Monday, February 1, 2010

B2C Online Shopping Mall to Target China

Japanese ecommerce operator Rakuten and Chinese search engine Baidu.com have announced a joint venture to establish an integrated B2C online shopping mall, according to Chinese news website People's Daily Online. This investment will total approximately 4.3 billion yen over the next three years.



The site will officially launch near the end of 2010, and will be the largest online mall in China.



The mall's contents will include both domestic and foreign brands. The mall's largest competitor is the Alibaba Group's Taobao.com, which totaled 180 million registered users last year, said People's Daily.



Rakuten has been a developer of B2C platforms since 1997, and operates Japan's largest online shopping website. More than 30,000 brands and distributers engage in transactions on Rakuten's ecommerce platform.



Japan-based Rakuten was founded in 1997 and is a pioneer and leader of the global B2C "platform mode." It is also the operator of Japan's largest online shopping website. To date, more than 30,000 brand operators and distributors in Japan are engaging in B2C transactions on Rakuten's ecommerce platform.



Rakuten also holds ownership of American online marketing company LinkShare.



Business Week reports that comScore measures online retail shopping as having grown by an average annual rate of 21 percent since 2000.ADNFCR-2178-ID-19588480-ADNFCR




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