HONG KONG--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Taobao Marketplace and Juhuasuan, two popular consumer e-commerce platforms operated by Alibaba Group, today announced the official launch of Juhuasuan Overseas (http://hk.ju.taobao.com) platform to provide Hong Kong and Taiwan consumers with a dedicated comprehensive group shopping platform offering a wide range of high-quality merchandise and localized lifestyle services selected from Taobao sellers. Previously, products offered on Juhuasuan were often only accessible to mainland Chinese consumers.
The Juhuasuan Overseas platform will leverage Taobao Marketplace’s massive database of more than 800 million product listings at any given time to truly provide Hong Kong and Taiwan consumers with a diverse and comprehensive product selection, while at the same time increasing value for money by offering attractive discounts on premium products and services. The Juhuasuan Overseas platform will feature between 12 and 20 new group shopping deals each day spanning a number of product categories popular among Hong Kong and Taiwan consumers, including women’s and men’s apparel and accessories; homewares; mother and baby products; consumer electronic accessories; children’s toys and so on. In a few weeks’ time, a number of localized lifestyle services and travel deals will also be launched and up on offer to Hong Kong consumers such as hotel and travel packages for regions including but not limited to Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Zhuhai.
"We are thrilled to be launching the Juhuasuan Overseas platform, which we firmly believe will enhance and complement the online shopping experience at Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com for our more-than 2 million registered users in Hong Kong and Taiwan," said Daphne Lee, Director of Taobao International Business. "In 2012, we continued to improve upon platform infrastructure and introduced new features such as the Alipay Card to make online shopping more convenient for Hong Kong and Taiwan consumers. Users can expect an even more diverse and comprehensive set of new and localized features and services to be rolled out in 2013."
Prior to the launch of the Juhuasuan Overseas platform, consumers from Hong Kong or Taiwan were often unable to participate in group shopping deals offered by Juhuasuan as cross-border shipping was not supported. Now, shoppers on the Juhuasuan Overseas platform need only to input their shipping address for their product to be delivered straight to their door in as little as two days after the deal ends. Once the localized lifestyle services and travel deals are launched in a few weeks’ time, consumers purchasing these deals will receive a QR code or transaction serial number via text message, which can be presented to the merchant to redeem the deal.
As of the end of 2012, there were more than 1.4 million and 600,000 registered Taobao users in Hong Kong and Taiwan, respectively. According to a survey conducted by Taobao Marketplace1, more than 60% of users from Hong Kong and Taiwan visit the website at least once a week and approximately one quarter of those surveyed said that they visited the website at least once a day. The most popular product categories for Hong Kong and Taiwan users in 2012 included women’s apparel; women’s accessories; consumer electronics accessories; bags; women’s and men’s shoes; children’s toys and clothing and so on.
Users in Hong Kong and Taiwan can log in to the Juhuasuan Overseas platform using their Taobao username and password and settle payment for purchases through Visa, MasterCard or JCB. Hong Kong users have the additional option of making payments via PPS or the Alipay Card. For further details, please visit: http://www.taobao.com/go/chn/shopping_process.php.
About Taobao Marketplace
Launched in 2003, Taobao Marketplace (www.taobao.com) is the most popular consumer-to-consumer (C2C) online marketplace in China with more than 800 million product listings and more than 500 million registered users as of June 2012. It is one of the top 20 most visited websites in the world according to Alexa. Taobao Marketplace is a business within Alibaba Group.
About Juhuasuan
Juhuasuan (www.juhuasuan.com) is a comprehensive group shopping platform in China with a mission to aggregate consumer power and offer the widest selection of high-quality merchandise and localized lifestyle services. It was launched by Taobao in March 2010 and became an independent platform in October 2011. In 2012, Juhuasuan achieved RMB20.75 billion in transaction volume, more than double that of 2011. Juhuasuan is a business within Alibaba Group.
1 Survey conducted by Taobao in January 2013. 143,087 overseas users completed the questionnaire.
