960.8 million ($316.1 million), a 31.3% increase from the corresponding period in 2013. The combination of product revenue from principal business and GMV from the marketplace reached RMB3,311.7 million ($533.8 million) and grew 49.3% year over year.
• Operating income for the second quarter of 2014 was RMB14.6 million ($2.4 million) representing 0.7% of total net revenues, as compared with an operating loss of RMB78.9 million in the second quarter of 2013, representing negative 5.3% of total net revenues. Non-GAAP operating income for the second quarter of 2014 was RMB17.5 million ($2.8 million) representing 0.9% of total net revenues, as compared with a non-GAAP operating loss of RMB76.3 million in the second quarter of 2013, representing negative 5.1% of total net revenues.
• Net Income for the second quarter of 2014 was RMB28.8 million ($4.6 million), representing 1.5% of total net revenues, as compared with a net loss of RMB63.9 million in the second quarter of 2013 representing negative 4.3% of total net revenues. Non-GAAP net income for the second quarter of 2014 was RMB31.7 million ($5.1 million), representing 1.6% of total net revenues, as compared with a non-GAAP net loss of RMB61.3 million in the second quarter of 2013 representing negative 4.1% of total net revenues.

Outlook for Third Quarter 2014

Dangdang expects total net revenues in the third quarter of 2014 to be approximately RMB1,983.6 million, an increase of 30.0% YoY. The Company also expects GMV from its marketplace to grow at a rate of 80.0% YoY to approximately RMB1,745.4 million in the third quarter of 2014.

Source: Dangdang

Wall ads in rural areas prove to be a good way of penetrating into lower tier cities; let’s take a look at some of the wall ads of China internet companies.

Enfodesk published its 2013 Q3 China B2C Market Report recently, China B2C market reached 162.4 billion yuan (USD 26.52 billion) with 50% YoY increase.

According to China B2C independent sale market performance, top 3 enterprises market share added up to 54.4%, 2% higher than Q2 2013. It was mainly because big B2C enterprises encroached small B2C enterprises’ market shares, Jingdong led B2C independent market with 38.8% share. Suning ranked the second with 9.9%, followed by Amazon China with 5.8%.

Because of market promotion, Jingdong website’s traffic hit apex in the middle of August 2013, and it hit another apex in the beginning of September but it soon went down by the end of September. Yixun (51buy) traffic went up in Q3 2013 with a large part of traffic guided from Tencent. Dangdang’s traffic went up in July and September for its two promotion campaigns. Suning’s traffic went up in August because of its anniversary celebration.

Tmall, Jingdong and Dangdang ranked the top 3 B2C platforms active users. Tmall active users growth slowed down, while Jingdong and Dangdang’s active users kept growing steadily.

Dangdang remained leader in conversion rate, and its Q3 conversion rate grew a little bit. Amazon China’s conversion rate increased a little by optimizing pages. Yihaodian launched market promotion in July and drove a lot of traffic, but its conversion rate dropped.

In Q3 2013, B2C clothing market reached 49.09 billion yuan (USD 8.03 billion), with 78.7% YoY increase. Vipshop had a good market performance in Q3.

In Q3 2013, B2C 3C products market reached 57.22 billion yuan (USD 9.36 billion), 35.2% of total B2C market. It increased 63.9% compared to Q3 2012. The difference between Suning and Jingdong enlarged by 2%.

In Q3 2013, Maternal and Child products B2C market reached 9.06 billion yuan (USD 1.48 billion), with 160.3% YoY increase and 26.4% QoQ increase. Maternal and Child products B2C market was growing quickly and became the new key market to fight over.

In Q3 2013, B2C publication market reached 3.87 billion yuan (USD 633 million), with 34.4% YoY increase and 6.3% QoQ increase. Dangdang remained the leader in publication market with 39.1% market share, 2% higher than Q2 2013. Amazon China ranked the second with 23.7%, Jingdong ranked the third with 16.5%.

Because 3C products had relatively high unit price, so 3C products market had a high percentage on the whole. But 3C products profit was low. Therefore, by examining B2C platforms excluding 3C products could give us a more objective assessment of B2C platforms. Non-3C products included clothing, publication, cosmetics and skincare products, maternal and child products, during which clothing had a big market share.

