Hangzhou, Feb 11, 2009 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Taobao.com, China's largest consumer e-commerce company, reported today that its transaction volume (gross merchandise volume) reached RMB 99.96 billion (US$14.62 billion) in 2008, a 131 percent year-on-year increase. Taobao's transaction volume for 2008 exceeded the sales volume of China's largest mass retailer, and equals approximately 1% of China's total retail trade in 2008, according to statistics released by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.
"Taobao's strong growth in 2008 was driven by a number of factors including the strong growth of Internet usage in China, the increasing penetration of domestic e-commerce and the investments made by Taobao to ensure the overall experience of our buyers and sellers remains the best in the business," said Jonathan Lu, president of Taobao.
China Internet analysts expect e-commerce to grow strongly in the coming years as both the number of Internet users in China increases and the percentage of those users who engage in e-commerce also grows. According to China IntelliConsulting Corporation, e-commerce penetration in China is relatively low as compared to Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom or the United States, but Internet analysts from iResearch China expect that online shopping will increase rapidly in the coming years.
Taobao has a total of 98 million registered users as of December 31, 2008, of which 48 percent are between the ages of 25 to 32 and 35 percent are between the ages of 16 to 24. This demographic distribution demonstrates that Taobao's user base is driven by young consumers in China who have grown up in an increasingly wired world.
Active Taobao users make an average of eight to 10 purchases per year. Users between the ages of 16 to 24 spend less than RMB 1,000 per year, while those the age of 30 spend more than RMB 1,600 and those over age 50 average more than RMB 2,000 per year.
"Taobao's announcement in late 2008 that Alibaba Group would invest RMB 5 billion into the Taobao ecosystem over the next five years is a concrete statement of the Group's confidence in the Chinese domestic economy, our optimism about domestic consumption and our commitment towards job creation for entrepreneurs to harness the power of the Taobao marketplace," Lu said. "We are committed to reinforcing Taobao's healthy and safe online shopping environment, and to continually upgrading the online shopping experience for all of our users."
Appendix: Top Ten retail items on Taobao.com in 2008
---------------------------------------------------Rank Category Transaction Volume (in billions of RMB)---------------------------------------------------1 Apparel 15.992 Mobile Phones 10.843 Cosmetics 5.604 Household Goods 5.585 Sporting Goods 5.406 Personal Computers & Accessories 5.167 Jewelry 5.018 Laptop Computers 4.889 Home Appliances 3.8310 Stored Value Cards (for mobile phones) 3.68---------------------------------------------------
About Taobao
Taobao (taobao.com) is the largest online shopping marketplace for consumers in China. With a registered user base of nearly 100 million, Taobao reaches an overwhelming majority of online shoppers in China. In 2008, Taobao's transaction volume, or gross merchandise volume (GMV), was RMB99.96 billion, up 131 percent year-on-year. Since its launch in 2003, Taobao has grown into an ecosystem where over 1 million online merchants reach a growing online consumer population in China.
Alimama (alimama.com), China's largest online advertising exchange platform, was combined with Taobao in September 2008. Alimama helps China's more than 1 million small and medium-size websites, which generate an estimated 80 percent of China's Internet traffic, to sell online advertising inventory and monetize their traffic. It currently serves 3 billion ad impressions that reach 80 million consumers every day. Launched in November 2007, Alimama's network currently includes 400,000 web publishers and advertisers.
Contact
John W. Spelich
Vice President, International Corporate Affairs
Alibaba Group
Email: johnspelich@hk.alibaba-inc.com
Tel: +852 2215-5129
Jasper Chan
Corporate Communications Manager
Alibaba Group
Email: jasperchan@hk.alibaba-inc.com
Tel: +852 2215-5213
| ||
|
