Exploring Foreigners’ Online Shopping Experience in China: A Case of Taobao

Abstract

This study is a result of the survey done amongst foreign students who study in different universities in Wuhan, China. The names of two participated universities will not be mentioned since there were agreements between participants not to disclose some of their details including demographic information. The universities were labeled as U1 and U2. The objective of the survey is to explore general online shopping experience among foreign students in China taking Taobao website (www.taobao.cn) as a case study for the analysis. Data were collected from a total of 150 (out of 169 distributed) self monitored questionnaires and analyzed using SPSS software through descriptive statistics. The findings show that among other factors, Chinese language played a great role as an obstruction for Taobao usage amongst many foreigners and it was suggested that, Taobao has to acclimatize with multiple language versions in their website. However, other strategies to improve foreigners’ online shopping experience were also discussed so as to enhance customers’ loyalty and satisfaction

Keywords: online shopping, Taobao, internet, internet banking, foreign students