SHANGHAI has 4.08 million online shoppers, the highest penetration rate of all cities in China, a Beijing-based IT consulting firm said in a recent report.
More than half of local people have purchased goods online at least once. On average, every Shanghainese spent 634 yuan (US$91.37) last year on online shopping sites, such as Taobao.com and Joyo.com, compared with 453 yuan in Beijing, according to China IntelliConsulting Corp.
About 330 million local people choose online stores or B2C (business to consumer) and 172 million people use auction Websites or C2C (consumer to consumer).
The top choices are clothing, books, audio and video products, IT gadgets, consumer electronics and cosmetics, said Zhou Hongmei, China IntelliConsulting's analyst.
"Regional differences existed with Shanghai's online consumers preferring clothing and cosmetics while Beijing's people like books," Zhou said.
In the four major cities ?? Shanghai, Beijing Guangzhou and Shenzhen, a total of 10.5 million people have purchased products online, with a penetration rate of 41.7 percent. In the four second-tier cities - Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenyang and Xi'an, the number of online buyers is 2.53 million with a penetration rate of 29.3 percent, according to China IntelliConsulting.
The survey, conducted from January to April, covered 2,600 people in the eight cities.
"China's online trade is still in the infant stage and lots of newcomers will try the service on the zero-cost platform," said Chang Ling, vice president of eBay Eachnet, eBay's Chinese joint venture.
China is the only region where the world's biggest online auction Website doesn't charge users for trading.
To encourage more online trade, market leader Taobao.com has provided free services for several years.
China's online auction Website trade value totaled 51.8 billion yuan, a jump of 125.2 percent year on year with eBay Eachnet's market share by volume 7.7 percent, following Taobao's 83.6 percent and Tencent Paipai's 8.7 percent, according to iResearch, a Shanghai-based Internet research firm.