China’s online retail market totaled US$198.12 billion in the first quarter of 2017 with an increase of 27.6% YoY according to data from Analysis; B2C segment accounts for over 53%, led by Tmall (55.8%). Mobile continued its strong growth of 38.8% in China’s online shopping market, dominated by Tmall and Taobao (80.5%).

The total retail sales of consumer goods in China reached 8,582.3 billion yuan (US$1,245.89 bn) in Q1 2017 according to National Bureau of Statistics. Online retail market totaled 1,349.31 billion yuan (US$198.12 billion) with an increase of 27.6% YoY.

B2C Online Retail Market in Q1 2017

China’s online retail B2C market total transactions reached 720.94 billion yuan (US$105.86 bn) with an increase of 31.5% in Q1 2017, accounting for 53.4% of China’s online retail market.

Tmall remains its dominant position in China’s online retail B2C market with 55.8% market share in Q1 2017 by total transactions, followed by JD (26.7%) and Vipshop (3.4%).

Mobile Shopping Market in Q1 2017

The total transactions of China mobile shopping market reached 1,037.62 billion yuan (US$152.36 billion) with an increase of 38.8% YoY. The growth of mobile shopping in China is slowing down but the quarterly growth YoY is still over 30%.

Mobile accounts for 76.9% of total online shopping transactions in Q1 2017.

Tmall (including Taobao transactions) captured 80.5% of China’s mobile shopping market in Q1 2017, followed by JD (13.5%) and Vipshop (2%). Mobile GMV transacted on Alibaba China retail marketplaces was 2,981 billion yuan (US$433 billion), or 79% of total in Alibaba’s fiscal year 2017, an increase of 49% year-over-year.

In the first four months of 2017, the online retail sales of goods and services in China totaled 1,918.0 billion yuan (US$279.26 bn), an increase of 32.0% YoY.

The total transactions of China’s online shopping market totaled 4.7 trillion yuan (US$680 bn) in 2016 with an increase of 23.9%; and, it’s estimated to reach 7.3 trillion yuan (US$1.06 trillion)  in 2019. Tmall dominates China’s B2C online shopping market with over 56% market share.

B2C online shopping market will grow to over 60% in 2019 from 55.3% in 2016 while C2C continues to shrink.

Mobile shopping begins to dominate China’s online shopping market and will grow to 5.6 trillion yuan; 76.9% of total online shopping transactions in 2019.

Tmall continued to lead China’s B2C online shopping market with 56.6% market share, followed by Jingdong (24.7%) and Suning (4.3%).

Mobile MAUs on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces reached 493 million in December 2016 while annual active buyers on its China retail marketplaces reached 443 million, an increase of 4 million. It has 82.6% market share in China’s mobile shopping market according to iResearch.

Jingdong annual active customer accounts increased by 46% to 226.6 million in 2016 from 155.0 million in 2015. Net revenues for 2016 were RMB260.2 billion (US$37.5 billion), an increase of 44% from 2015.

Also read: China’s cross-border online shoppers to exceed 200 million by 2020

The monthly active users of China mobile internet exceeded one billion units devices in 2016 according to QuestMobile.

Android active devices exceeded 746 million units in December 2016 from 620 million in Jan 2016 while iOS ones dropped from 286 mn in Jan 2016 to 276 mn in Dec 2016.

66 mobile apps in China each has over 50 million monthly active users in Dec 2016; 146 apps bewteen 10 million and 50 million.

Both Android and iOS apps have increased total monthly usage time in Dec 2016, with an increase of 34% and 20% respectively YoY.

Each age group has increased app usage duration per device over the past two years.

WeChat active users reached 856.39 million in Dec 2016, an increase of 23% YoY ranking the number one app by total number of active users. The next apps in the top ten include QQ, Taobao, Alipay, Tencent Video, iQiyi, Baidu Mobile, Weibo, and Sogou Input.

WeChat also ranks first by DAU/MAU ratio (76%), followed by QQ (57.6%), Sogou Input (52.2%), Baidu Input (50.5%), and 360 Mobile Security (42.6%).

A WeChat user has the highest average monthly usage duration (1,967 minutes), followed by Toutiao (news app; 955 mins), QQ (865 mins), Netease News (636 mins), UC Browser (610 mins), etc.

Tencent Video was the most downloaded app in Dec 2016 (6.19 million downloads), followed by Alipay (5.86 mn), QQ (5.72 mn) and WeChat (5.44 mn).

Tencent Video, iQiyi, and Youku are the top 3 online video apps by total MAUs in China in 2016.

Weibo was ranked the top social networking mobile app in 2016 by QuestMobile with over 341 million MAUs, followed by QZone (92m) and Momo (70m).

Top mobile shopping apps last year in China by total MAUs include Taobao (430.7m), Jingdong (152.7m), VIPShop (59.1m), Tmall (49.3m), Suning (28.9m), and etc.

Top 15 airlines and hotels apps are all local apps except Booking (9th) and Airbnb (14th).

In app stores category, Tencent’s Yingyongbao ranks on top with over 184 million MAUs, followed by Baidu Mobile Assistant (161m), 360 Mobile Assistant (113m), Xiaomi App Store (91.5m), Huawei App Store (87.8m), OPPO Software Store (75.6m), Vivo App Store (53.5m), and etc.

Total transaction value of China online shopping market reached 1.15 trillion yuan (US$166.85 billion) in Q3 2016, up 23.6% YoY or 2.6% QoQ, according to data from iResearch.

B2C (600 billion yuan) accounted for 55.1% of China online shopping market in Q3 2016, led by Tmall (56.2%), Jingdong (25.1%), Suning (4.4%), and VIPshop (3.2%).

The total transactions of China mobile shopping market reached 820.15 billion yuan (US$), an increase of 56.1% YoY. Mobile accounted for 71.6% of China’s online shopping market, led by Tmall/Taobao with 82.7% market share.

China’s mobile internet market reached RMB 197.22 billion (USD 29 billion) in Q2 2016, an increase of 113% YoY or 22.7% QoQ according to iResearch.

Mobile shopping accounted for 62.9% of China’s mobile internet market, followed by mobile advertising (20.1%) and mobile gaming (12.4%).

China’s mobile shopping market reached RMB 783.44 billion (USD 115.65 billion) in Q2 2016 with a growth rate of 75.9% YoY.

Nearly 60% of Chinese respondents said they used their mobile devices in-store to check and compare prices according to a study by JDA and Centiro.

Almost half respondents read products or service reviews using their mobile devices while shopping in-store.

Quality issue is the top reason digital buyers in China are less likely to make another purchase from a retailer.

China’s online shopping market transactions totaled RMB 1,117.8 billion (USD 167.51 billion) in the second quarter of 2016 with a growth rate of 27.6% YoY or 14.9% QoQ according to iResearch.

Online shopping represented 14.3% of China’s total consumer retail sales in Q2 2016. And, B2C accounted for 54.5% of total online shopping transactions, led by Tmall (54.5%) and JD (26.3%).

From January to June, the total retail sales of consumer goods reached 15,613.8 billion yuan, up by 10.3 percent year-on-year. according to National Bureau of Statistics of China. The online retail sales of goods and services was 2,236.7 billion yuan, increased by 28.2% year-on-year.

Mobile online shopping market reached RMB 783.44 billion (USD 117.4 bn) in Q2 2016 in China, an increase of 75.9% YoY, accounting for 70.1% of total online shopping transactions.

Alibaba continued to dominate China’s mobile shopping market in Q2 2016 with over 80% market share.

The frequent women shoppers: they shop online frequently. They usually buy clothes, mother-care and baby products, cosmetics and skincare products. Quality and varieties are their primary concerns.

The quality-conscience men shoppers: they usually spend more money on online shopping. They often buy 3C (computer, communication, and consumer electronics) products and lotteries. They don’t shop online at workplaces. Price and credit are their concerns.

The young shoppers: they buy cosmetics and skincare products. They buy online through searching keywords or clicking on links in social media. Young people between 26 to 45 y-o prefer online shopping at home.

The middle-age shoppers: they often buy clothes, small household appliances, and telecom products. Also, they love staying at home, shopping online using the web browser.

The high-income shoppers: they are rich and shop more frequently online with higher average spend. They often buy  household appliances, jewelry, and furniture online. This group of shoppers often buy online in transport and prefer shopping by clicking via social media links.

