Chinese online shoppers favor U.S. e-retailers

U.S. retail web sites are the most popular overseas online shopping destinations for Chinese consumers, according to a report Visa Inc. recently released in China.

The report is based on transaction data from 2011 to 2014 across the Visa payment card network, and analyzed how often and how much consumers in several major markets purchased from online retail sites in other countries.

The index for the frequency of Chinese consumers shopping on U.S. sites for the 12-month period ended March 2014 is 1,333, while the median for all 10 countries covered is 100. That means Chinese shoppers purchased 13 times more often on U.S. retail sites than the average for the overseas markets included in the study. The U.S. sites indexed slightly higher in the two earlier years covered by the study.

Besides the United States, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Japan are among the most preferred destinations for Chinese online shoppers. Italy and South Korea were the countries where Chinese online shoppers least often buy.

The report also shows that the average value of orders placed by Chinese online consumers on U.S. and Australian retail web sites is 50% higher than the average for all countries.

Visa also reports that U.S. consumers are the most frequent overseas online shoppers at e-commerce sites in China. Visa says that may be due to the large number overseas Chinese living in the United States. Other than the U.S., Canada and Australia are the top countries for buying online from China, according to the report.

Here is how the 10 overseas markets rank in frequency of purchasing by Chinese online shoppers from April 2013 to March 2014, according to Visa:

Rank	Market advertisement	Frequency index
1	U.S.	1,333 advertisement
2	United Kingdom	565
3 advertisement	Hong Kong	233
4	German advertisement	105
5	Japan	102 advertisement
6	France	98
7 advertisement	Australia	93
8	Canada advertisement	89
9	Korea	32 advertisement
10	Italy	22

Source: Visa Inc.

For more information about the Chinese e-commerce market, see the Internet Retailer China 500.

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Chinese online shoppers favor U.S. e-retailers

They shop 13 times more often on U.S. e-commerce sites than the average for 10 major markets, Visa says. U.S. consumers are the most frequent overseas online shoppers at e-commerce sites in China.