Second-Hand Online Shoppers in China Surge

Second-hand shopping is an increasingly important issue in global markets. It has different reasons why the purchase of used goods attracts more and more attention among consumers. Some buy second hand for sustainability reasons, others have become more price-conscious, especially since the pandemic. And the pandemic has intensified another trend – eCommerce. The combination of the two – second-hand and online shopping – is a niche business addressing a special target group. In Germany or the United Kingdom, for example, only around one third of consumers purchased second-hand products online in 2021, according to the Statista Global Consumer Survey Content Special on eCommerce. Second-hand eCommerce seems to be more popular in China, where more than 40% of consumers stated that they bought second-hand items online in 2021, according to the Statista survey. Chinese eCommerce player NetEase has now also published interesting figures on the second-hand eCommerce business in China. According to their 2021 report on the Chinese second-hand eCommerce market, total eCommerce GMV from the sale of second-hand goods in China has surpassed 400 billion Yuan in 2021, which corresponds to a year-on-year increase of almost 30%. Total user numbers have also been surging:

With rising online second-hand GMV, the number of second-hand online shoppers in China has also increased rapidly over the past few years. In 2014, only 2 million people shopped from online second-hand websites. The number exploded in the following years, surpassing the 100-million mark only four years later in 2018. Within another three years, the number more than doubled again and hit a total of 223 million online second-hand shoppers in 2021. Of course, the surge of online second-hand shoppers in China goes along with a general boom in eCommerce: According to CNNIC, the total number of online shoppers in China more than doubled within just six years from 413 million in 2015 to 842 million in 2021. In the first corona year 2020, the trend was particularly pronounced, with a year-on-year increase in online shopper numbers of 22%.