If you open mobile Taobao and search “Starbucks”, you may see a new page completely different from before. In the past, when users search an established brand, the corresponding result would be the flagship store. The link to the flagship store will be displayed on the top of the page, with other various relevant goods […]
Taobao Statistics, Market Share, Trends, Insights
Launched in May 2003, China e-commerce platform Taobao, based in Hangzhou city and owned by Alibaba Group, provides the largest online shopping website Taobao.com and mobile apps China. It is the largest sales and revenue contributor of Alibaba Group.
Taobao has hundreds of millions of customers on its platform. Now, the main growth comes from less developed areas. The total annual transactions on Taobao is over trillion yuan.
Taobao History
Upon its launch in 2003, Taobao offered free listings to sellers and introduced interactive website features such as instant messaging for buyer-seller communications and an escrow-based payment tool, Alipay, now owned by Ant Financial and affiliated with Alibaba.
Taobao became mainland China's online shopping market leader within two years. Its market share surged from 8% to 59% between 2003 and 2005, while eBay China plunged from 79% to 36%.
Taobao.com achieved 43.3 billion yuan (over US$6 billion) total online sales with 53 million users in year 2007. It started offering 7 days money-back guarantee, no question asked; a more broad and cheaper selection of brand products.
In April 2008, Taobao introduced a dedicated B2C platform called Taobao Mall to complement its C2C marketplace. Taobao Mall established itself as the destination for quality brand name products for Chinese consumers and was hosted at Tmall.com in November 2010 and renamed to Tian Mao (Tmall) in January 2012.
From 2012, Taobao began to accept international Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards.
The gap behind China’s e-commerce factories
This is the third part of a three-part series on e-commerce companies’ exploration and collaboration with the manufacturing industry. Read part 1 here and part 2 here. You can download the full eBook here. Compared with manufacturing, China’s internet companies know more about how to interact with consumers. E-commerce factories is an attempt to promote manufacturing […]
Pinduoduo and Taobao’s manufacturing strategies
This is the second part of a three-part series on e-commerce companies’ exploration and collaboration with the manufacturing industry. Read part 1 here. You can download the full eBook here. E-commerce giants are speeding up their deployment of factories. C2M, or customer to the manufacturer, is the direct connection between the customer and the manufacturing […]
Insights of e-commerce and manufacturing collaboration in China
This is the first part of a three-part series on e-commerce companies’ exploration and collaboration with the manufacturing industry. You can download the full eBook here. E-commerce factory is the collaboration of the manufacturing industry and the internet. Under the circumstances of retail sector being depressed while the traffic of e-commerce reaching the peak, the […]
Case study: selling luxury product through Taobao live broadcast
Feiyu Live Broadcast Competition in categories such as clothing, jewelry, and makeup is stiff in Taobao’s live streaming ecosystem and there are still opportunities in other categories such as luxury products. A Taobao Live MCN (Multi-Channel Network) Feiyu specializing in second-hand luxury products provides an excellent case for study. Since its debut on Taobao back […]
Mobile shopping users and top e-commerce apps in China in Q3 2019
China’s online shopping users reached 370 million on desktop and over 1 billion unique mobile devices in September 2019. They use an average of 2.22 mobile apps and 6.3 hours on shopping. Missfresh beats Alibaba’s HemaFresh by total users in tier-1 cities. Also, check out the top mobile shopping apps by growth and total MAU. […]
China’s year-end shopping festival Double 12 is on
Following Double 11 2019, the last major shopping festival is Double 12. Alibaba’s Taobao of Double 12 will focus on live broadcasting; everyone is the host and everything can be broadcasted. Interesting content will become a huge highlight of Double 12 on Taobao.
Alibaba e-commerce platform highlights in Q3 2019
In September 2019, Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces had 785 million mobile MAUs, representing a quarterly net increase of 30 million. Annual active consumers on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces reached 693 million for the 12 months ended September 30, 2019, compared to 674 million for the 12 months ended June 30, 2019.
How Taobao uses search and content to cultivate social e-commerce
Taobao launched its own Hot Search List function in September. It’s currently only available to 50% of the users, the Hot Search List appears when users click the search bar on the main page. Hot Search items on the list appear to be phrases edited manually rather than product keywords. Though it looks like Weibo’s […]
Alibaba’s China e-commerce customers grew to 674 million in Q2 2019
In June 2019, Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces had 755 million mobile MAUs, representing a quarterly net increase of 34 million. Annual active consumers on Alibaba’s China retail marketplaces was 674 million for the 12 months ended June 30, 2019, compared to 654 million for the 12 months ended March 31, 2019.
Sales & insights of China’s mid-year shopping festival (618) 2019
Taobao 618 Livestream 618, usually from mid-May to 18 June, is China’s largest mid-year shopping festival. This year’s Tmall 618, there were hundreds of domestic and foreign brands whose sales exceeded last year’s Double 11, with the highest growth rate exceeding 40 times. Taobao/Tmall 618 Performance With over 200,000 brands taking part. Innovative marketing campaigns […]
Top comprehensive e-commerce apps in 2018
Market penetration of comprehensive e-commerce mobile apps in China increased steadily to 67.3% in December 2018. Mobile Taobao led this market with a penetration of 53.1%, followed by Pinduoduo (29.3%) and JD (24.2%). Market penetration of comprehensive e-commerce reached 67.3%, an increase of 11.1% year-on-year. Its average DAU was 240 million in December, a net […]
Alibaba performance in Q1 and fiscal year 2019
Alibaba reported fiscal year revenue growth of 51% as well as robust user growth and engagement. Excluding the effects of consolidating acquired businesses, revenue would have increased by 39% year-over-year, according to Maggie Wu, Chief Financial Officer of Alibaba Group.
China FMCG market overview Q1 2019
The total spending of the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) recorded moderate value growth of 2.4% in the 12 weeks ending March 22, 2019, compared to the same period in 2018, according to Kantar Worldpanel China. Non-food, especially personal care categories, maintained a robust growth while the food and beverage sector showed a weaker performance of […]
Taobao to enable farmers to find new markets and customers
Taobao will leverage its live streaming technology to help incubate 1,000 key opinion leaders in China’s countryside in an effort to boost rural development according to Alibaba. By helping farmers go online, Taobao aims to enable farmers to find new markets and customers from their homegrown products.