How Do China’s Online Retailers Differ from Major Online Retailers of the United States?

This question originally appeared on Quora, and the answers that follow were provided by Ben Chiang, Adventure Capitalist, Zach Brown, a Texan in China, and Grady Ha, marketing and strategy consultant.

Ben Chiang

Ben Chiang, Adventure Capitalist

I’d highlight three major characteristics:

1. Market dominance

Taobao/affiliates have dominated Chinese e-commerce since it began. Taobao is a C2C eBay-like site, T-Mall is a B2C Amazon-like site, and Alipay is a PayPal-like payment service. They have had 70 to 100 percent market share since their inception. Only recently have other sites emerged, such as 360Buy (which has raised well over $1 billion in private capital) in general B2C, as well as vertical or specialized sites focusing on cosmetics/bags/lingerie/kids in direct B2C, flash sales, subscription, or group-buy sales.

2. Delivery expectations

Because of significant investments, mostly by 360Buy and Taobao, Chinese consumers have been trained to expect next-day or even same-day delivery for their e-commerce purchases. Amazon’s CFO recently came out to say they don’t see any way to get to one-day delivery anytime soon [1]. When I think about how Prime/2-day delivery was an inflection point in my own e-commerce buying habits, one-day is even better.

3. They have everything

Seriously. You can find some cool stuff in the long-tail through eBay, Etsy, etc. in the States, but as the majority of the world’s consumer trinkets are made in China, it makes sense that everything you’d want is on there. We recently ordered twenty scratch-n-sniff belts on Taobao for $12, fake Jeremy Lin jerseys for $15 each (rip off!!), then thirty sunglasses for a bachelor party for $15, and finally three inflatable sharks for $7. It makes costume and theme parties that much more fun/easier/cheaper.

Zach Brown

Zach Brown, a Texan in China

1. As Ben mentioned, the express delivery process is one area of difference and probably the most significant of any between the two markets. I work with KuaiDi companies often, and it is firstly awesome, and secondly something that could never exist in the US or most western developed countries. It’s basically cheap labor and strength in numbers drives that industry. Quality is a huge issue though, as the large SF Express and a few smaller others are the only ones not franchised.