China’s eCommerce Market Surpasses $186B In Q3

The online retail market hit $186.13 billion during the third quarter, with Alibaba in the dominant position.

According to a report in The Drum, Alibaba’s Tmall controlled 59.5 percent of the market share in China during the third quarter. In second place was eCommerce rival JD.com, which The Drum reported ended the third quarter with an online market share of 25.8 percent. Combined, Tmall and JD.com controlled most of the retail Internet-based market with a combined market share of 85.3 percent. Suning, the electronics retailer, saw its market share increase in the third quarter compared to the second quarter. Its market share now stands at 6.4 percent, up from 5.5 percent in the second quarter, noted the report. The fourth-place player was Vipshop with 3.2 percent market shares — and Gome, with 1.2 percent share of the marketplace, came in fifth.

The online retail market in China had 30.3 percent growth during the third quarter compared with a year ago, reported The Drum, citing data from research firm Analysys. Meanwhile, Forrester, another market research firm, forecasted the eCommerce market in China to reach $1.8 trillion in 2022. For 2018, Forrester said the eCommerce market in China will reach $1.1 trillion.

To say Alibaba has become a leader in eCommerce in China would be an understatement. One just has to look to results for its Singles’ Day shopping event held in November for evidence. For the 24-hour shopping event, it had more than $30.8 billion in sales, with gross merchandise value up close to 27 percent from the year earlier’s Singles’ Day shopping event.  In a press release at the time, Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang said: “the Festival’s astounding growth over the past decade has powered the steady growth of quality consumption sought by Chinese shoppers.” Meanwhile, JD.com reported around $23 billion in transaction value during the shopping event. JD.com said it sold more than 400 million items in its consumer goods and food business.