CHINA TOPIX

11/22/2024 04:08:41 pm

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China's Online Spending May Overtake US

Online Shopping
(Photo : Online Shopping with Touchscreen Ultrabook)

China's online spending will hit over CNY3.3 trillion, or around $532 billion in 2015, and industry experts predicted that the country's online sales could surpass that of the United States this year.

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According to Bain & Co, an American global management consulting firm that has been advising many of the world's largest corporations and governments, China's e-commerce growth will continue to be 32% annually in the next three years.

The "China E-commerce Report" published by Bain & Co said that the country's e-commerce market will grow 50% higher than that of the United States in 2015. As early as this year, China is likely to outpace the e-commerce industry of the US, the report said.

Growth To Outpace US

Last year, Chinese consumers spent a total of $212.4 billion on online transactions while their US counterparts spent $228.7 billion. China's growth, however, was seen at 74% from 2009 to 2012 while that of the US was just 13% last year.

Analysts said China can easily overtake the US as the world's leading online shopper because more than half of the country's 1.3 billion people now have direct access to the Internet, with a substantial number of netizens using their smarphones and gadgets to shop online.

Competing China's Giants

This development would mean companies with retail outlets in China will have to realign their sales strategies in order to gain a share of the booming online market. The growth of online sales in the country has outpaced offline sales growth, sources said.

And while China's e-commerce has long been dominated by China's online retail giants Alibaba and 360Buy, experts said businesses will have to be on the web, whether they like it or not, even if it means competing with the giants.

The National Bureau of Statistics said Internet shopping occupied 7.3% of the total consumer retail sales in the country during the second half of this year. Overall, China's total retail sales hit $985 billion.

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