Taobao data: What do Chinese buy online?

Tingyi Chen WeChat news

Taobao released a consumer shopping report showing the e-commerce trend in China over the past 5 years.  According to this report, Chinese consumer is showing higher demand in the following industries: healthy food, smart devices, special interest groups, traditional products and sports.

Taobao data shows higher demand for healthy food products

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Health supplement is among the fastest growing market in F&B industry. Within the health supplement category, digestive enzymes (believed to have a weight losing effect) sales volume has multiplied by 1.3 in the first 3 quarter of 2015.

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Taobao data shows smart device is another high growth market

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Among the smart watch industry, Apple is leading with around 20% of market share, the rest of the market share is very fragmented.

Vacuum robot take most of the market share for home smart devices. 

Taobao data shows consumer purchasing behaviour is more scattered

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Manga related products have stable and fast growth over the last 3 years. Consumers in manga industry show higher loyalty and high re-purchase rate. The largest customer group is students aged between 19 and 22 with a concentration in first tier cities.

Taobao data indicates growing demand for traditional products in e-commerce

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Traditional clothing Qipao is becoming more popular among the younger generation. User under age of 28 represent half of the market for Qipao purchase.

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Users over 28 purchase more products on average than the younger generation.  This may be because users under 28 prefer to shop on other platforms like Tmall, JD.com when buying specialised or higher quality products.

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Taobao is more popular among users with lower educational degree.

The purchase volume of perfumes and hair hair dryer keeps growing for age group 50-70. This age group also shows increasing interest in outdoor sport equipment.

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