The Taobao shopping experience

[Manuel]

7 minutes ago, XiaoXi said:

16 hours ago, ChTTay said:

It’s China! Enjoy it while it lasts! ?

Why what's happening to China?

 

It's melting, obviously.

[ChTTay]

They’ll tighten up and Taobao will just be Amazon. 

[DavyJonesLocker]

 I guess it depends on what you are after when shopping. If you are very price conscious maybe taobao is the best. I'm after reliability and service so I just stick to mainly Jingdong now . I'm different that Manuel in I'm really not a keen shopper.

 

I bought a whole pile of things in the past 6 months including an entire 2 bed apartment refit on tmall, jingdong (about 40k total). Wardrobes were from Ikea though but the other furniture was from stores that actually have a physical presence in Beijing, so maybe not s great comparison . Everything was better than expected but I did select decent quality from the larger sellers and all appliances came from jingdong direct. I did see cheaper on taobao but really not a lot in the difference and as mentioned crappy descriptions, god awful search engine etc 

I am surprised taobao gets so much traffic given there are better alternatives around. 

 

[XiaoXi]

On 5/21/2018 at 12:06 PM, ChTTay said:

They’ll tighten up and Taobao will just be Amazon. 

I doubt they'll fix all these problems as long as it's run by Chinese for Chinese. If they do I'll be the first to celebrate.

 

On 5/21/2018 at 12:29 PM, DavyJonesLocker said:

I am surprised taobao gets so much traffic given there are better alternatives around. 

If you're surprised at that weird behaviour in China you must have had a heart attack at all the other crazy stuff lol.

[DavyJonesLocker]

2 minutes ago, XiaoXi said:

If you're surprised at that weird behaviour in China you must have had a heart attack at all the other crazy stuff lol.

 

well yes logic does seem to go out the window a lot!

 

There is a heck of familiarisation to be done with chinese apps, finding the best one for your needs rather than the most popular. i think Taobao  got so much momentum initially it  became the first go-to app for many people. i am using it this week to buy motorcycle parts as JD and others don't have the range, its draining to say the least sifting through irrelevant information, incorrect information and listings.?

 

 

 

[ChTTay]

It depends. I think something like that will go hand in hand with a general crack down on counterfeit goods and perhaps an increase in copyright protection. 

 

I can see them cleaning up Taobao within the next 5 years.

[Manuel]

A good clean up,  that'd be nice.

[DavyJonesLocker]

1 hour ago, Manuel said:

A good clean up,  that'd be nice.

 

do you use 58.com or 转转?

 

that just seems a total mess, the filter part is near pointless! ?

[889]

I think Vellocet has nailed it. Taobao is gaming us. Look at the OP's emotional involvement: just like a gamer's.

 

Have to wade through pages of unrelated items to find what you're looking for? No different than 家乐福 forcing you into a tortuous maze through the clothing and housewares departments before you reach the food. That's retail gaming.

 

"Your package is at the sorting centre."

 

"It's just reached your city."

 

"Wang Xiaotong will be at your door with the delivery in just 15 minutes!"

 

Oh the excitement.

 

Oh the fear!

 

It's like being able to order up Christmas for yourself twelve months a year.

 

What'll be inside?

 

[ChTTay]

Vellocet and 889 have nailed it! 

 

I love that!

 

When is my box of coconut water going to arrive? 1 day! Too long!

 

It’s on the way! I’m so excited

 

Why isn’t it here? 

 

It’s here! Happy days! 

 

... what next? ?

[Manuel]

Nope, forget Christmas. Just received a lamp for the kitchen as the old one went kaput four days ago and the required light bulb is on longer in production. Ordered 正白灯, got 暖白灯. As it turns out both kinds of light each has its own virtues so I'm not returning it but you can see how this could be frustrating because the item came from Guangzhou and I'm in Wuxi. It's the wasted time shipping items back and forth that I dread, and what really annoys me is that sellers don't take extra steps to reduce the chances of returns.

[Manuel]

BTW I have used 58.com when looking for flats to rent, and I sold some used office furniture on it. It seems the platform is geared more towards local trade though, so it takes much longer to sell used items. I would only use it for selling large items that would be to costly to ship. Can you also buy new on it? I've not really looked at it in detail.

 

EDIT: OK just had a look which munching on some breasts, chicken breasts, and it's basically a classified ads website.

