Spring Festival boosts online shopping

The shopping frenzy is kicking off once again in China. With the Spring Festival holidays and the Chinese Year of the Snake right around the corner, everybody in the country seems be on a shopping spree, especially online. E-commerce websites are tempting buyers with sweet promotions. So far, traditional Chinese pastries and biscuits top the list of most popular items purchased.

Normally at this time of year customers would be rushing to markets and supermarkets to do their festival shopping. But compared to previous years, supermarket shopping has not increased all that much.

Yuan Yufang, a store manager of Buddies Supermarket, said, “Shopping this year has only gone up by half a percent, not very much.”

Everyone’s favorite shopping spot in China seems to have changed. Earlier this month online retailer Taobao hosted an online fair for the upcoming Spring Festival. During the fair’s seven days, 4.8 million people placed orders, 4.5 million of them purchasing food and snacks. Total spending was more than one billion yuan. Internet festival shopping offers cheaper prices and more choices, and takes less time.

A customer said, “Online shopping is very convenient. I don’t have to keep running to the shops. It is more cost efficient.”

A customer said, “Shopping on the Internet is cheaper and more convenient. The goods can be delivered to my home very quickly.”

Local specialities and imports are customers’ new favourites this year, as they cannot be bought in ordinary markets. In Taobao’s Spring Festival fair, Chinese traditional snacks, like Fujian Zi Ba and Jin Hua flaky pastry, were among best selling products. And other online sellers have seen the popularity of imported goods.

Guo Dongdong, Vice President of Yihaodian.com, said, “For Spring Festival, we have imported a large number of products from many countries, and that has boosted online sales dramatically.

Online stores are very convenient for those who work away from home as well. According to Taobao’s statistics, during the online fair around 2.5 million migrant workers placed orders and had the goods sent directly to their hometowns. So did 10 thousand customers who live abroad. By the end of 2012, the total number of China’s online customers was estimated to have exceeded 200 million.