Per-month ecommerce purchase rate outpaces rest of world
According to the January 2012 China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) study, “29th Statistical Report on Internet Development in China,” at the end of 2011, China had 194 million online buyers, representing more than a third of all internet users in the country and an increase of 33.5 million over 2010.
While statistics about China are usually staggering, China’s relationship with ecommerce is particularly noteworthy. A September 2011 survey of online buyers worldwide conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) found that 86% of buyers in China considered themselves experts at ecommerce, compared to 70% in the UK and 72% in the US. And users in China are acting on that confidence—online buyers in the country reported an average of 8.4 online purchases per month.
If PwC’s stats held up for every online buyer counted by CNNIC, it would equate to more than 1.63 billion online transactions every month in China.
To put this number in context, eMarketer estimated online buyers in the US at 143.4 million in 2011. Multiplied by PwC’s findings of 5.2 purchases per buyer per month, that would put the US at 745.7 million purchases every month, less than half the number of ecommerce purchases the data indicates occur in China.
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Check out today’s other articles, “Video, Social Boost US Mobile Content Consumption” and “Denny’s Serves Up ‘Crave-able Content’ Through Social, Online Video.”