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Taobao marketplace is a website for online shopping in Chinese language, similar to eBay and Amazon, operated in the People's Republic of China by Alibaba Group.

Founded by Alibaba Group in May 10, 2003, Taobao marketplace facilitates consumer-to-consumer (C2C) retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online retail stores that mainly cater to consumers in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan.

Of around 760 million product listings as of March 2013, Taobao marketplace is one of the world’s top 20 most visited websites according to Alexa. For the year ended March 31, 2013, the combined gross merchandise volume (GMV) of Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com exceeded 1 trillion yuan.

Sellers are able to post new and used goods for sale or resale on the Taobao marketplace either through a fixed price or by auction. The overwhelming majority of the products on Taobao marketplace are brand new merchandise sold at a fixed price, while auctions merely make up a very small percentage of transactions. Buyers can assess seller backgrounds by information available on the site, including ratings, comments and complaints.

History
Taobao marketplace (formerly "Taobao") was launched in May 2003 by Alibaba Group after eBay acquired Eachnet, China’s online auction leader at the time, for USD 180 million and became the major player in the Chinese consumer e-commerce market at that time. To counter eBay’s expansion, Taobao offered free listings to sellers and introduced website features designed to act in the best interests of local consumers, such as an instant messaging tool for facilitating buyer-seller communication and an escrow-based payment tool, Alipay. As a result, Taobao became the undisputed market leader in mainland China within two years. Its market share surged from 8% to 59% between 2003 and 2005, while eBay China's plunged from 79% to 36%. Finally, eBay shut down its own site in China in 2006.

In April 2008, Taobao introduced a newly dedicated B2C platform called Taobao Mall to complement its C2C marketplace. Since then, Taobao Mall has established itself as the destination for quality, brand name goods for Chinese consumers. Taobao Mall launched an independent web domain, Tmall.com, and enhanced its focus on product verticals and improvements in shopping experience in November 2010. It became an independent business in June 2011 and changed its Chinese name to Tian Mao (Tmall) in January 2012. As of October 2013 it was the eighth most visited website in China.

In 2008, Taobao fueled the overall growth of the Chinese online shopping industry, through execution of the “Big Taobao” strategy with the aim of becoming a provider of e-commerce infrastructure services for all e-commerce market participants.

In October 2010, Taobao beta launched eTao as an independent searching engine for online shopping, providing product and merchant information from a number of major consumer e-commerce websites in China. Online shoppers can use the site to compare prices from different sellers and identify products to buy. According to the Alibaba Group website, eTao offers products from Amazon China, Dangdang, Gome, Yihaodian, Nike China and Vancl, as well as Taobao and Tmall.

In May 2011, Alibaba Group opened a physical furniture store in Beijing under the Taobao Mall trademark. The five-story 25,000sqm Taobao Mall iFengChao Furniture Showroom opened as a complement to their online stores.

In June 2011, Alibaba Group Executive Chairman and former CEO Jack Ma announced that Taobao would be split into three different companies: Taobao Marketplace (a C2C platform), Tmall.com (a B2C platform; then called Taobao Mall), and eTao (a search engine for online shopping ). 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.”

From 2012 onwards, Taobao began to accept international Visa and MasterCard credit cards; prior, only domestic banks were supported by AliPay. The plan to support international credit cards was announced in late 2011.

On April 29, 2013,Alibaba announced an investment of USD 586 million in Sina Weibo. According to Reuters, the deal “should drive more web traffic to Alibaba's Taobao marketplace, China's largest e-commerce website with a consumer focus.”   On August 1, 2013, Alibaba launched Weibo for Taobao, which allows users to link Sina Weibo accounts with Taobao accounts.

