Taobao

For the Chinese general, see Tao Bao.
Taobao
Type of site
Consumer-to-consumer and E-commerce
Available inChinese
OwnerAlibaba Group
URLwww.taobao.com Edit this at Wikidata
CommercialYes
LaunchedMay 2003 (2003-05)
Current statusActive
Written inPHP[1]
Taobao
"Taobao" in Simplified (top) and Traditional (bottom) Chinese characters
Simplified Chinese淘宝
Traditional Chinese淘寶
Literal meaningsearch for treasure[2]
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinTáobǎo
Bopomofoㄊㄠˊ ㄅㄠˇ
Wade–GilesT'ao2-pao3
Tongyong PinyinTáo-bǎo
IPA[tʰǎʊ.pàʊ]
Yue: Cantonese
Yale RomanizationTòuh-bóu
Jyutpingtou4 bou2
IPA[tʰɔw˩.pɔw˧˥]
Southern Min
Tâi-lôTô-pó

Taobao is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it was the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021.[3] Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003[4] by Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

Taobao Marketplace facilitates consumer-to-consumer retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online stores that mainly cater to consumers in Chinese-speaking regions (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) and abroad,[5] which is made payable by online accounts. Its stores usually offer an express delivery service.

Sellers are able to post goods for sale either through a fixed price or an auction. Auctions make up a small percentage of transactions, whereas the majority of the products are new merchandise sold at fixed prices. Taobao users usually read feedback and compare items from multiple shops. Taobao's popular payment platform is Alibaba's Alipay[6]

With over 1 billion product listings as of 2016,[7] the combined transaction volume of Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com reached 3 trillion yuan in 2017.[8]

eBay acquired Eachnet, China's online auction leader at the time, for US$180 million. It became a major contender in the Chinese consumer e-commerce market.[9] To counter eBay's expansion, Taobao offered free listings to sellers. It introduced instant messaging for facilitating buyer-seller communication and an escrow-based payment tool: Alipay. Taobao's focus on institutional trust building mechanisms like escrowing payments became a major reason for its success in the market for eBay, despite eBay's first-mover advantage.[10]: 15  Taobao became mainland China's market leader within two years. Its market share grew from 8% to 59% between 2003 and 2005, while eBay China dropped from 79% to 36%.[11] eBay shut down its Chinese site in 2006.

In October 2010, Taobao beta-launched eTao as an independent search engine for online shopping to provide and merchant information from a number of major consumer e-commerce websites in China. Online shoppers would be able to use the site to compare prices across sellers. According to the Alibaba Group web site, eTao offers products from Amazon China, Dangdang, Gome, Yihaodian, Nike China and Vancl, as well as Taobao and Tmall.[12]

In June 2011, Jack Ma, executive chairman and former chief executive officer of Alibaba Group, announced that Taobao would split into three different companies: Taobao Marketplace (a consumer-to-consumer platform), Tmall.com (a business-to consumer platform, then called Taobao Mall), and eTao (a search engine for online shopping). The move was said to be necessary for Taobao to “meet competitive threats that emerged in the past two years during which the Internet and e-commerce landscape has changed dramatically.”[13]

In 2012 Taobao began to accept international Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards.[14][15]

On 29 April 2013, Alibaba announced an investment of US$586 million in Sina Weibo. According to Reuters, the deal “should drive more web traffic to Alibaba's Taobao Marketplace”.[16] On August 1, 2013, Alibaba launched Weibo for Taobao, which allows users to link Sina Weibo accounts with Taobao accounts.[17]

  1. ^ Roger Chapman. "Top 40 Website Programming Languages". roadchap.com. Archived from the original on September 22, 2013. Retrieved September 6, 2011.
  2. ^ Barboza, David (August 10, 2009). "An Online Market Flourishes in China". The New York Times. Retrieved November 13, 2022.
  3. ^ "taobao.com Site Overview". Alexa Internet. Archived from the original on 2009-04-07. Retrieved 2019-02-21.
  4. ^ "taobao.com - Taobao : 淘宝网(淘寶網)". taobao.com.clearwebstats.com. Archived from the original on 2019-12-24. Retrieved 2019-12-24.
  5. ^ Chen, Jianqing; Ming Fan; Mingzhi Li (2016). "Advertising versus Brokerage Model for Online Trading Platforms" (PDF). MIS Quarterly. 40 (3): 575–596. doi:10.25300/MISQ/2016/40.3.03. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2021-04-21. Retrieved 2021-04-27.
  6. ^ Huang, Lan; Zhang, Xiaofang; Wang, Yan; Xie, Xuping (2021-09-05). "Research and Application of Reinforcement Learning Recommendation Method for Taobao". 2021 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC). Athens, Greece: IEEE. pp. 1–6. doi:10.1109/ISCC53001.2021.9631429. ISBN 978-1-6654-2744-9. S2CID 245145808.
  7. ^ "Consumer Engagement Driving Growth for Mobile Taobao | Alizila.com". Alizila.com. 28 June 2016. Archived from the original on 2 July 2017. Retrieved 5 March 2018.
  8. ^ Lee, Cyrus. "Alibaba achieves 3 trillion yuan transaction volume milestone". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 2018-03-26. Retrieved 2018-03-05.
  9. ^ ""eBay China Rumors". Search Engine Journal. September 26, 2006". 27 September 2006. Archived from the original on 9 May 2011. Retrieved 20 July 2011.
  10. ^ Liu, Lizhi (2024). From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691254104.
  11. ^ ""China's pied piper". The Economist. September 21, 2006". The Economist. September 21, 2006. Archived from the original on April 4, 2012. Retrieved July 20, 2011.
  12. ^ "Alibaba Group Company Overview". Alibaba Group. Archived from the original on 13 October 2013. Retrieved 21 October 2013.
  13. ^ "Alibaba Group to Split Taobao Online Retail Unit Into Three". Bloomberg. 16 June 2011. Archived from the original on 2018-02-28. Retrieved 12 May 2017 – via www.bloomberg.com.
  14. ^ 淘宝全面接受海外信用卡付款 Archived 2018-08-13 at the Wayback Machine, Taobao.com
  15. ^ 2011-10-19, 支付宝将向全球开放 国外用户可购物淘宝 Archived 2011-10-31 at the Wayback Machine, Phoenix TV Finance
  16. ^ "Alibaba pushes into social networking with Weibo investment". Reuters. Reuters. 29 April 2013. Archived from the original on 21 October 2013. Retrieved 21 October 2013.
  17. ^ Alibaba Released Weibo for Taobao with Sina Archived 2013-09-03 at the Wayback Machine China Internet Watch, August 5, 2013