According to Andy Yeung, an analyst in Oppenheimer, whose report on November 11 2013 showed that China B2C YoY increase rate was 50% in Q3, much lower than 82% growth rate in Q2 and 96% in Q1 2013.

Andy Yeung pointed out in the report that three Chinese B2C enterprises, which were Vipshop, dangdang and Lightinthebox, had good revenue growth rates in Q3. It would slow down in the coming quarters. The stock price of Vipshop had been growing 316.5% since the beginning of 2013.

Vipshop’s third quarter finance reported a total revenue of USD 383.7 million in Q3, 146.1% more than that of 2012. And the net profit reached USD 12 million in Q3 2013, while in last year, Vipshop suffered a USD 1.5 million net loss. Vipshop outperformed the market expectation.

Since the disappointing Q2 finance report launched in August 2013, Lightinthebox’s stock price dropped almost 50%.

CNIT just released its research on China B2C brand influence in July 2013. Jingdong ranked the first in China B2C brand influence scored 95.72, followed by Tmall and Amazon China.

Compared to June 2013, the ranking of Jingdong, Vipshop, Yihaodian, Lefeng and Vancl all went up. Vipshop jumped from the 10th to 4th.

In terms of user awareness of China’s online B2C brands, Jingdong topped with 187,597 users. Vipshop attracted 173,531 users attention, ranked the second. Tmall, Suning, 51buy and dangdang were close in user attention, all surpassed 80,000.

In online media coverage, Tmall had the biggest media coverage with 27.54% of total B2C brands media coverage. Jingdong came to the second with 20.98%. The other 8 B2C brands in the top 10 list each occupied 4%-10%.

According to CNIT, the unique visitor in July dropped a little compared to June 2013. This was partly because the end of June 18 Sales War. In July 2013, Tmall ranked the first with 60.36 million UV. Jingdong had 18.18 million UV, and Amazon China had 7.2 million UV in July.

Dangdang topped in the number of negative reports in July 2013, with 106 negative reports. It was concerned with dangdang free ebook sale confronted with against from press, fake sale and bad logistic service. Vipshop and Suning’s negative reports also surpassed 60, mainly about fake products and bad customer service.

All major B2C brands focused on Weibo advertising. In July 2013, Jingdong Weibo retweeted posts reached 176,336, ranked the first. Followed by Tmall with 163,125 posts. Except for Vancl, other B2C brands Weibo posts all surpassed 10,000 in July 2013.

According to 10oEC.cn report released last month, top 10 B2C websites which faced most consumer complaints is shown above. Taobao ranked the first with 17.31% complaint rate, and its response rate to complaints was the lowest. Coo8 had the highest response rate to complaints, with 85%.

Consumers complaints on Taobao were mainly because of products quality. And Tencent e-commerce was complained about costumer services. Coo8, dangdang and xiu.com were complained of fake promotion activities. 

Due to a lot of complaints about B2C platforms, the suggestion for consumers are:

• Save transaction details and documents
• Fully take advantage of B2C platform help center
• If it is necessary, hire a professional lawyer.

You may wonder, how much would it cost to enter major e-commerce platforms in China? Here’s an illustration with apparel and clothing category.

In the example of clothing and apparel, in Tmall, it would cost 100,000 yuan (USD 16,218) for security deposit, and 60,000 yuan service fee (USD 9,730). Commission charge is 5% of sales revenue.

Security deposit is a certain amount of money which China online shops need to payHow to B2C platforms, ranging from 5000 to 100,000 yuan (USD 811 to USD 16,215 ). Security deposit is used to prevent e-shops from cheating consumers. Once the fraud happens, B2C platforms would use the deposit money to compensate consumers. And service fee is the annual B2C platform service fee, it is paid monthly. Commission is the percentage of each trading charged by the B2C platforms. The total cost of entering a B2C platform is the sum of security deposit, service fee and commission. 

