ju.taobao.com tops China's group buying market.

May. 23, 2011 (China Knowledge) - ju.taobao.com, the group buying unit of Taobao.com, which is Asia's biggest online shopping website and a subsidiary of Chinese B2B e-commerce company Alibaba Group, topped Chinese online group buying market by the most 13.71 million unique visitors per day in March, according to a research institute focusing on in-depth research in internet industry. Lashou.com ranked second with a daily unique visitor number of 7.47 million, followed by meituan.com with 5.12 million, tuan.qq.com that is owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd<0700>, a leading provider of Internet and mobile and telecom value-added services in China, with 2.56 million and nuomi.com with 2.34 million. Manzuo.com ranked sixth with 2.3 million unique visitors browsing the website per day in March, followed by t.dianping.com with 2.02 million, groupon.cn that is the Chinese portal of U.S.-based Groupon.com, the world's leading group buying website, with 1.94 million, 24quan.com with 1.92 million and t.58.com with 1.8 million. In March, four group buying websites, comprising meituan.com, nuomi.com, t.dianping.com and t.58.com, had month-on-month increases exceeding 50% in daily unique visitors, said the research institute, adding that Chinese group buying websites had 28.89 million unique visitors per day in the month, 24.3% more than in February, boosted by market rebound after the Chinese Spring Festival and sustaining market expansion. According to a separate report from the research institute, ju.taobao.com also ranked first in China's group buying websites with a daily unique visitors number of 10.67 million in February, followed by lashou.com with 5.35 million and meituan.com with 3.34 million. In January 2011, the top three group buying websites in China were still ju.taobao.com, lashou.com and meituan.com with a daily unique visitor number of 75.59 million, 45.05 million and 30.43 million, respectively. Sources reported that Tencent and U.S.-based Groupon have launched gaopeng.com to expand their group buying market in China. Statistics released by China Internet Network Information Center or CNNIC show that China had 457 million Internet citizens as of Dec. 31, 2010, of which 4.1% or 18.75 million were online group buyers. The Chinese group buying business is expanding mainly in the country's second- and third-tier cities, CNNIC added.