Online shopping has been around since 1995, when Jeffery Bezos created a website which later became the single largest online shopping platform, Amazon.com. Online shopping has since changed the way modern people live their lives by swaying them from spending time waiting in a line to spending time waiting for delievery.
Surprisingly enough, in China, where supermarkets and department stores are very easily accessible to most people, online shopping is more popular than in any other country. On Double-Eleven day in 2015 (a popular online shopping festival in China), Alibaba was able to achieve a record-keeping 楼91.2 billion transaction volume within 24 hours. With hundres of millions of packages waiting for shipment, Double-Eleven day saturated the package delivery industry for weeks.
Just as you have Amazon, eBay and Craigslist for different online shopping purposes, we have corresponding platforms for various buying demands.
Amazon is available in China. It and its biggest competitor JD.com are the best places for buying first-party electronics, books and goceries. They usually offer extremely fast delivery, with most users recieving their packages on the next day of purchasing.
Taobao.com is the largest online shopping platform in Asia and belongs to Alibaba. It works as a open platform, as in, anyone can register as a seller, and the transactions are secured by AliPay to ensure maximum safety with funds.
There are also several other shopping websites, each with their own characteristics.