The practical shoppers: they only buy clothes, shoes and telecom products online. They use fewer shopping apps.

Regional economic level influenced the development level of the online shopping market. The top five provinces with the highest online consumption located in the southeast coastal provinces where citizens got a higher income level than the average. Find out more here.

Online shoppers using 2 to 3 shopping apps accounted for 62.5%, and 4.9% use more than 5 apps.

Online shoppers using more shopping apps tend to spend more money. Shoppers who use more than 5 shopping apps are likely to spend above 10,000 yuan, and who use only 1 app tend to spend below 50 yuan. The sum of expense gathered between 50 to 500 yuan.

Domestic online shopping in China still accounted for most online shopping activities as only less than a quarter of shoppers bought cross-border products online according to a iResearch survey.

The number of shoppers who purchase goods directly through shopping apps or homepage has also increased. Shoppers who shop online with apps reached 64%.

Online shoppers’ shopping frequency is  at one to four times a month. The number of shoppers who shop online 3 times a month accounted for 15.8%.

Shoppers using desktop computers prefer shopping at home (77.9% in 2014 and 74.6% in 2015), followed by “shopping at workplaces” (53.4% in 2014 and 43% in 2015).

Also read: 7 Habits of China Online Shoppers

Emerging markets are leading the way with smartphone users in China (45.0%), India (36.7%) and Singapore (23.3%) Asia Pacific’s biggest adopters of digital wallets according to MasterCard.

Related: 7 Habits of China Online Shoppers

Overall, close to half of respondents (48.5%) across Asia Pacific have made a purchase using their smartphone in Q4 2015, led by those in India (76.4%), China (76.1%),South Korea (62.0%) and Thailand (61.1%).

Clothing and accessories (35%), personal care and beauty products (20.9%) and movie tickets (20.4%) are the top mobile shopping purchases amongst Asia Pacific consumers. Close to half of the consumers in China (46.4%), India (42.5%) and Korea (42.1%) shop for clothing and accessories on their smartphone.

Also read: Alibaba mobile MAUs grew to 410M, up 42% in Q1 2016

China’s mobile shopping market reached more than 519.99 billion yuan (US$80.25 billion) with an increase of 120.9% QoQ in Q3 2015 according to iResearch.

Mobile shopping market has developed quickly in China. The growth rate of mobile shopping came faster than the overall online shopping market in Q3 2015. Mobile shopping transaction sales reached 519.99 billion yuan (US$80.25 billion) accounting for 56.7% of total internet shopping sales.

Mobile shopping continued to reach China internet users. Transactions on mobile client accounted for 56.7% overall online sales with 5.9 percentage points higher compared to the previous quarter and 22.7 percentage points higher compared to the same period last year.

Alibaba (Tmall and Taobao) accounted for 84.6% of China’s mobile shopping market in Q3 2015. Jingdong cooperated with Tencent to transfer social networks users to shoppers. Suning tended to increase more traffic and sales by relying on Tmall of Alibaba. Vipshop added 5.6 million active consumers in Q3 2015.

China’s mobile shopping sales have exceeded the PC client since Q2 2015 and were still expected to climb in rapid growth according to iResearch. Available for accessing the internet at anytime and anywhere highly motivated mobile terminals as a link to boost integration of online and offline shopping.

In addition, with increasing activities in the rural market, online sales on the mobile terminal is predicted to occupy an increasingly important position relying on cheaper and more convenient equipment operating methods compared the PC client.

Also read: China Retail V.S. Online Shopping 2015

Total retail sales of China consumer goods were 26.24 trillion yuan (US$4.11 trillion) in 2014, an increase of 12% compared to the previous year. The growth rate of the Chinese retail market has dropped for five consecutive years. More than two-tenths of responding retailers have reduced opening new stores and the average number of employees fell by 0.8% and 1.2% respectively in 2013 and 2014 according to Deloitte.

Consumption in education, travel, culture, entertainment and others gradually occupied more share on consumers’ expenditure in the past few years. In the next 6 months, customers tend to spend more on food and beverage, travel, entertainment, investment, investment, home appliances and so on.

State-owned enterprises managed China’s industry in most aspects with overwhelming advantages. In recent several years, state-owned enterprises have given up much control to promote more dynamic market.

The growth rate of Chinese consumer goods market has declined following the slowing macroeconomy and residents’ income. Total retail sales of Chinese consumer goods were 26.24 trillion yuan (US$4.11 trillion) in 2014, an increase of 12% compared to the previous year. About 23% companies didn’t open any new stores in 2014 according to Deloitte.

Bricks-and-mortar retailing has become fragmented under the booming of China’s online shopping market. The growth rate of China’s top 100 chain retailers slowed down. 27% companies surveyed maintained negative growth in 2014.

The larger companies are, the more transactions companies may have. Chinese companies with national-wide operating scale gained an average revenue of 26.5 billion yuan (US$4.16 billion) and an increase of 9.6% in operating revenues compared to the previous year.

Shopping malls, convenience stores, and hypermarkets maintained growth in operating revenues in 2013 and 2014 compared to supermarkets, department stores, and specialty stores. Major retailers dropped in sales such as Sun Art, Carrefour, Lianhua, Yonghui, and Lotus.

Although the offline market in China didn’t see any significant improvement, the online shopping market maintained a steady momentum of growth in the recent several years. Overall transaction values of online shopping market reached 2.81 trillion yuan (US$0.44 trillion) in 2014, representing a growth of 48.7% compared with the same period the previous year and 10.7 percentage points slower compared with the growth rate in 2013. Overall online retailing sales accounted for 10.71% of the whole retailing market in China.

Many large offline retailers developed online shopping platforms in 2014 that the transaction values of O2O market in 2014 exceeded 300 billion yuan (US$47.07 billion) and was expected to reach 465.54 billion yuan (US$73.04 billion) in 2015. Lower price and good deals remained an important driver of online shoppers while product variety also saw more importance. Overall transactions of chain retailers’ online shopping market totaled 6.1 billion yuan in 2014.

Chinese mobile shopping market reached 928.5 billion yuan (US$145.67 billion) in 2012, reflecting an increase of 240% compared the previous year. In the first quarter of 2015, the mobile shopping market reached 362.34 billion yuan (US$56.85 billion) accounting for 47.8% of the overall internet shopping market and was expected to exceed 50% in 2015.

Skin-care products, milk and infant formula sold best online. Tmall, Taobao Jingdong, Jumei, Vipshop and others were major shopping platforms while when purchasing those products offline users were more likely to buy in Watsons, RT-MART, War-Mart, Carrefour and CR Vanguard.

Chinese cross-border e-commerce market saw much potential that the transaction values reached 4.2 trillion yuan (US$0.66 trillion) in 2014 with YoY growth of 33.3% and realized a 26.2% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) over the past five years. However, China was still new to cross-border e-commerce concluded by the relatively low import transaction values.

As high as 93.5% transactions were dealt on B2B platforms in 2014 in China and 6.5% on B2C platforms. However, with speedy development of logistics and overseas online shopping market, B2C market would increase in online transactions in the future. Tmall, Jingdong, Suning, Gome, Vipshop and Yihaoian were major B2C online shopping platforms.

Also read: 22% Online Shopping Spend Are Newly Created Demand

China’s e-commerce retail sales are expected to increase by 42.1% to US$672.01 billion, accounting for over 40% of the global e-commerce retail sales in 2015 estimated by eMarketer. The e-commerce market in 2018 is expected to reach US$1.57 trillion according to eMarketer. China has become the world’s largest e-commerce market.

With the development of mobile networks, mobile commerce market is booming in China. Although smartphone market in China is saturating, the smartphone penetration is expected to reach 38.6% this year.

Mobile commerce in 2015 is predicted to reach US$333.99 billion, making up about half of China’s total retail e-commerce sales. Retail e-commerce in 2015 accounts for only 15.9% of the total retail sales; and mobile 7.9%.

Rural netizens are major future consumers for e-commerce companies. To achieve long and continuous growth, companies have to seize opportunities to attract rural shoppers. Alibaba, the largest internet company in the world, is to invest 1 billion yuan (US$0.16 billion) in the logistics and delivery services to better serve rural shoppers in the coming Double 11 shopping festival. In addition, Chinese cross-border e-commerce is also growing fast.

