Online shoppers flock to the way of the Taobao.com

Saturday March 14, 2009
Online shoppers flock to the way of the Taobao.com
Shanghai Bund
By CHOW HOW BAN


In the three years since it began, this shopping portal has captured some 75% of China’s online retail market.

AT A weekend badminton session, my Chinese badminton mate revealed that we had been playing with shuttlecocks he had bought online.

“It was as simple as ABC, and furthermore, convenient,” he said of online shopping, a trend that has grown in recent years.

Lucy Jin, 24, who has been buying and selling stuff on Taobao.com at least once a month since two years ago, says: “Shopping online is very interesting. I bought tickets for performances at cheaper prices. And delivery fees are very cheap, too.

“Sometimes, I buy gifts for my friends. And you don’t have to meet up with your friend to give him or her the present. Almost every Chinese girl uses Taobao.”

She said a good buyer could walk away with a good bargain – just like in real-life shopping.

“The owner and I will talk online or via e-mail on discounts,” the Shanghainese lass added.

A Malaysian student, who only wanted to be known as Fiza, was influenced by her Chinese friends into buying things on the popular shopping portal.

“I buy clothes. Sometimes they are cheaper than what I can get at the shopping malls,” she said.

The buyer can also return defective products for an exchange. One can use Internet banking to pay for the goods and check the delivery status on the portal.

Buyers can also obtain receipts from the sellers – individual and corporate – for the products.

Taobao, established in 2003, has become China’s most-used consumer-to-consumer and business-to-consumer website in less than three years.

Taobao facilitated the sale of 99.96bil yuan (RM54bil) of merchandise last year, more than double the 43.3bil yuan in 2007.

Bloomberg reported that Taobao, the e-commerce unit of Alibaba, dominates 75% of China’s online shopping market, citing data from third-party research firm iResearch.

With 62 million registered members, it is not a hard decision for many to turn to Taobao to fulfil their dreams of doing business online, as setting up their own e-commerce portal would require a lot of capital.

However there is still a learning curve.

A Taobao “shop owner” said she sat in front of her computer for days without receiving any orders.

“At the beginning I was worried as I didn’t know if I could recoup the investment I put into my computers and office. But, my perseverance finally paid off,” she said.

Another “shop owner” who succeeded in establishing her own retail brand after years of trial and error, said when she first joined the fray years ago the market was rather new, but the Taobao operator and users upgraded the platform to meet consumers’ demands.

“I think every ‘shop owner’ has faced difficult times in finding the right product to sell.

“There are many success stories among Taobao ‘shop owners’. It’s a matter of whether you put your heart into it.”

She said she had learned to zoom in on her target audience, be specific about the product she was selling, and to vary her marketing strategies.

For another trader, having his product information on various platforms helped develop him into a credible “shop owner”. He sells decorative glass products.

“I started doing business on Taobao in 2005 hoping that I could promote my products to more customers than I could through conventional retailing,” he said.

“When I first registered myself on the portal, I was so naive that I used my real name and personal details, which I shouldn’t have. Now, I have learned a lot and gained tremendous profit in online sales.”

He spends about 10 hours online daily to communicate with his customers and to complete transactions.

Taobao welcomes any company or retailer, and e-commerce has been an effective platform to reach out to the world, he added.

According to an iResearch survey, Taobao created some 570,000 jobs last year, 19% of it in Shanghai, the international gateway to China.

More than half the individual sellers on Taobao are aged between 23 and 32, the majority fresh graduates.

Some 44% earn between 1,000 yuan and 2,000 yuan a month; 4% between 4,000 yuan and 5,000 yuan, and 2% more than 6,000 yuan a month.