Online shopping boom set to stay

Chinese consumers are increasingly dependent on online shopping, and they shop online in their spare time, during working hours, on public transportation and in the office, according to a latest report released on Tuesday by Nielsen, a global information and measurement company.

All latest trends indicate a bright future for China's e-commerce market, particularly mobile commerce, thanks to the high penetration of smartphones among Chinese consumers today, Tao Libao, vice president of E-commerce Solution at Nielsen China, said in a press release.

The number of online shoppers reached 302 million in China in 2013, and the total online sales of 1.85 trillion yuan ($300 billion) accounted for 7.9 percent of China's overall retail sales, a 29.5 percent increase from 2012, official data showed.

By the end of 2013, Internet penetration rate reached 45.5 percent in China, with a total of 618 million users.

Among those, 500 million log on via their mobile phones, according to China Internet Network Information Center.

Desktop computers and laptops are still the most frequently used devices for shoppers to shop online, Nielsen said in the report.

Meanwhile, mobile shopping via mobile phones and tablets is gaining momentum, with 53 percent and 36 percent of respondents also choosing to use these devices to shop online.

Around 80 percent of mobile shopping consumers say they will use their mobile phones to search product information before purchase, according to Nielsen.

However, compared with overall online shopping scale, mobile shopping consumers, for now, still account for a relatively smaller percentage of all online consumers.

For a few categories such as clothes, accessories as well as cosmetics and personal care products, more than 40 percent of the total online shoppers surveyed have purchased through mobile devices including smartphones and tablets.

"Given the over 70 percent penetration of smartphones among Chinese consumers today, even including lower tier cities, mobile commerce is expected to be further unlocked in the next few years," Tao said.

The report also said that majority of Chinese online shoppers prefer to check product information before shopping.

Search engines, professional websites of specific category and social networks are top three channels for online shoppers to check out the product information or user reviews of the specific products.

In Nielsen's survey, nine out of 10 respondents said they would be willing to try self-pickup service.

The report is based on an online survey of a total of 4,500 respondents aged over 18 from 14 major first- and second-tier cities in China.

All of respondents have shopped online for more than three times over the past 6 months and they completed the whole shopping process by themselves.