Also read: China Mobile Shopping Turnover Surpassed PC in Q2 2015

Chinese e-commerce market increased by 21.3% to 12.3 trillion yuan (US$1.93 trillion) in 2014, and would maintain steady and rapid growth in the next few years. The e-commerce market in 2018 is expected to reach 24.2 trillion yuan (US$3.80 trillion) according to Kantar Retail.

Foods and Beverage, non-Food Grocery, household, personal care and cosmetics, infant nutrition and baby care were major fast-moving consumer goods of China’s e-commerce. Household, personal care and cosmetics were relatively less reliable on electronic market: only 3% manufacturers had over 10% online revenues of total sales.

6% of foods and beverage manufacturers got over 10% of revenues from the online market. Non-Food grocery were relatively dependable on the online market that 14% gained over 10% their sales from the internet. Infant nutrition and baby care were most mature market: about 59% manufacturers gained over 10% of total sales from the online market.

Size of business and branding, business growth and profitability, digital marketing and online shopper marketing capability were top three factors that influenced electronic manufacturers most, and followed by goods category insights, logistics and delivery capability. Digital marketing has been ever important for sales and revenues of companies.

Among the top ten powerful e-commerce companies of China, Jingdong ranked first owing to increasing integrated good categories, leading logistics system and high-level website traffic. Tmall ranked second, which behaved well in platform operation and digital marketing by standing on shoulders of strong big data of Alibaba. Yihaodian followed which was recognized for specialized foods and grocery supply.

Different Chinese etailers have its own category priorities according to Kantar Retail report:

Also read: China Mobile Shopping in Counties Over $32.16B in 2014

In 2014, China’s online shopping users reached 55.7% of the total internet users. In the mean time, mobile online shopping market was booming in China, with an annual growth rate of 63.5%, 3.2 times higher than the overall online shopping market.

The booming of the mobile shopping market accelerated the strategic layout of companies. The configuration of Chinese online shopping market remain steady. Taobao, Tmall and Jingdong led the market with penetration rates of 87.0%, 69.7% and 45.3% respectively. After being listed on the market, Jumei, Jingdong, Alibaba would broaden their business across the world.

According to China Internet Information Center (CNNIC), about 361.42 million Chinese shopped online in 2014, compared with 301.89 million in 2013. Mobile shopping users increased to 236.09 million, 55.7% of the total.

Almost one-third online shoppers were in the eastern region of China, followed by the southern (18.5%) and northeastern (16.7%). Users in the northwestern were the lowest.

China’s online shopping market  are more versatile compared with some western countries. China online users could buy both real and virtual goods online, some of which are even beyond many westerners’ imaginations. Clothes, computer and digital accessories, virtual cards and household appliance were main categories of online shopping in China.

Based on shopping frequency and expenditure, China online shoppers could be divided into two groups, generic shoppers and frequent shoppers.

Very frequent online shoppers in China spent more than generic shoppers. The average expenditure in half year of 2014 by frequent shoppers reached 12,610 yuan (US$1,976.78), almost five times of 2,687 yuan (US$421.22) by the generic online shoppers.

The omnipotent online shopping contributed 2,789.80 billion yuan (US$437.53 billion) to the total online retail, an increase of 49.7% compared with the same period last year, which was equal to 10.6% of China’s social consumer goods retail. China (US$41,151.50 billion) was the largest online shopping market in 2014, followed by the United States (US$3,056.50 billion).

Featured as online shopping market, the displayed information couldn’t show realistic meaning and value of products; thus product reputation, business or company’s fame, together with price were top three influencing factors from the view of consumers. Delivery time was also one of the purchase decision factors.

Affected by household income level, 11.6% showed they were willing sacrifice quality in shopping online, and 51% would consider quality and price both.

Payment channels for online shopping were diversified in China. Third party payment(eg.Alipay) was the mainstream channel, with penetration rate as high as 82.9%, and followed by online banking payment and quick payment.

The Chinese government published corresponding regulations to protect consumers’ rights and interests, one of which with a large impact was the ‘7-day refund; no question asked’. 30% online shoppers once refunded goods, and 75% resolved the refund successfully.

Invoice consciousness was not so strong in Chinese minds. During online shopping, only 11.9% asked for invoices each time, and 58.1% haven’t asked for any.

Online shopping for overseas goods gradually became a common practice of Chinese online shoppers. In 2014, only 4.8% admitted shopping for overseas goods; however, with many B2C companies realizing the potential, the group will grow in the future.

Clothes were first choices of 45.5% Chinese online shoppers shopping overseas. America, South Korea, and Japan were the hottest shopping destinations. The average order price of cross-border shoppers was higher than the overall online shopping. In 2014, the annual average spned of online cross-border shoppers was 4989 yuan (US$782.10), 64.1% of the overall.

66.4% users chose to purchase overseas goods online due to the high quality in some foreign countries, and half due to lower prices. However, online shoppers sometimes faced problems such as long delivery time, damaged or loss of goods, hard to check and unable to refund or return.

Social e-business wasn’t a new concept in China. As early as 2011, Chinese companies began the exploration in the social network and online shopping market. According to the research by CNNIC, online shoppers accounted for 70.6% of WeChat users, 55.2% of QQ users, and 36.5% of Sina Weibo users, which had a tremendous potential.

About 46.6% social networking users showed tolerance towards advertisements and marketing in social media. 27.8% users once forwarded messages and information of these websites, and 33.8% finally made orders following the promotion information.

China’s social media shopping had good genes and soil, with the continuous development of e-business market and acceleration of major companies, the proportion of this group and online overseas shoppers could be significantly increased.

Also read: China E-Payment Insights 2015

In Q2 2015, China’s online shopping market reached 872.54 billion yuan (US$136.77 billion), with a high level increase of 39.6%, which accounted for 12.3% of total retail value compared with 10% in 2014.

The transaction value of mobile shopping market exceeded 443.45 billion yuan (US$69.51 billion), an increase of 133.5% far higher than the overall growth of the online shopping market, which has become the main driving force for the rapid development of online shopping market in China.

The transaction value of B2C market reached 442.13 billion yuan (US$69.31 billion) in Q2 2015, accounting for 50.7% of the overall online shopping value, 6.2 percentage points higher compared with Q2 2014. B2C market has been growing rapidly, this quarter China’s B2C online shopping market grew by 59.1%, much higher than C2C (24%). B2C has exceeded C2C to become the mainstream of China’s online shopping market.

From the use of different internet access devices, mobile shopping transaction value surpassed the PC-end turnover for the first time accounting for 50.8% of China’s online shopping market, an increase of 20 percentage points compared with the same period last year. In the future, mobile-end shopping would become major driving force of online shopping in China.

Tmall accounted for 55.6% of the total B2C online shopping market; Jingdong 25.2%, and the others totalled about 20% in Q2 2015.

Alibaba’s mobile apps, such as Taobao and Tmall, made up 83.7% of China’s mobile shopping market share; Jingdong increased to 6.1%; and Vipshop ranked third with share of 2.5%.

Also read: China’s Mobile Market Analysis in Q2 2015

According to AliResearch, in 2014, China counties mobile online shopping market exceeded 200 billion yuan (US$32.16 billion), with an increase of 250% YoY, far higher than the increase of online shopping value of the same period.

Among the top 25 counties of largest contribution on mobile shopping value, most are in the eastern coastal areas, including nine in Zhejiang, five in Jiangsu, four in Fujian and two in Shandong. This phenomenon had relations with the local consumption levels and other factors.

Also read: China Mobile Gaming Market in H1 2015

The penetration ratio of iOS8 reached 76% in China in Q2 2015; and as of August 2015, only 19.4% subscribers still used the iOS7 system. The popularization of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus promoted the adoption of iOS8, and the free system upgrade feature improved iPhone user base in China. When issued in September 2015, iOS9 might replace iOS8 and gain more market share.

Smartphones with large screens were most welcomed in China. Screens with 1280*920 were best-sellers in the market, as Xiaomi Note, Huawei Glory, iPhone 6Plus.

Smartphones market in China faced a fierce competition in the past several months. Xiaomi and Huawei chased iPhone out of the largest smartphone vendor in China by shipments in Q2 2015, and China’s 360 and Letv released smart handsets, driven by the success of some domestic brands. Samsung, the Korea-based brand, was gradually losing its market share in China.

