spun off from Taobao, operated in the People's Republic of China by Alibaba Group. It is

a platform for local Chinese and international businesses to sell quality, brand name goods

to consumers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

History Tmall.com was first introduced by Taobao in

April 2008 as Taobao Mall, a dedicated B2C platform within its consumer e-commerce website.

In November 2010, Taobao Mall launched an independent web domain, tmall.com, to differentiate

listings by its merchants, who are either brand owners or authorized distributors, from

Taobao’s C2C merchants. Meanwhile, it kicked off a US$30 million advertising campaign to

raise brand awareness among consumers. It also announced an enhanced focus on product

verticals and improvements in shopping experience. In June 2011, Alibaba Group Chairman and CEO

Jack Ma announced a major restructuring of Taobao through an internal email. It was reorganized

into three separate companies. As a result, Tmall.com became an independent business under

Alibaba Group. The other two businesses that resulted from the reorganization are Taobao

Marketplace and eTao. 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.” In October 2011, Tmall.com experienced two

successive waves of online rioting since it significantly increased fees on online vendors.

The service fees raised from 6,000 yuan to 60,000 yuan a year, and a compulsory fixed

sum deposit gone from 10,000 yuan to up to 150,000 yuan. According to Tmall.com, the

price increase was intended to help weed out merchants that are too often a source of fakes,

shoddy products and poor customer service. Stores that earn top ratings for service and

quality from customers and high sales volumes are entitled to partial or full refunds.

On January 11, 2012, TMall.com officially changed its Chinese name to Tian Mao, the

Chinese pronunciation of Tmall, which literally means “sky cat”.

Tmall occupied 51.3% Chinese B2C market online product sales share in Q1 2013.

Brands that currently have stores on Tmall.com include P&G, Adidas, UNIQLO, GAP, Nine West,

Reebok, ECCO, Ray-Ban, New Balance, Umbro, Lenovo, Dell, Nokia, Philips, Samsung, Logitech

and Lipton. Metrics

Tmall.com currently features more than 70,000 international and Chinese brands from more

than 50,000 merchants and serves more than 180 million buyers. Tmall.com ranked number

one among all Chinese B2C retail websites for 2010 in terms of transaction volume, with

a gross merchandise volume of RMB30 billion – about three times the amount facilitated

by 360buy, its closest competitor. The site accounts for a 47.6% share of the B2C online

retail market in China, followed by 16.2% of 360buy and 4.8% of Joyo Amazon.

According to Alexa, as of July 2014 Tmall.com was the 18th most visited website globally

and the 7th most visited site in China. Features

Alipay, an escrow-based online payment platform owned by Alibaba Group, is the preferred payment

solution for transactions on Tmall.com. As on Taobao Marketplace, the C2C e-commerce

platform under Alibaba Group, buyers and sellers can communicate prior to the purchase through

AliWangWang, its proprietary embedded instant messaging program. It has become a habit among

Chinese online shoppers to “chat” with the sellers or their customer service team

through AliWangWang to inquire about products, engage in bargaining, etc. prior to purchase.

References

External links Official website

Official English Information Page