Forbes: Research shows that Chinese people are increasingly fond of online shopping

The US Forbes biweekly website reported on November 22: Where do Chinese people shop? In the near future, the market will pay as much attention to what Chinese consumers are buying as it does to Americans now. According to US consulting firm Bain & Company, more and more Chinese are shopping online.

For investors looking for long-term trends, it is not just what the Chinese buy, but where they buy. Just as Americans shop on Amazon, Chinese consumers buy everything from Jin Yong novels to Lenovo computers on e-commerce sites.

China's e-commerce market significantly outpaced the growth of traditional retail in 2010. Looking ahead, online shopping is expected to grow at an annual rate of 48 percent, reaching 1.5 trillion yuan by 2013, but will still only account for 7 percent of total retail sales, Bain researchers said in a 19-page report released today. This means that despite the current figures, online retailers still have a lot of room to gain a larger market share.

Books and electronic products are the most popular commodities sold online, followed by cosmetics and clothing. Bain said that it is still unclear whether the "China model" can transform pure growth into profit growth, but the basic data of online shopping growth is irrefutable.

China also has the largest number of Internet users in the world. Bain & Company estimates that this year China will have 556 million Internet users, of which 34% are likely to shop online. By 2013, China should have 715 million Internet users, and if 40% of them shop online, then in the next two years, China will have nearly 100 million new online shoppers.