In Q2 2015, the penetration rate of 4G networks reached 20.1% up of over 200 million, 14.8 percentage points higher compared with Q1 2015.

China Mobile composed of 53.4% of China’s mobile network market share, followed by China Unicom (25.27%) and China Telecom (21.3%). 86.6% of 4G network users accessed to the internet through China Mobile, which maintained prominence and expertise compared with China Telecom and China Unicom (11.31% in total).

Compared with Q2 2014, life service, shopping and health apps increased in a large amount. Took mobile shopping apps as example, overseas shopping, mother care, group buying and etc. apps increased obviously.

Mobile gaming apps also increased in a large amount compared with the same period last year. Leisure and mind gaming apps maintained a growth trend of over 40%, followed by network gaming apps and role play apps.

Guangdong province had 12.75% of mobile gaming users in China, followed by Jiangsu province (6.58%) and Henan province (6.26%). Regions in eastern of southern part of China had more mobile gaming users.

More entrepreneurs devoted themselves to the exploration of mobile internet. Beijing, the capital city of China, had a unique advantage and attracted entrepreneurs with its robust internet atmosphere. Other regions, for example, the Yangtze River Delta, also attracted many internet entrepreneurs.

Men and women had nearly total different preference towards mobile apps. Men preferred apps for entertainment, navigation, social communication, reading and etc. while women preferred shopping, healthy, photography, education apps and etc.

Users above 20 years old preferred to play chess and card games, and 5 to 12 years old were the most likely to play sport and adventure games. Users of 13 to 18 years old comprised of the majority of mobile gaming apps users in each kind of mobile apps.

61% mobile apps were downloaded in leisure time, and 44% of which were mobile gaming apps. In non-leisure time, 39% were downloaded, and 63% of those were non gaming apps.

Also read: China Top 100 Mobile Apps in July 2015

Tencent invests US$50 million to Kik messenger, the Canadian instant messaging application for mobile devices that is available on iOS, Android, and Windows phone operating systems. Kik has earned the company one billion dollar valuation since the investment in August.

Kik targets young people as major customer group. At present there are 240 million registered users, of which 42% are aged between 16-24 years old. Kik is expected to learn good experience of attracting the young generation from Tencent, and developing its mobile business as WeChat does. One of the outstanding advantages of Kik messenger that may help its mobile business is that Kik mobile shopping users almost has the similar ratio with WeChat. However, the biggest challenge for Kik is to allow users to believe that purchasing goods on messenger application is safe, convenient, and cheap.

Among the US instant messaging users from 16 to 24 years old, Kik consists of 10% while Tencent almost has no market share. This is a very important opportunity and timing for Tencent. Besides Kik, Tencent also invested in Snapchat, whose daily active users totaled 1 billion according to its CEO. However, Snapchat and Facebook can’t serve a large number of users in China. Kik is the only and best choice for Tencent to improve its overseas brand. The “purely financial” investment is expected to create a win-win future.

Also read: China Top 100 Mobile Apps in July 2015

In Q1 2015, China mobile internet users reached 740 million with increase of 1.6% QoQ and 10.27% YoY, which showed stable growth in the mobile internet market according to data from EnfoDesk.

Also read: 24% of Top Global Mobile Internet Unicorns from China

In Q1 2015, China mobile shopping market total transaction value exceeds RMB36.23 billion (US$5.9 billion) according to data of iResearch. Affected by the Chinese New Year, mobile shopping’s QoQ growth in Q1 2015 was relatively slowed. However, iResearch estimates that in Q2 2015, mobile shopping would still keep rapid growth.

In terms of transaction value, in Q1 2015, China mobile shopping accounted for 47.8% of the whole online shopping market, which even had increased by 22 percentage from the same period last year.

There are two major reasons for China mobile shopping’s overwhelming development. Through 2014, netizens’ mobile shopping habits were getting mature. On the other hand, at the beginning of 2015, various e-commerce websites continuously improved service on mobile device to stimulate mobile shopping.

In Q1 2015, Taobao still ranked the top among all the mobile shopping apps, representing 84.5% market share, followed by Jingdong.

Also read: 20 Charts on China Mobile / WeChat Shopping Market

In 2014, total transaction value of China mobile payment market exceeded RMB599.247 billion(US$97.628 billion) with an increase of 391.3% from last year according to data of iResearch.

On 12 February 2015, People’s Bank of China announced China’s Payment Market Report 2014. The report showed in 2014, the total transaction volume and value of non-cash business were 62.752 billion and RMB1,817.38 trillion (US$294.70 trillion) with YoY growth rate of 25.11% and 13.05% respectively.

Among all the transactions, e-payment business is still keeping rapid growth as well as mobile payment. In 2014, total transaction volume of e-payment was 33.333 billion, worth RMB1,404.65 trillion(US$227.78 trillion) in China. Besides, the transaction volume and value of e-payment increased by 29.28% and 30.65% from the same period of prior year.

The transaction volume and value of mobile payment were 4.524 billion and RMB22.59 trillion (US$3.66 trillion) with YoY growth rate of 170.25% and 134.30% respectively in 2014 in China.

In 2014, total transaction volume of online payment from payment agencies was 37.422 billion, worth RMB24.72 trillion (US$4.00 trillion) in China.

In 2013, the growth rate of mobile payment market was 707% from 2012; and in 2015, China mobile payment market growth will slow down. The transaction value is expected to exceed RMB18 trillion in 2018.

Also read: Insights of China Mobile Payment (Wechat, Alipay) Users

In 2014, total transaction value of China online shopping market exceeded RMB2.8 trillion (US$453.61 billion) with an increase of 48.7% according to latest data of iResearch. China’s National Bureau of Statistics’ official data shows online shopping value accounted for 10.7% of total retail value in China.

iResearch estimated that in 2018, total transaction value would be RMB7.3 trillion (US$1.18 trillion) in China online shopping market.

Related: Apparel: Most Popular Category Among China Online Shoppers

Also read: Alibaba Has over 86% Share of China Mobile Shopping Market in 2014

One week’s Chinese New Year 2015 holiday just ended on 24 February. During this period, over 60% purchased on mobile device. And, the most popular product category is mothercare according to Tmall.

Major home appliance sales value grew by over 265% during this period; Tmall Superstore jumped 42 times. Shanghai, Hangzhou and Beijing were the top 3 online shopping cities during Chinese New Year 2015.

Also read: 80% Willing to Travel During Chinese New Year Holidays 2015

In 2014, total transaction value of China mobile shopping market was RMB929.71 billion (US$151.27 billion) with an increase of 239.3% according to Chinese research company iResearch, which is close to EnfoDesk’s estimate.

The total transaction value of China online shopping market was RMB2814.51 billion (US$457.5 billion) with an increase of 49.8% according to iResearch. It is estimated that China mobile shopping market will  keep rapid development and the transaction value will be over RMB4 trillion (US$650.21 billion) in 2018.

Mobile phone internet users accounted for 83.4% of total China internet users as of June 2014, which increased by 2.4% from 2013 and surpassed internet users on desktop (80.9%) for the first time according to data of iResearch.

Mobile Alibaba ranked top among China mobile shopping providers with market share of 86.2% in 2014, followed by Jingdong and Vipshop. Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall played the most important roles in China mobile shopping market. Besides, Jingdong cooperated with Tencent to promote WeChat shopping, mobile QQ shopping, micro-shopping and so on. Read more on WeChat shoppers here.

The transaction value of China mobile shopping accounted for 33% of online shopping market in 2014. It is estimated that in 2016, the market share of total transaction value on mobile device will exceed that on desktop computers.

China mobile shopping users exceeded 300 million with a total transaction of almost 10 trillion yuan in 2014, an increase of 270% according to Enfodesk.

The major China mobile shopping forces are those post-85s and post-90s; the most popular product is clothing and 3C products.

EnfoDesk estimates China’s smartphone is to reach 481.38 million units in 2015. Presence of smartphones make shopping easier and convenient wherever the user is connected online. Public transportation is the most popular scenario for mobile shopping in China.

Total transaction value of China mobile shopping market more than tripled in 2014, estimated by EnfoDesk.

