By Chen Jing

According to statistics from market researcher iResearch, the volume of China's online shopping market in the 3rd quarter of 2011 has reached RMB 197.51 billion Yuan, and growth in the first 3 quarters stays at a rate of over 70 percent compared with the same period of the previous year. The transaction volume of China's online shopping market is estimated to exceed RMB 750 billion Yuan in 2011.

Behind these fast-growing figures lies a fact: online shopping has evolved from a novelty into the norm. Case in point, in the first half of 2011, the total shopping amount of buyers from Midwest China on taobao.com grew by 98 percent compared with the same period of last year, with that in Xinjiang increasing by 259 percent. Online shopping is no longer limited in first-tier cities; instead, it has become an important way to boost consumption.

Conventional enterprises making more efforts

In 2011, numerous B2C (Business-to-Customer) websites made vehement efforts to expand their turfs: 360buy.com added books and luxurious goods businesses; Tmall, Amazon China, and Dangdang continued to expand the category of their general merchandises; and Suning.com, who used to deal mainly with home appliances and digital devices, also entered the book and general merchandises businesses. In terms of approaches to broaden the category of their commodities, most websites adopt open platforms that allow suppliers to open stores directly, and provide the suppliers with such services as online stores construction and logistics, creating opportunities for conventional enterprises that don't have sufficient e-commerce experience.   

Thanks to that, the online sales of conventional enterprises continue to make new high records. In 2011, on taobao.com's distribution platform alone, there were 81,000 suppliers and brands, with as many as 1.3 million distributors; conventional enterprises accounted for a significant part of these brands, and they are showing extremely great momentum. In Taobao's promotion day on Nov. 11, 2011, conventional enterprises Camel and Beyond Home Textile enjoyed sales of more than RMB 40 million Yuan, and the sales of Jack & Jones' exceeded RMB 30 million Yuan.

Emerging mobile e-commerce

Alipay recently launched its iPad app, and within a week, the app was downloaded more than 100,000 times. Also, Alipay's iPhone app was named one of Apple's best apps in 2011, with more than 3 million downloads. Zhu Yinjia, who is in charge of Alipay's wireless business, suggests that convenience is the most important reason why users transfer from computers to mobiles and tablets. 

With the rapid growth of mobile internet users and the change of internet using behaviors of internet users, e-commerce enterprises are beginning to make deployment in the mobile internet market. At present, Vancl receives about 15,000 orders from its mobile phone platform; Dangdang has more than 7,000 orders coming from its mobile clients; and in June, 2011, 360buy.com's daily volume of orders placed through mobile phones reached RMB 2 million Yuan. Efforts made by online shopping platforms on the mobile internet are more than simple transplanting. Chen Hu, vice president of letao.com, says that: "besides selling well-known brands such as Nike and Adidas, the mobile phone channel also has its unique characteristics, and should sell commodities that are suitable for users of this channel". For this reason, letao.com works with such mobile games brands as Fruit Ninja and Angry Birds to produce peripheral products, selling more than 1,000 pairs of shoes that are printed with characters of these games weekly. The advantages of mobile e-commerce, such as being real-time, convenient, and regional, are materializing. However, the development of mobile-ecommerce at present is still restricted by such factors as small mobile phone shopping users group and incomplete mobile payment and network environment. Generally speaking, it is still in its early stage of development.   

Maturing industrial environment

In June 2011, the National Tax Bureau of Wuhan wrote China's first tax bill on an individual online shop, levying more than RMB 4.3 million Yuan on Taobao's women clothing store 100f1. It is told that Taobao's online stores that are in Wuhan and that are Crown level and higher are all included in the city's taxing scope.

The year 2011 is also an important year for third-party payment platforms. In this year, the Third-party Payment License was issued. People's Bank of China has give out 40 "payment business licenses" (aka payment license) in the year, and enterprises that do not possess the payment license are not allowed to continue engagement in related business starting from September 1.

Both the "first tax bill" and the "issuance of license" are indications that stronger regulation on online shopping has been put on agenda. Nothing can be accomplished without norms and rules. Solutions to main problems of online shopping, such as prevalent fakes and uneven service quality, also depend on the promulgation of relevant policies, so that the whole industry can develop more rationally and healthily.  

The maturing of industrial environment has also been reflected on the rapid development of supporting links of online shopping in 2011. Take express delivery as an example, the daily processing capacity of China's express delivery industry has grown from 3 million pieces in 2007 to 13 million pieces in 2011. Meanwhile, many e-commerce enterprises have invested large amount of capital to set up logistics infrastructures. For example, Vancl has established its Rufengda express delivery for distribution; Dangdang has set up logistics centers in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Wuhan, and invested RMB 1 billion Yuan to construct 3 logistics bases in North China, East China, and South China.