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Startup Asia Venue ABCs Report: 42.2 Million Chinese Use Daily Deals Sites [STATS]

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) has today released a paper entitled 2011 China Group Buy Users Investigative Report which paints a picture of the daily deals landscape in China – and the many dissatisfied users who buy the deals. In total, 42.2 million of China’s 500 million netizens have used group buy sites in the past year and an astonishing 45.6 percent of them have had negative experiences with what they’ve bought. Of course, that’s often an issue with vendors rather than with the deals sites themselves. From personal experience, I find that some short-sighted restaurants treat group buy customers as second-class citizens, with no thought to the fact that they, as business owners, are supposed to be trying to convert these new-comers into regular customers. Despite a great deal of turmoil in the overcrowded industry in China – with significant job lay-offs at Lashou, at 55Tuan, and at the Groupon.cn clone in recent weeks – there was actually 125 percent growth in group buy user numbers in the six months up to June 2011.

Group Buy User Facts and Stats for 2011

Unsurprisingly, these Groupon clones are more popular in urban and moneyed areas in China – namely in the eastern coastal regions around Shanghai, where 10.5 percent of web users have used them; in western and central parts of the country, it’s down to 6.7 percent. The national average penetration rate of these deals sites is 8.7 percent. Here are some other key stats which illuminate this complex and fragmented sector in China (all figures are percentages):

・Deal product categories, by rate of purchase by users:
Food and beverages: 73.5
Leisure and entertainment: 58.5
Home appliances: 43
Digital gadgets: 28.4
Beauty and fitness: 27.2
Travel and hotels: 15.3
Outdoor activities: 10.8

・Factors in whether to buy a deal, by rate of importance to users:
Extent of discount: 85.4
Extent of need: 57.9
Location: 52.5

・Deal buyers by gender:
Female: 53.9
Male: 46.1
・Will continue to use deals sites in the future?
Yes: 82.1
No: 14.8
Unsure: 3.1

・Of the 45.6 percent who’d had bad experiences – Reasons for dissatisfaction with a deal, by instance of occurrence for users:
Quality of goods: 71.6
Merchant’s bad attitude: 40.3
Excessive delivery time: 28.6
False information given about product: 21.7
Poor service in general: 21.1

Other little tid-bits include how group buy site users tend to be better educated, and have higher wages, than the national average among netizens – a sign that this kind of service is indeed more popular in urban areas. With a reported 5,000 deals sites operating in China, consumers have plenty of choice, but not much in the way of guarantees of quality or authenticity. We’re awaiting some signs of consolidation in the industry, which surely can’t sustain more than a handful of top competitors.

The CNNIC is a state-run web registry, policy and analytics organization.