Tmall.com
Tmall.com offers a shopping experience for increasingly affluent Chinese consumers that offers them the opportunity to buy Western brands. According to the Alibaba Group website, these brands include UNIQLO, L’Oréal, Adidas, P&G, Unilever, Gap, Ray-Ban, Nike and Levi's. ).  Again, according to the Alibaba Group site, Tmall.com and Taobao marketplace set a record for highest single-day transaction volume during a special promotion on November 11, 2012, facilitating sales of goods totaling RMB19.1 billion on the day. For the year ended March 31, 2013, the combined gross merchandise volume (GMV) of the two platforms exceeded RMB1 trillion.

Mascot
Taobao’s mascot is the ant, representing their corporate culture as well. "We are the ant army." Jack Ma has introduced Taobao to the outside world. He has used the word "ant army" on more than one occasion. It can be remembered that Jack Ma once organized more than 2,000 employees at a gymnasium collectively at Alibaba to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the founding ceremony. At the party,Taobao employees waved the Taobao mascot — the flag of "ants." At the end of the celebration that lasted for four hours, all the employees stood hand-in-hand, singing "If you do not experience wind and rain, you cannot see the rainbow. Ants that be organized together can beat the elephant."

How to read the shop feedback Taobao?
To thoroughly investigate a Taobao shop, a good way is to view its feedback by clicking the shop's rating icon. For Tmall.com shops, people click the stars to view their ratings. Taobao netizens usually spend time to read feedback and compare items of one shop with those of others.

Ways to avoid fraud on Taobao

 * 1) Verify the authenticity of the seller’s credibility.
 * 2) Specifically check the sellers’ evaluations.
 * 3) Be very clear on the details of the goods you are going to purchase before you decide to buy.
 * 4) Watch out for goods that are sold at fire sale prices.
 * 5) Do not remit money to sellers' bank card accounts.
 * 6) Make terms of payment clear with the sellers.
 * 7) Do not promise to trade face to face.
 * 8) Chat in depth with the seller before making your purchase.

Alipay
Launched in 2004, Alipay (www.alipay.com), an escrow-based online payment platform, is the preferred payment solution for transactions on Taobao marketplace. It is the most widely used third-party online payment solution in China. To ensure safe transactions, Alipay uses and escrow system through which payment is only released to the seller when the buyer has received his or her goods in satisfactory condition.

According to the Alibaba Group website, Alipay partners with multiple financial institutions as well as Visa and Mastercard to facilitate payments in China and abroad.

AliWangWang (TradeManager)
A distinctive feature of shopping on Taobao marketplace is the pervasive communication between buyer and seller prior to the purchase through its embedded proprietary instant chat program, named AliWangWang. 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 purchasing products.

Happy Taobao
In Dec. 2009, Taobao together with Hunan TV set up Happy Taobao, Inc for television shopping. Not only did Hunan TV launch an entertainment called "Happy Taobao", Taobao Marketplace also created channels and independent websites, both of which were to combine electronic commercial with TV media.

Others
Taobao marketplace has introduced various new features and services in recent years to create a more holistic user experience for online shoppers and retailers. For instance, in January 2010, it launched the Taobao application created by independent developers through the Taobao Open Platform, to be downloaded by consumers in App Store ; in March 2010, it introduced the Taobao Data Cube platform, which gives small businesses access to its aggregate consumer transactions data for insight into key industry trends; and in June 2010, it partnered with Wasu Media Internet Limited to launch a digital entertainment products platform Taohua and interactive digital television shopping, which are operated by a joint-venture formed by the two companies.

Metrics
Taobao marketplace has more than 500 million registered users as June of 2012 and currently hosts more than 800 million product listings. It has facilitated approximately RMB200 billion in gross merchandise volume in 2009. In September 2013, Taobao ranked 12th overall in Alexa's internet rankings.

Financials
For the year ending March 31, 2013, the combined gross merchandise volume (GMV) of Taobao and Tmall.com combined exceeded RMB1 trillion.

Calligraphy
The Chinese imperial court collects the most valuable calligraphy pieces. They are done by the most talented calligraphers of each century. Every emperor, as an enthusiastic collector carried on their ancestors' tradition of adding their own seal mark on to the calligraphy pieces. These traditions made all of the pieces extremely valuable and collectible.