WeChat Mobile Shoppers Insights

WeChat is just one of the most popular messaging app in China though it has attracted most attention. Mobile QQ has more monthly active users in Q3 2014 according to Enfodesk research.

Top Mobile Shopping Apps in China in 2014

Demographic Profile of China Mobile Shoppers

Read more: China Mobile Shopping Market to Exceed 3 Trillion in 2017

Paipai launched micro-shop mobile app last month to enable individual merchants to set up mobile online stores on smartphones directly and they could log in the stores with QQ numbers only.

Paipai.com, part of Jingdong from their strategic collaboration with Tencent launched micro-shop platform for both business and individual sellers targeting C2C mobile shopping market in October 2014. Sellers can create mobile store with this platform and share with friends on popular mobile platforms such as WeChat and mobile QQ.

JD.com also integrated its online shopping platform on WeChat. WeChat added a new feature in May 2014 for its official account platform to enable verified WeChat Official service accounts, who have integrated WeChat payment, to set up mobile store easily. Both don’t seem to catch the individual sellers market; that’s where Paipai’s micro-shop comes in play.

Different from other mobile apps for online stores in the market, Paipai mobile selling app registration or login is only for QQ numbers other than mobile phone numbers. In terms of other functions for mobile online stores, Paipai micro-shop owners can display new products, edit their information and then share products in social media, arrange delivery, and receive.

According to Paipai, its mobile sellers receive payment via Tenpay and their seller account can not add bank cards for receiving payments. During the trading on Paipai, once a seller account activates Tenpay account, payment received directly goes to the Tenpay account.

Mobile online stores on smartphones have been booming since the second half of 2013 in China. Koudai has over 12 million mobile stores with over 83 million monthly active users and transaction value of 15.8 billion yuan. Jingdong has Paipai micro-shop and Jingdong micro-shop and they could only be managed on desktop until now that Paipai mobile seller app is available.

Besides, the previous requirement for merchant qualification of Paipai micro-shop and Jingdong micro-shop were higher than others in the market until recently when the bar is lowered to attract more micro-sellers. Paipai’s micro-shop mainly targeted merchants who are already on Paipai e-commerce platform with verified WeChat service official accounts.

The newly-launched Paipai micro-shop mobile app does not require WeChat service official account or verification which can potentially attract many small businesses and individual sellers.

Also read: Jingdong Launched Shopping Channel on Mobile QQ

China post-90s are the active group on the internet, especially on social media; and, China post-90s QQ users accounted for 39% of total users according to data released on Tencent’s Open Day. They favor mobile shopping and online videos.

China post-90s on the internet who are between 15 and 24 years old were more than the average number of post-90s in the world according to the research of ComScore.

Also read: China Online Shopper Spent $12.5 Billion Buying from Oversea E-tailers

As of June 2014, China internet users exceeded 632 million, of which 527 million were mobile phone internet users with an increase of 26.99 million from 2013 according to data of CNNIC. 

Mobile phone internet users accounted for 83.4% of total China internet users as of June 2014, which increased by 2.4% from 2013 and surpassed internet users on desktop (80.9%) for the first time according to data of iResearch.

From 2010 to 2013, China mobile shopping market had achieved rapid development. We believed that the popularity of mobile internet, improvement of mobile payment and efforts made by e-commerce companies are the major reasons for its rapid development. It is estimated that total transaction value will exceed RMB800 billion(US$ 130.22 billion) in 2014 and penetration on mobile device will be about 30%.

In Q3 2014, China mobile shopping transaction value accounted for 33.4% of China total online shopping transaction value. And the percentage of mobile shopping in overall online shopping market is continuously increasing quarter on quarter. 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. It is estimated that percentage of mobile shopping will be over 50%.

The most regular way to access online shopping website was to type URL directly into the web browser in 2013, which accounted for 32.6%, followed by “search for navigation site” (14.91%) and “browser navigation page” (14.71%) in 2013.

Mobile shopping client-side (mobile shopping apps) was the regular way to access mobile shopping services, representing 66.6% in 2013, followed by “inputing URL directly” (33.7%) and “browser navigation” (32.7%). Top mobile shopping apps in China were Taobao, Tmall and Jingdong in August 2014.

China top 3 categories of products on mobile device in 2013 were mobile phone fee recharge, apparel, shoes & hats, household items.

Also read: China Mobile Internet Market in Q3 2014

In Q3 2014, total transaction value of China mobile shopping market was RMB230.96 billion ($37.59 billion) with an increase of 250.9% from the same period of prior year. Total transaction value of China online shopping market was RMB691.41 billion ($112.55 billion) with an increase of 49.8% year on year in Q3 2014.

Compared with desktop, mobile device has particular features like portability, entertainment, convenience and so on which can satisfy users’ instant shopping needs.

In Q3 2014, China mobile shopping transaction value accounted for 33.4% of China total online shopping transaction value. And the percentage of mobile shopping in overall online shopping market is continuously increasing quarter on quarter. In Q2, mobile shopping represented 26.8% of total online shopping transactions in the same period in China.

China mobile shoppers mainly depend on smartphones and 10% of them shop on tablet. They tend to favor mobile shopping apps like Taobao, JD and etc. which are extended from desktop. MMB.cn targets users from China’s tier-2 and lower cities and even covers non-smartphone users.

Besides, at the end of June 2014, Sina Weibo launched smartphone apps “Weimai” (or Micro-sell) for sellers to manage product inventories and provide online customer service and it is performing well. Weibo had 167 million monthly active users in Q3 2014, remaining the most popular Weibo app in China, which indicates Weimai still has great potential in online shopping market.

Alibaba remained ranking top in Q3 2014, followed by Jingdong (5.4%) and Vipshop (2.1%). Jumei made advantage of mobile device and its transaction value in Q3 was near RMB1.5 billion ($244.19 million).
Also read: 7 Charts on China Mobile Shopping App Market

In Q3 2014, total transaction value of China mobile Internet market was RMB51.56 billion ($8.39 billion) with increase of 11% quarter on quarter and 93.4% year on year according to data from iResearch.

As China mobile Internet market’s rapid development in these years, it has formed stable structure and meanwhile it is developing with reasonable strategy.

There are three reasons for China mobile Internet market’s rapid development in Q3 2014:

• Operators in China made great efforts in promoting 4G smartphones, which can increase 4G smartphone’s market share as well as accelerate the replacement of 3G & 2G mobile phones in China
• The increasing mobile Internet users brought urgent need for mobile services
• Traditional industries had been improving themselves with mobile internet which pushed China mobile internet market into fast development.

In Q3 2014, mobile shopping represented 51% of total value of China mobile Internet market, ranking top, followed by mobile value-added services (20.2%), mobile marketing (15.3%) and mobile gaming (13.5%).

Mobile shopping remained its status in mobile Internet market in Q3 2014. iResearch estimates China mobile shopping market is going to exceed RMB800 billion (US$129.7 billion) this year and it is continuously keeping strong growth in China. Value-added service was squashed by other service and its market share was decreasing continuously.

Programmatic buying chain forming initial shape as well as new mobile advertising methods stimulate new increase in mobile market. eMarketer estimates that China’s mobile online display and search ad spend will exceed over $2.83 billion in 2014; and, China mobile internet ad spend will exceed $12 billion in 2017 which indicates revenue from mobile marketing is expected to increase a lot in China mobile Internet market.

China mobile internet which is featured with mobile and convenience can be integrated with many entity industries and then it can further improve their development. Take mobile payment as an example; China mobile payment market covers public transportation, retail & catering industries and ect. It integrates with lifestyle service industry via various applications which adds new power for such industry. Know more about China mobile payment users: Wechat payment VS Alipay users

Also read: China Mobile Internet Statistics 2014

Paipai.com, part of Jingdong, is launching micro-shop platform for both business and individual sellers targeting C2C mobile shopping market.

Wechat added a new feature this May for its official account platform to enable verified Wechat Official service accounts, who have integrated Wechat payment, to set up mobile store easily. During the same period, JD.com also integrated its online shopping platform on Wechat. Both don’t seem to catch the individual sellers market; that’s where Paipai’s micro-shop comes in play.

Paipai has been internal testing micro-shop with 5,000 merchants for about one month. According to Ebrun News, 40% of Paipai Micro-shop orders come from Wechat, 20% from mobile QQ, and 40% from other channels including Qzone, Weibo, and forums.

