Online supermarkets in China are shopping websites that offer grocery buyers a complete shopping solution from a single online platform. The emphasis on these sites is to provide consumers all the products they would normally find on a

supermarket A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earli ...

shop floor, but delivered direct to the house or office door. Customers pay for goods with popular online payment systems such as

Alipay Alipay () is a third-party mobile and online payment platform, established in Hangzhou, China in February 2004 by Alibaba Group and its founder Jack Ma. In 2015, Alipay moved its headquarters to Pudong, Shanghai, although its parent company An ...

, or by bank transfer, or cash on delivery. Some online grocers such as

Yihaodian Yihaodian () is a Chinese online grocery business founded by Gang Yu and Junling Liu in July 2008. Yihaodian is a business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce website that provides people with a platform to shop groceries online. Yihaodian has “virtu ...

(also known as The No 1 Store) and Dingdong Maicai deliver to customers directly from their distribution centers, other providers such as

Auchan Auchan () is a French multinational retail group headquartered in Croix, France. It was founded in 1961 by Gérard Mulliez and is owned by the Mulliez family, who has 95% stake in the company. With 354,851 employees, of which 261,000 have 5% s ...

employ staff to pick goods from store shelves which are then delivered to customers.

Main Competitors

As of (June 2011) there is only one online supermarket which is fully national across China: Yihaodian. All other online supermarkets only operate in Shanghai. In a China a consumer study published in May 2011 (DDMA Market Research) found that in Shanghai 89% of white collar online grocery shoppers had used Yihaodian recently, whereas only 39% had used

Taobao Taobao () is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it is the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba Cl ...

Supermarket. The same study by DDMA Market Research identified the main drivers of usage for online supermarkets in China as: * Convenience of delivery (100%) * Ease of searching for items (70%) * Not having to deal with crowds (66%) * Ability to read product reviews (60%) * Wide selection of products (51%). US retail giant

Wal-Mart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

in May 2011 announced it was in talks to purchase a minority stake in Yihaodian for an undisclosed amount. Taobao Supermarket also has access to large amounts of investment capital through its parent Alibaba Group (40% owned by

Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

). Taobao Supermarket has announced on its website that it plans to expand into Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou.

Online Consumer Purchases in China

10% of all consumer goods purchases in Shanghai are carried out online, according to another market research study by DDMA Market Research. This compares to 10.5% for the UK. On average across China the share is lower at 3%, but

internet penetration Global Internet Usage is the number of people who use the Internet worldwide. Internet users In 2015, the International Telecommunication Union estimated about 3.2 billion people, or almost half of the world's population, would be online by the ...

is growing rapidly so this number is expected to increase. A recent study shows that in China, online shopping benefits rural residents statistically by enhancing their living standards.

References

* {{cite news, last=Perez, first=Bien, title=Shoppers log on to online supermarkets, url=http://gochina.scmp.com/shanghai/news/shoppers-log-online-supermarkets, newspaper=South China Morning Post, date=April 22, 2011 http://gochina.scmp.com/shanghai/news/shoppers-log-online-supermarkets Online retailers of China

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

Supermarkets of China