Ceramics
Chinese ceramics, which began in the pre-dynastic periods, has continuously improved since then. it is one of the most significant forms of Chinese art.

Snuff bottle
When opium was introduced to China, snuff bottles then became popular. The Chinese royalties were addicted to it as well, and they used it as a long-life medicine. The design of the snuff bottles flourished because the money that was poured into the industry was by the rich. Many snuff bottles were made by talented artisans, using tiny paint brushes, and painted from inside of the bottle reaching down from the top of narrow neck. They are highly collectible still to this day.

Lacquer
During the Shang Dynasty (ca. 1600–1046 BCE), the sophisticated techniques used in the lacquer process were first developed and it became a highly artistic craft, various prehistoric lacquerware have been unearthed in China dating back to the Neolithic period. The earliest extant lacquer object, a red wooden bowl, was unearthed at a Hemudu culture (ca. 5000-4500 BCE) site in China. By the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), many centers of lacquer production became firmly established. The knowledge of the Chinese methods of the lacquer process spread from China during the Han, Tang and Song dynasties. But, eventually it was introduced to Korea, Japan, Southeast and South Asia.

Photography
Photography was used in several China's cities soon after the invention of photography in 1839 and the arrival of European photographers in Macao. At first, people who were superstitious, thought having the camera and take a picture of them would result in their spirit being taken away. By the end of the nineteenth century, all major cities had photographic studios. Some affluent Chinese people adopted photography as a hobby. Western and Chinese photographers documented ordinary street life, major wars, and prominent figures.

The Empress Dowager Cixi had her portrait taken repeatedly.

Sculpture and carving
The 18th Century Qing dynasty covered vase depicts a woman who is holding lingzhi fungus and a peony branch. See is accompanied by a boy, crane, and a deer.

Ivory Carving
Ivory was not a prestigious material in the rather strict hierarchy of Chinese art, where jade has always been far more highly regarded, and rhinoceros horn, which is not ivory, had a special auspicious position. But ivory, as well as bone, has been used for various items since early times, when China still had its own species of elephant — demand for ivory seems to have played a large part in their extinction, which came before 100 BC. From the Ming Dynasty ivory began to be used for small statuettes of the gods and others (see gallery). In the Qing Dynasty it suited the growing taste for intricate carving, and became more prominent, being used for brush-holders, boxes, handles and similar pieces, and later Canton developed large models of houses and other large and showy pieces, which remain popular. Enormous examples are still seen as decorative centrepieces at government receptions. Figures were typically uncoloured, or just with certain features coloured in ink, often just black, but sometimes a few other colours.

Governmental seals
Seal sculpture (紐刻), is an art that originated in ancient China and is mainly popular in East Asian countries. It focuses or decorates on the head-part or the top-side of a seal. It is a kind of sculpture or mini-sculpture. In China, the utmost important seal of all is the imperial seal called 'He Shi Bi', now lost, it was said that the green jade took a form of a round shape with inscriptions read "Having received the Mandate from Heaven, may (the emperor) lead a long and prosperous life." (受命於天，既壽永昌) written by the Primer Li Si for Qin Shi Huang Zhao zheng, the Augustus Emperor of The Chinese Empire.

Ruyi
Ruyi is a scepter that serves primarily as a decoration. Its history began in the Qing Dynasty when the Ruyi sceptors given to noted visitors of the emperor. Now they're given as birthday presents. It is made of different materials, including porcelain and jade. The term Ruyi means "may your wish be granted" or "as you wish". The unusual shape is meant to imitate the shape of a stemmed lotus flower.

Embroidery
Chinese embroidery is some of the oldest extant needlework. The four major regional styles of Chinese embroidery are Suzhou (Su Xiu), Hunan (Xiang Xiu), Guangdong (Yue Xiu) and Sichuan (Shu Xiu). All of them are nominated as Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage.