During the period, Chinese netizens mainly buy books and music and video products at the beginning however now they purchase mostly digital products, adult supplies and so on. Generally speaking, due to the concept limitation, such as income/consumption concepts, there are still relative few merchandize varieties bought online in China and the majority trait of these products is the low average value.
In 2008, China's B2C online shopping market scale kept stable growth and reached 12.5 billion RMB (1.78 billion USD).
Chart Market scale of online shopping market in China, 2003-2008
Till the end of 2008, the number of Chinese netizens was upon 280 million which was the steady base for the development of online shopping market in China. About one-fourth netizens bought things online in 2008.
With the continuous development of online shopping in China, the way of payment online developed better. The invention of the third party payment tools - Alipay, Paypal - reduce the risk of online shopping for the netizens. Meanwhile, it is much more convenient to deal in the same city with the upgrade of logistics and the service of delivery to door as well as payment after receipt.
As the number of Chinese netizens and online consumers increasing continuously, it is no doubt that online shopping market in China certainly sees a rapid rise and great developing potentials with many investing opportunities.
In the field of B2C, most websites still focus on certain industries, such as IT products, books and MV, adult products, presents and flowers etc. The flourish of B2C in China has attracted foreign investment gradually. Some of them adopted mergers and acquisitions - Amazon buying JoYo, and some of them set chain stores directly in China.