Paipai plans to launch mobile app in late October to enable individuals merchants to set up mobile online stores on smartphones directly.

The cost per user acquisition is much lower on mobile. Paipai knows that; and it enjoyed it. According to Paipai, the CPA of its micro-shop is just between 1 and 2 yuan while it costs no less than 10 yuan on other C2C platforms. The cost per order of Paipai micro-shop is between 7 and 8 yuan comparing with over 30 yuan on other C2C platforms.

The combined MAUs of Weixin (Wechat’s Chinese version) and WeChat were 438 million by end June 2014 according to Tencent’s financial results for Q2 2014. It’s very common to see people utilizing Wechat as a sales tool using his or her own personal Wechat account and selling various products. Though there are a few apps available for individual sellers, Paipai micro-shop will most likely be the most competitive product in the market considering the strategic partnership between Jingdong and Tencent.

Also check out the 7 charts on China mobile shopping apps market.

In H1 2014, total number of China mobile Internet users exceeded 686 million and 60% users are male. There was an increase of 2.5% from H2 2013 in total number of female users.

62% of China mobile Internet users are young ones with age from 25 to 40.

In H1 2014, 46% of China mobile Internet users are in second and third tier cities.

In H1 2014, 67% of users with educational background of high school/ vocational of higher are the major ones which indicates users’ education level is uprising in China.

The freelancer/ self-employed accounted for 23% of total China mobile Internet users, followed by workers (22.5%) and students (13.9%) in H1 2014.

We can see users with no income accounted for 20.6% of total mobile internet users in H1 2014 and there is a great gap between the low income and high income in China.

Most China mobile Internet users spend 1-4 hours on mobile Internet which accounted for 48% in H1 2014.

84% of China mobile Internet users spend evening time on mobile Internet which is their private time.

Top mobile apps in China include instant messenger app, mobile music, mobile video, mobile games app and so on. We can see major mobile apps meet users’ daily social and entertainment needs.

Female users in their young age range from 24-40 favor instant messenger apps more than male ones.

Female users are more like mobile videos while male ones favor mobile games more.

Female users in 25-40 accounted for more than half of total users on mobile shopping app while over 64% male ones favor mobile reader and mobile news.

Also read: China mobile app distribution channels market share

UCWeb, mobile browser company now owned by Alibaba, updated its mobile browser to cooperate with Tmall to promote shopping privilege by giving out red envelops (or hongbao, a frequently used mobile marketing tactic) worth RMB60 million (USD 9.7 million). New version will support users to log in with Taobao account so users can enjoy convenience and shopping privilege on UC mobile browser.

On the iOS and Android platform, UC browser’s monthly user coverage accounted for 65.9%, ranking the top in China mobile browser market.

UC browser’s cooperation with Tmall started on 23 September 2014 in China. UC mobile browser users who  shop on Tmall can enjoy privilege including special offers, Tmall credits and lottery. UCWeb merged into Alibaba group in  June 2014. It is believed that UC mobile browser will become an important entry for Alibaba in China.

A significant portion of Alibaba customers have begun transacting on the mobile platform, and in the three months ended June 30, 2014, mobile GMV accounted for 32.8% of their GMV, up from 27.4% in the preceding three months and from 12.0% in the same period in the previous year.

China mobile shopping market total transactions reached RMB168.39 billion (US$27.3 billion) in the second quarter of 2014, representing 26.8% of total online shopping transactions in the same period in China, an increase of 24.6% compared with the first quarter.

Also read: China Mobile Shopping in Rapid Development

The total transaction value of China online apparel market exceeded RMB434.9 billion (USD70.75 billion) in 2013 with a YoY increase of 42.8%, which accounted for 23.1% of the whole China online shopping market.

It is estimated that in 2014, with stable growth of China online apparel market, the total transaction value will increase to RMB615.3 billion (USD100.1 billion) with a YoY increase of 41.5%, accounting for 22.1% of the whole China online shopping market.

There are still many issues in China online apparel market, such as imbalance of e-commerce distribution, payment and delivery problems, which restrict its rapid development.

China online apparel market has been highly anticipated by international brands such as Zara, Burberry and other who usually started by opening Tmall flagship stores in China.

Also read: Fashion chase of Top 4 China Online Shopping Websites

Jingdong’s mobile strategy on QQ focuses on limited time and group buying offers, branded products, popular products with three corresponding categories. Like its Wechat e-commerce operation, Jingdong manages all online shopping operations on mobile QQ and the payment is handled via Tenpay with online payment and cash on delivery option.

According to Jingdong, they will give away RMB1 billion Hong Bao money to users on mobile QQ.

Tencent and Jingdong (JD.com) together announced their strategic alliance this March; and, Jingdong will further push its online shopping market share with the “help” from Tencent.

Jingdong currently owns a little over 5% market share in China’s mobile shopping market, still far behind Tmall.

China mobile shopping market total transactions reached RMB168.39 billion (US$27.3 billion) in the second quarter of 2014, representing 26.8% of total online shopping transactions in the same period in China, an increase of 24.6% compared with the first quarter.

China’s Top Mobile Retailers in Q2 2014

Taobao dominates mobile shopping market in China with over 84.2% market share by total transaction value, followed by Jingdong, VIP.com and mobile e-commerce operator MMB.cn.

Mobile Shopping to Continue Strong Growth in China

iResearch estimates China mobile shopping market is going to exceed RMB800 billion (US$129.7 billion) this year, 30% of total total online shopping transactions; over half of China’s online shopping transactions will be on mobile by 2016.

In 2013, China online shopping market total transactions reached RMB1892.49 billion (US$306.74 billion) and 14.5% was from mobile. 76.4% of total mobile retail GMV in China was from Alibaba (US$51 billion).

Also read: China’s Post-90s Favor Mobile Shopping

Do you know that some Chinese who stay up late tend to buy before they sleep; three peak period for women clothing purchase; moms’ mobile shopping starts from midnight; the middle aged often buy collectibles in the afternoon…

I created this infographic based on recently released data from Taobao so that you can get an overall understanding about Taobao shoppers’ habits.

JD.com’s Wechat shop is currently being targeted among some Wechat users in Beijing and Shanghai with updated Wechat version 5.3.

In the Wechat shop being tested, the main offering are offers in limited time period and group buying offers.

Tencent’s given up its own e-commerce operation and instead investing for 15% stake in JD. According to the agreement between Tencent and Jingdong (JD.com), JD is in charge of all e-commerce activities except for public accounts.

Update (28 May 2014): according to JD, the new Wechat Shop consists of three sections:

• New discovery: fashion, new and cool products
• Brands: discounted brand products
• “Juhui”: “value for money” products

Update (6 Jun 2014): according to JD’s official data, JD’s total Wechat transactions had increased by eight times by 4 Jun 2014 after this update.

In the first quarter of 2014, China mobile shopping market total transactions reached 78.02 billion yuan (USD 12.53 billion), with an growth of 13% from the previous quarter, an increase of 207% compared with the first quarter in 2013 according to Analysis International.

The overall China mobile shopping market is in rapid development period, mostly driven by merchants’ heavy promoting targeting mobile device users, the more mature mobile shopping habits among China online users, and rapid development of certain mobile apps like taxi app Didi Dache.

Taobao Leading China Mobile Shopping Market

Taobao also dominates China’s mobile shopping market with over 78% market share (by revenue), followed by JD with only 7.2%.

The Chinese e-commerce market have seen a sharp rise in both B2C and C2C channels in the recent years. Rapid development in online shopping platforms, social media, online payment and mobile devices is not only driving the market to a boom, but also revolutionizing consumer experience and business marketing methods. Here are the four major new trends to be observed in the industry.

NO. 1: Mobile Devices – Shopping On The Go

As mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets penetrate further into the market, Chinese online shoppers are increasingly making their purchases on the move. A survey published jointly by KPMG and Mogujie shows that although desktops and laptops remain the most used devices for online shopping, smartphones and tablets are swiftly taking over.

The large 3G/4G network user base will give mobile shopping even greater potential. The number of Chinese 3G/4G users rose from 223 million to 325 million in merely six months in the first half of 2013. And the Chinese government has a even greater vision for the future: the goal is to see the number of mobile network users increase to 1.2 billion by 2020.