Jingdong’s security deposit is 10,000 yuan (USD 1,622), and service fee is 6000 yuan (USD 973), with a 8% commission rate. Dangdang is the same as Jingdong. Yihaodian costs even less, 5000 yuan(USD 810) security deposit and 3600 yuan(USD 584) service fee with a 6% commission rate. QQbuy costs 20,000 yuan (USD 3,244)for security deposit, 6000 yuan (USD 973) service fee. Commission is 5%. Amazon doesn’t charge security deposit and service fee, but charge a 10% commission.

According to EnfoDesk, by the end of June 2013, the top 9 e-commerce platforms home appliance spare parts price index is shown above.

And top 9 e-commerce platforms home appliance spare parts sales performance(market share by revenue and market share by volume) in June are above. The top three e-commerce platforms were Jingdong, Tmall and Suning.

In June 2013, the average market credit score was 4.71, dangdang ranked top among the top 9 platforms with score 5.00. 51buy was the lowest, with only 4.46. Tmall had the highest sales volume, with 1718. While 51buy was still the lowest, with only 1 home appliance spare parts sold out in June.

The average monthly market discount rate was 91.5% in June. Dangdang had the biggest discount rate among the top 9 platforms, with 86.5% discount rate. Followed by Jingdong, with 88% discount rate.

Top 3 brands by market share by revenue in the top 9 platforms in June were Loctek, Haier and NB. And top 3 brands by market share by volume in the top 9 platforms were Loctek, Ugreen and CE-Link.

The average credit score was 4.71 in June, NB had the highest score with 4.86, and JIAPEI’s score was relative low, with only 4.54.

Maurice Lacroix had the highest price, with 618.86 yuan(USD 100.36). Seebest’s price was the lowest, with only 26.08 yuan(USD 4.23).

The average market discount rate in June was 91.5%, Loctek had the biggest discount with 86.6%, followed by JIAPEI with 87%.

According to iResearch,Chinese online transaction market scale reached 352.1 billion yuan (USD 57.52 billion), with a year-on-year increase of 36.6%. B2C has surpassed 30%, increasing 10% compared to last year.

Tmall is leading B2C market, with 51.3% online market share in Q2, while Jingdong tops independent sales B2C market with 43.4% share.

Chinese B2C (including those launched by C2C) market scale in Q1 2013 reached 120 billion. B2C online market scale’s year-on-year increase was 96.5%, much higher than that of C2C.

Top five B2C enterprises are: Tmall, Jingdong, QQ Buy, Suning and dangdang. And top 10 platforms had 91.1% of the market, which is 3% more than last year.

In independent sales B2C market, Jingdong is the top with 43.4% share and its year-on-year increase is 100.8% in Q1.

In digital camera B2C market share, Jingdong had nearly 50% in Q1 according to iEcTracker, a third-party data monitoring owned by iResearch. Jingdong and Taobao together dominate 80% of online digital camera retail market.

According to Hitwise, Jingdong is the most visited B2C website with over 462 million visits, who also had the fastest month-on-month growth of 30%.  

Tmall ranks the second with over 459 million site visits, up 6% and followed by 51buy.

However, some Chinese B2C enterprises site visits dropped in May. Suning had a big drop by 16%; Amazon China visits down by 7%; site visits of Vancl and dangdang almost remain the same as April.

According to the mobile shopping market quarterly monitoring report for Q4 2012, released by Enofodesk, China mobile shopping market reached 19.6 billion yuan (USD 3.15 billion). In 2012, the mobile shopping market reached 60.05 billion yuan (USD 9.66 billion), among which Taobao alone accounted for 80%.

Recalling China mobile shopping market performance in 2012, market concentration is further exacerbated. Taobao wireless client accounted for 79.9% of the market share, followed by 360buy, accounting for 5.8% market share; and Dangdang ranked third with 2.5%.

Facing the competition of online retail giant, the share of those who early entered the mobile e-commerce market had fallen sharply, accounting for only 1.3%.

What is the hottest word among Chinese netizens these days? It’s the “Bachelor’s Day Promotion”. Almost every netizen has got the invitation for this ceremony whether or not you are a bachelor.

About Bachelor’s Day Promotion in China

November 11th has become a special festival during recent years. With four characters of “1”, this date was named as Bachelor’s Day. On this day, young people will hold bachelor parties to create couples or simply have fun. Some choose to end their bachelor life by showing love or proposing for marriage.

In 2009, Alibaba held the first Double Eleven Shopping Festival on Taobao.com, storming the online shopping for the very first time. Three years later, with coming 2012’s Bachelor’s Day, more than 10,000 businesses, cooperating with e-commerce sites, are poised to rock the shopping festival again.

Participants took actions to meet this festival. Some clothes manufactures began to hoard products for this winter from August. And they made full preparation on supplying chains and staff arrangements.

China Express Association organized “Double Eleven” meetings to discuss measurements.  Major logistics companies like EMS, Shentong, Yuantong, Home Delivery… are going to recruit thousands of new staffs to meet the need of peak online shopping periods.

Big Promotions on Major Online Retail Websites

Big promotions in the name of celebrating Nov 11 Bachelor’s Day usually start at the very beginning of November with huge discounts and give aways lined up.

Some shopping platforms start early; 360buy started its one-month “Desert Storm” Promotions in Oct 10, offering coupons which value 50 million Yuan in total.

Suning started promotions called “Zero Purchasing Within 300-hundred Yuan”. After spending 300 hundred yuan on suning.com, consumers could get coupons with the same value. Coupons could also be used in more than 1700 offline Suning stores.

Gome Online Mall continuingly made efforts to supply goods at reduced prices, which scaled 1 billion Yuan in total, lowering the online prices for approximately 40%.

Tmall advanced rushing purchases of coupons. Successive rounds of promotions are started at 10:00, 14:00, 20:00 every day until Bachelor’s Day. Besides Tmall, Alibaba supported Taobao to take part in this shopping festival. More than 10,000 businesses are involved, which is 5 times of that compared to last year.

Moreover, Dangdang has fired its “Fire Promotions” from Nov 9, which will also last until Nov 11. In the meantime, it will celebrate its third anniversary.

More than price wars

You may wonder what the driving force of these crazy promotions is. Bachelor’s Day Promotion may be the most important timing to achieve annual revenue goal. Take Suning as an example. According to its latest quarterly financial report, it achieved sales of 9.5 billion yuan in the last 3 quarters. Though representing increase, there is a huge gap between the present performances with its sales goal of 20 billion Yuan. Year-end promotions are quite significant for Suning.

Basically, e-commerce cannot break away from its essence of retailing. Besides prices, they also compete on product varieties, users’ experience and resources. That is to say, this war is not only a challenge for promotion ability, but also a test of storage, logistics and capitals.

Both of Gome and Suning joined their online and offline channels, leading the whole industry to develop in the department store-oriented way.

Dangdang entered Tmall as a flagship stores of books and commodities. Previously, No.1 Store, New Egg and Yintai had stepped into Tmall. Suning officially acquired the Red Child as well as drew in Vancl and LAFASO, from which we can see its ambition to capture commodities categories.

If your business offers online purchase to Chinese consumers, November’s Bachelor’s Day should definitely be part of your annual sales strategy. Of course, it does not necessarily mean you should join the competition. But, if you do, timing and preparation are crucial to achieve successful online sales.

China’s first quarter online shopping transactions was 228.2 billion yuan, down 0.8% over the previous quarter but up 40.9% over the same period last year.

Transactions on C2C sites totaled 166 billion yuan (72.8%) and B2C totaled 62.2 billion yuan (27.2%). Taobao continues to dominate the C2C market with over 95% revenue share and tmall (previously Taobao Mall) leads B2C platform trading with 51.5% market share.

7.7% of clicks on Sina Weibo shortened links went to Taobao last month, followed by Tudou, YouKu and Baidu.

Correction: the 7th from the left should be “Soufun.com”, a property portal.

According to iResearch, the fastest growing B2C website in 2011 by total number of orders is womai.com (owned by China National Cereals, Oils and Foodstuffs Corporation; or, COFCO), followed by vjia.com (owned by VANCL) and yaodian100.com.