Taobao.com, China's largest online shopping marketplace for consumers in China, reported on Tuesday that its transaction volume (gross merchandise volume) reached RMB 99.96 billion (US$14.62 billion) in 2008, a 131 percent increase over the previous year. Taobao's transaction volume for 2008 exceeded the sales volume of China's largest mass retailer, and equaled approximately 1% of China's total retail trade in 2008, according to statistics released by the Chinese government.

Taobao had over 1 million online merchants, and a total of 98 million registered users as of December 31, 2008, of which 48 percent were between the ages of 25 to 32, and 35 percent were between the ages of 16 to 24.

Active Taobao users made an average of eight to 10 purchases per year. Users between the ages of 16 to 24 spend less than RMB 1,000 per year, while those the age of 30 spend more than RMB 1,600, and those over age 50 average more than RMB 2,000 per year.

The top ten retail items on Taobao.com in 2008 were Apparel, Mobile Phones, Cosmetics, Household Goods, Sporting Goods, Personal Computers & Accessories, Jewelry, Laptop Computers, Home Appliances, and Stored Value Cards (for mobile phones).

"Taobao's strong growth in 2008 was driven by a number of factors including the strong growth of Internet usage in China, the increasing penetration of domestic e-commerce and the investments made by Taobao to ensure the overall experience of our buyers and sellers remains the best in the business," said Jonathan Lu, president of Taobao.

China Internet analysts expect ecommerce to grow strongly in the coming years as both the number of Internet users in China increases and the percentage of those users who engage in e-commerce also grows. According to China IntelliConsulting Corporation, ecommerce penetration in China is relatively low as compared to Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom or the United States, but Internet analysts from iResearch China expect that online shopping will increase rapidly in the coming years.

"Taobao's announcement in late 2008 that Alibaba Group would invest RMB 5 billion into the Taobao ecosystem over the next five years is a concrete statement of the Group's confidence in the Chinese domestic economy, our optimism about domestic consumption and our commitment towards job creation for entrepreneurs to harness the power of the Taobao marketplace," Lu said. "We are committed to reinforcing Taobao's healthy and safe online shopping environment, and to continually upgrading the online shopping experience for all of our users."

Taobao is part of the Alibaba Group.