Online Shopping: How China Leads the Boom at Virtual Checkouts

Global growth in e-commerce is impressive, particularly in Asian countries where online shopping figures can astound. On a single day in 2012, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.com rang up more than US$3 billion in sales. This year, China's e-commerce market is expected to become the world's largest. Felix Tan, from the Australian School of Business, says developed nations can learn from this striking success. Chinese e-commerce operators take a holistic view of business and gain an edge with strategic management practices. Investment in partners creates collaborators and the use of social media engages shoppers for the long term. “The customer experience is very community-based and is extremely rounded, very consolidated,” Tan says.