[889]

I think a good measure of Taobao addiction isn't so much how frequently you order but how frequently you check delivery status after you do.

 

In any event, there must be some interesting internet slang associated with Taobao, especially the tricks sellers frequently play. Anyone have any examples?

 

 

[XiaoXi]

10 hours ago, 889 said:

Have to wade through pages of unrelated items to find what you're looking for? No different than 家乐福 forcing you into a tortuous maze through the clothing and housewares departments before you reach the food. That's retail gaming.

Actually it's really quite different. Having ads at the side of the results is one thing but not being able to find what you want when you search is just losing sales. People literally become millionaires providing the exact product someone is looking for on Google Adwords...the opposite doesn't work. Unless like Taobao where you don't have much competition anyway. I think Chinese are used to not being able to find anything anyway since Google is blocked and they have to use Baidu.

 

Although having said that I think it doesn't work amazingly in the supermarkets either, which is probably why you don't get that in other countries. It's much better to have related products nearby or cleverly placed impulse products. In the west the best tactic to make people buy things is to make it easier to purchase products, not harder. Making people walk really far and climb stairs to get to their product is unlikely to help much. Playing the 妈妈壹选 advert 100 times a minute at 300 decibels doesn't help things too much either. There's some possibility to for impulse buys but it's not very targeted and is quite annoying.

8 hours ago, ChTTay said:

When is my box of coconut water going to arrive? 1 day! Too long!

 

It’s on the way! I’m so excited

 

Why isn’t it here? 

 

It’s here! Happy days! 

 

... what next? ?

.....next is to return it.

 

On 5/24/2018 at 5:50 PM, ChTTay said:

I can see them cleaning up Taobao within the next 5 years.

Let's hope you're right, it's already a good 5 years overdue.

 

2 hours ago, Manuel said:

BTW I have used 58.com when looking for flats to rent, and I sold some used office furniture on it. It seems the platform is geared more towards local trade though, so it takes much longer to sell used items. I would only use it for selling large items that would be to costly to ship. Can you also buy new on it? I've not really looked at it in detail.

I've used it quite a bit. Two main problems 1. fake pictures. 2. expired listings rarely get removed so you end up contacting a million people who will just tell you it's already gone. Actually another problem is there's so many places connected with an agent who will charge you a fee before even showing you the flat and then you find out the pictures were all fake and it looks nothing like it did in the listing but you've already paid your ￥200.

[ChTTay]

I’ve not really had any of these problems or they’ve never annoyed me. For me Taobao is more useful than it is anything else! 

[Manuel]

@XiaoXi True about the fake pictures, usually posted by agents and a great waste of everybody's time. I tend to go for the 个人 ads, less BS to deal with and no fees.

[XiaoXi]

11 hours ago, Manuel said:

 True about the fake pictures, usually posted by agents and a great waste of everybody's time. I tend to go for the 个人 ads, less BS to deal with and no fees.

Yes me too but it's hard to find them amongst all the expired ads that haven't been removed and all the agency ads.

[Manuel]

Here are two more annoyances about T-Mall. Supposedly T-Mall is the trustworthy brother of Taobao but on T-Mall there is no negative feedback, in fact, there is only one kind of feedback, so it's very hard to find the negative reviews, you basically have to read through them one by one. The other annoyance about T-Mall is that user posted pictures cannot be expanded like on Taobao. It's as if the resolution was reduced deliberately when the images are upload, so as not to reveal the dreadful details.

[ChTTay]

I’m using the Taobao app for iPhone and can expand user posted pictures in Tmall. 

 

The interface is essentially the same for regular Taobao and Tmall. I can filter comments by 差评，好评，有照片, etc

 

You’re on desktop?

[Manuel]

2 hours ago, ChTTay said:

I’m using the Taobao app for iPhone and can expand user posted pictures in Tmall. 

You can tap to view, pinch out to zoom in. On the desktop version you can click to view, and then click the 'full screen' icon to view at full res. The full screen button is missing on the desktop version of T-Mall.

 

2 hours ago, ChTTay said:

The interface is essentially the same for regular Taobao and Tmall. I can filter comments by 差评，好评，有照片, etc on T-Mall, to be honest I don't even see the point in T-Mall when the two overlap in so many ways. But so do a lot of services offered by Google.

That's definitely not correct, check again. Both mobile and desktop. There is no 高/中/差评 on