NO. 2: Mobile Payment – A Revolution in Payment Methods

Another prominent trend in Chinese e-commerce market is that online shoppers in China are rapidly taking up mobile payment. The survey shows that as much as 55% of online shoppers in China has used mobile payment for their online purchases, whereas in the U.S. the figure is only 19%. This transition is largely facilitated by the recent developments in domestic third-party payment service market, which is currently dominated by four key players – Alipay, Tenpay, Union Pay and 99bill. Together, these four channels provide 85.5% of payment services in China.

NO. 3: Readjustments in Product Positioning Strategies in Line with Consumer Needs

As the e-commerce industry grows, the motives and concerns for Chinese consumers’ online shopping behavior become all the more clear. The KPMG research shows that the most important factor that influences consumers’ decision to make a purchase online is still the price – as much as 74% of respondents name low price as their major consideration when shopping online. “Online purchasing in China is still mostly promotional and discount driven. This means we are at the infancy stage… imagine the potential of full-price e-commerce.” explained Thibault Villet, CEO & co-founder of Glamour Sales. Other conveniences driving shoppers to go online include less time consumption, specific origin of products, the possibility to compare goods and a larger variety to choose from.

In the mean time, some major drawbacks of online shopping remain striking. 78% of respondents of KPMG survey report concerns over the authenticity of products sold online. Also, most consumers wish to try the product before purchase, an expectation still largely unmet by online businesses. Apart from that, size, discrepancy between online display and actual product and after-sales services also remain as major concerns for online shoppers.

Consumers’ needs are certainly catalyzing continuous readjustments in product positioning strategies on the retailers’ part. The most popular products sold online should also serve as an important indicator of  the e-commerce market. The survey indicates that cosmetics, shoes and apparels for female are the top categories shopped online nowadays. These particular categories of product sought after by online shoppers indicate an enormous potential for luxury brands as Chinese consumers gain more purchase power and become less price-sensitive.

NO. 4: Social Media as a Powerful Marketing Tool

The most immediate change in the e-commerce industry which no online business can overlook is perhaps the burgeoning marketing power of social media.  Research shows as much as 25% of traffic in e-commerce websites is brought in by social media, among which half can be attributed to the voices of popular online opinion leaders. With a range of  successful local social media and a growing user base, Chinese shoppers are increasingly resorting to user reviews online as references when they make a purchase. This channel has even overtaken the traditional WOM (word-of-mouth) communication by 1%, a testimony of its fledging power.

As said before, the e-commerce market has a tendency of slanting towards certain categories of products that can be readily transformed into large luxury market. For this reason, retailers are propelled to give more attention to luxury product marketing on social media. Indeed, the top social media platforms are already playing an important marketing role in the Chinese luxury market.

PricewaterhouseCoopers released a report on April 8 2014, which found out that Chinese consumers ran ahead of global consumers in online shopping, especially in mobile shopping.

The PWC report interviewed 15,000 online consumers, covering 15 regions including Brazil, Canada, mainland China and Hong Kong, France, India and Middle East.

According to the report, 14% Chinese respondents said they did online shopping everyday. More than 60% Chinese claimed they shopped online at least once a week, much higher than global average of 5% online shopping everyday and 21% every week. In mobile shopping, Chinese consumers still ranked the number one. 4% of Chinese respondents said they used mobile shopping everyday, 20% used it once a week and 27% once a month. While the global percentages were 2%, 7% and 12% respectively.

The report also discovered that Chinese consumers used more of smartphone. Except for using smartphone for phone call, news, weather, search, GPS and SNS, other functions tended to be more popular among Chinese consumers such as online shopping and content consumption. 71% Chinese used mobile shopping, while only 32% Americans did; 37% Chinese used smartphone for dining reservation, while the percentage in America was only 13%; 35% Chinese purchased stock using smartphone, while only 5% Americans did.

Another interesting finding was that Chinese consumers were more likely to accept mobile payment. In 2013, Square, paypal and tenpay’s total transaction reached 124 billion yuan (USD 20.11 billion), 167 billion yuan (USD 27.09 billion) and 52 billion yuan (USD 8.45 billion) respectively. Alipay ranked the top with 906 billion yuan (USD 146.97 billion) in global mobile payment transaction. In 2013, the total mobile payment transaction in China reached 1220 billion yuan (USD 197.9 billion), it expected to reach 2941 billion yuan (USD 477.07 billion) in 2014 and 5257 billion yuan (USD 852.75 billion) in 2015.

In Q4, Tmall, Jingdong and Tencent B2C remained Top 3 on the list. Matthew Effect was more obvious in the market: the market share of Tmall, Jingdong and Tencent all increased slightly to 49.7%, 19.0% and 7.0% respectively. Many e-commerce giants broke their order record on Double 11, due to the large traffic from Double 11 promotion. EnfoDesk suggested that large B2C enterprises with abundant capital had advantage in traffic acquisition and mobile entry, enlarging the gap between large and small B2C enterprises. To compete, small and medium B2C must cooperate with large B2C and improve their profession as well.

Jingdong ranked the first with market share of 41.3%, followed by Suning with 10.0% and Amazon.cn with 5.8%. In terms of enterprises performance, the “flash sale” mode of Vip.com (former Vipshop) was copied by many enterprises, such as Dangdang, Tencent B2C and Jingdong. EnfoDesk regarded “flash sale” as a possible mode for large e-commerce platform to do shoes&clothing business, and a good solve to the high inventory problem of China clothing market.This is the reason why “flash sale” mode was widely copied. The core of this mode was to get authorization from brand suppliers, rather than technique. In the short run, large B2C managed to copy the “form” of “flash sale”, but it is hard to success without brand authorization and superior suppliers.

EnfoDesk found the driving force of online retail GMV was mostly the sale promotion. Especially since large promotions launched, such as Tmall Double 11 in 2011 and “price war between online retailers” in 2012, China online retail market experienced a new stage of  rapid development. Furthermore, traditional industry began trying e-commerce; online retailing and trading were gradually accepted, boosting the development of online retailer market.

In 2013, Tmall remained on the top with 49.08% market share. It benefited largely from the consumer and commerce resources that Alibaba accumulated over years, giving Tmall an advantage of goods richness and brand strength. Also, Double 11 quickly enlarged the market and enhanced the influence of Tmall.

Jingdong followed Tmall with 18.16% in 2013. With perfect service and rapid delivery, Jingdong won many customers. In 2013, Jingdong expanded its business and enriched its goods variety, to seize a large market share.

Tencent B2C (including QQ wanggou and Yixun) accounted for 5.68% of the market. Although Tencent had huge traffic resource, its conversion rate was quite low. In 2013 Tencent integrated its B2C business, optimized merchant resource and eliminated overlapping business to achieve a higher resource utilization.

In 2013, Suning took 4.30% of the market with its brand awareness, offline supply chain and price advantage. Moreover, the acquisition of PPTV expanded its traffic source, providing a foundation to secure the market share and customers.

Amazon performed well in global market except in China. Amazon.cn only had 2.72% of market in 2013, as a consequence of poor localization capability. However, there were still many loyal customers appreciating its price, richness, technology and delivery advantages.

EnfoDesk statistic showed China mobile shopping market hit 157.04 billion Yuan (USD 25.54 billion) in 2013, up 161.5% YoY. The whole market was in a rapid developing period.

There were three major driving forces of mobile shopping market. Firstly, as online retailing acceptance was gradually increasing, it was easy for online retail to shift to mobile terminal. Secondly, many e-commerce giants focused on mobile shopping last year, their promotion activity boosted the development of mobile shopping. Thirdly, the mature of other mobile application such as mobile game also helped developing mobile payment habit, thus mobile shopping became popular.

The competition of mobile shopping market was basically the same as web shopping. EnfoDesk suggested that in the field of shopping, there were back-end supply chain competition besides front-end product competition. Although the mobile-only enterprises could firstly enter the unnoticed market in 3rd or 4th tier cities, they faced high cost structure due to the absence of supply chain and brand strength. In 2013, mobile-only e-commerce excluding MMB (maimaibao) all lost competitiveness. In terms of market share, Taobao Mobile accounted for 81.45% of market by taking advantage of Alipay, followed by Jingdong Mobile, MMB, Suning Mobile and Amazon Mobile.

GMV of China E-commerce increased 21.3% last year to 9.9 trillion yuan (USD 1.63 trillion), according to iResearch. The growth was expected to slow down in coming years, and the e-commerce market will reach 21.6 trillion yuan (USD 3.53 trillion) in 2017.

As the data showed, the GMV of online shopping was estimated to account for 7.8% of the total retail sales of  social consumer goods in 2013, with a growth of 1.6 percentage point.

In terms of the structure of e-commerce market in 2013, small and medium-size enterprises'(SME) B2B accounted for 51.7%, and B2B of enterprises above designated size took up 26.2%; the proportion of B2B summed up to 77.9%. The market share of online shopping, online travel and O2O was 18.6%, 2.3% and 1.2%, respectively.

According to iResearch, the domestic and foreign trade environment would improve after 2013. In the next 3 to 4 years, SME’s B2B will expand in fields such as platform transaction, value-added service and big data of platform, and the overall B2B market would increase steady. The market share of online shopping was higher than last year. Although online travel took low proportion, it kept over 30% growth rate driven by the developing segments like air ticket and hotel booking.

Among the segments of China e-commerce market, SME’s B2B was still the largest part; the GMV of SEM’s B2B was predicted to hit 12.4 trillion yuan (USD 2.03 trillion) in 2017, with compound growth rate of 25%. Moreover, O2O and mobile shopping would be the fastest developing segments in the future.

In respect of mobile shopping, the traditional e-commerce giants were focusing on developing user habit of mobile client. As the network coverage system maturing, more smartphone and tablet users started to utilize fragmentary time, and mobile shopping was a good option for filling time. Meanwhile the growth of online shopping on PC slowed down, making mobile market the new growth point. It motivated e-commerce enterprises to seize the mobile shopping market.

For O2O, the O2O market of local service was the early starter in traditional industry and had made some development. O2O of catering and ticket service began to take shape. Reverse O2O (offline to online) service such as QR code and sound wave payment were just emerging, however, as the technology matures, the market may exceed 100 billion in the future.

China mobile shopping market reached 167.64 billion yuan (USD 27.459 billion) in 2013, with 165.4% YoY growth. The market kept increasing rapidly under the circumstance of a better network coverage system and higher mobile terminal penetration. In the same period, the size of online shopping by PC is nearly 1600 billion yuan (USD 262.08 billion), with a 35.7% YoY growth. The market size was predicted to get close to a trillion with a growth rate of 39.4% in 2017, according to iResearch.

It is regarded that the trend of mobile internet was overwhelming, and mobile shopping was gradually becoming the first choice of online shopping. The rapid increase of mobile shopping benefited from following reasons. For one thing, traditional E-commerce giants emphasized developing the customers’ habit of using mobile. They enhanced the user experience, increased mobile promotion input, and launched mobile-special activities on Double 11, i.e. the shopping carnival created first by Tmall.

Taobao app, released mobile-user-only “red-envelops” (cash coupons) , Jingdong, Yixun (51buy), Suning also released special coupon to mobile users, encouraging more mobile users. On the day of Double 11(November 11) in 2013, the mobile Taobao transaction amount paid by Alipay reached 5.35 billion yuan (USD 876.32 million), and the user-frequency per day of mobile Taobao reached 1.27 billion times increasing by 457.3% compared to last year.

For another thing, as China’s network coverage system was maturing, more users of smartphones and tablets were starting to make use of the fragmentary time, and shopping became a good choice. In the meantime, the growth of online shopping by PC slowed down, and the mobile market rose to a growth point of E-commerce, attracting more E-commerce enterprises to pursue the mobile market share.

According to the statistical data of iResearch, China mobile shopping penetration was 9.1% in 2013, with a YoY growth of over 4 percentage points. It’s predicted to reach 24.1% in 2017.

Analysts regarded that the subsequent increase of mobile shopping penetration in the next few years was owed to the mature of the upstream and downstream of mobile shopping chain, and the better layout of mobile and the more promotion carried out by traditional E-commerce.

Here are several trends of future mobile shopping market. One is mobile end access diversification,Wechat payment showed the potential of IM market other than traditional E-commerce app and wap websites. Yixin, released by NetEase and China telecom, Alibaba’s Laiwang and other IMs tried to catch users’ eye by offering free mobile data traffic. New WeChat 5.0 added payment function and joined up with Yixun.com to make shopping all by WeChat possible.

Another trend is more cooperation with telecommunication operators. Taobao announced to cooperate with China Unicom, and released “free mobile data traffic” plan together. Some other E-commerce enterprises such as Suning and Jingdong also revealed the intention of cooperation with telecommunication operator to seize more consumers and market share.

As mobile terminal became more popular and the charge of mobile network decreased, mobile internet and shopping was broaden to tier-three or four cities and low-income groups. This is another trend of future mobile shopping market.

Taobao published 2013 shopping keywords on December 12, 2013. Hazy weather, tuhao, dama, and mobile shopping, etc. were the top Taobao shopping keywords of the year.

Taobao transactions related to hazy weather reached 870 million yuan (USD 142.28 million). Beijing had most hazy weather days in 2013, more than 300,000 persons purchased products such as dust mask, air purifier and indoor running machine. Total transactions related to hazy weather in Beijing mounted to 55,000, with 61.32 million yuan (USD 10.03 million). On the contrary, in Hainan province, only 15,871 purchased products related to hazy weather and 26,000 transactions in 2013, with 4.63 million yuan (USD 757,169).

Environment pollution certainly affected people’s shopping habits, as well as related industries.

Besides, other hot shopping keywords related data were below:

Tuhao: In 2013, the number of buyers who spent over million yuan in a year on Taobao was 5,758. And 1,053 of them were from Guangdong Province.

Dama: Online gold and gold relative funds transactions reached 910 million yuan (USD 148.82 million) in 2013, average transaction amount was 997.8 yuan (USD 163.18).

Mobile shopping: There were 400 million consumers purchased on mobile Taobao.

Mobile transaction occupied 20% of total on Double 11, and the transaction grew 560% compared to 2012. This was regarded as the omen of mobile shopping outbreak. Nearly half of post-90s used mobile phone to purchase on Double 11, 2013. It means that online shopping began to transfer from PC to mobile.

Taobao data showed that mobile transaction reached 5.35 billion yuan (USD 872 million), and mobile Taobao daily active accounts hit 127 million. The number of Taobao mobile transaction on Double 11 was 35.9 million, 21% of total transaction. At present, mobile Taobao users reached 320 million.

Different from PC-end online shopping, mobile shopping showed personalized, fragmented and information push features.

30% Middle and Western China Consumers Did Mobile Shopping

Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Jiangsu Province and Zhejiang Province consumers are the main force for online shopping, however, data showed that consumers from middle and western China surpassed tier one cities in mobile shopping.

Tibetan mobile transaction occupied 29.1% of its total transaction, ranking the first in mobile shopping. Followed by Shaanxi and Jiangsu with 27.3%, Shanxi ranked fourth with 27.3%, and Zhejiang ranked the fifth with 27.2%.

Post 90s Love Mobile Shopping

Young people below 25 years old seem to prefer mobile shopping, especially young women. Data showed that 46% young female below 25 purchased via mobile on Double 11 2013, and male consumers below 25 who purchased via mobile occupied 37%. Mobile shopping had become the life-style of post 90s. If PC represents the post 80s, then mobile represents post 90s.

Mobile Shoppers Love to Purchase on Bed

During 4am-7am on November 11 2013, mobile-end transaction surpassed PC-end. Data showed that most people closed their computer at 4:40 am, while most mobile shoppers were still active. Mobile transaction during the period occupied 63%.

Mobile Taobao allows users to check product information and purchase without limit on location and time. Newly mothers loved to shop in the midnight, milk powder, diapers and other babies products sales went up in the midnight.

 Product Information Sharing

Mobile shopping is not only about shopping, it includes getting information and sharing it. Maybe consumers gain information about products through multiple channels, such as Sina Weibo, SNS, advertising, but the purchasing process is more and more centered on mobile. At the same time, the percentage of adding favorite product pages in PC and pay it on mobile is increasing.

Mobile Taobao is more suitable for users to share purchasing experience. One hour after the beginning of Double 11, millions of consumers shared their shopping information on mobile Taobao.