Men spend more on electronic items online compared to women. (Photo: Li Hao/GT)
Cheng Xiao, 25, has recently been distracted from his work. He has been immersed in grabbing gift money (competing with others for digital money on social media) on Taobao, China's leading online shopping platform. He is preparing for the Singles' Day shopping festival on Wednesday, an annual shopping bonanza featuring millions of discounted products.
"I keep looking at my watch and calculating how long I should wait before the next round of gift money grabbing on Taobao," said Cheng, a college student who spent about 10,000 yuan ($1,572) on online shopping.
Shoppers like Cheng are referred to as the "hands-chopping party" on Chinese social media because they almost always regret their splurges and vow to chop off their hands if they impulse shop again, which they inevitably do. Women are usually considered to be a major driving force in the prosperity of online shopping, but a new survey has shown, surprisingly, that the number of male online consumers is higher than that of women.
According to a white paper released at the International E-business Expo 2015 in October in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province by Nielsen, a global marketing and advertising research company, male online consumers account for 55 percent of the total. Meanwhile, a report on China's online shopping market in 2014 released by the China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) found that among those who frequently shop online, men are about 23 percent higher than women.
Yuan Guobao, a Beijing-based media commentator, has asked his family and friends to supervise him in a bid to curb his shopping tendencies.
"No more snacks! No more books! No more shoes," he vowed.
Yuan spends over 10,000 yuan per month on online shopping, as a channel to release his boredom. "Am I considering chopping my hands? I probably will not. Taobao is almighty, and you can buy everything you want there," Yuan said.
Another CINIC report showed that men spend more money than women on average. Among those who spend more than 10,000 yuan per year, the number of male buyers is twice as many as female ones.
One reason men spend so much lies in what they purchase. Cheng's money is mostly invested in buying 3C digital products (computers, communication, and consumer electronics) including phones and wearable gadgets.
Every time Cheng brings up buying a television to watch football games on, his girlfriend would strongly object, saying, "it is unnecessary to spend so much money on a television since you can watch football games on your laptop."
"She can't understand my desire to watch live football games [on a good television]," he said.
Cheng said many of his male friends are keen on buying clothes, shoes or hats, while contraceptives are also a big expense for those who are not single. Many men spend a lot on online games as a regular expense, too, he said.
Men's shopping habits are greatly different from women's in many ways, according to the male shoppers.
For example, Cheng is proud of being quicker and more decisive in online shopping. When shopping for clothes, Cheng makes the decision very fast, according to him, while his girlfriend is "always browsing from one store to another store and can't make a final decision."
