Some years ago, I asked some young adults how often they ordered things online. I had anticipated that Chinese people, being cautious about spending money, and suspicious of fraud, would order few things online. To my surprise, one young woman replied matter-of- factly, "Every day."
That opened my mind and as the years have gone by, I have observed that the complexities of living in high rise buildings and on university campuses have given rise to creative delivery methods.
Here are some I have encountered:
This is an intermediate collection point where packages to be delivered in a certain area are temporarily stored. In this instance, the packages are delivered in the evening, to be distributed to the various neighborhoods and pick up points the next day.
These are neighborhood pick up points for Internet deliveries; the delivery company uses text messages through the Chinese app, WeChat, to inform customers that their packages can be picked up at a certain place and time
These pick up points are at university entrances. Delivery companies bring packages to these points and inform students of the delivery. The students then come and search through the packages to find the one(s) they ordered. It looks chaotic, but it seems to work.
In my high rise building, deliveries are made throughout the day. Most of the packages are just placed on a rack or on the floor in a corner of the lobby. There is a small room that stores some packages; maybe they are registered or something; the door keeper has the key. Some brand name delivery companies have their own units in high rises and they place packages in lockers. The customer is sent a code which is used to open the locker. When the packages is removed, the locker is ready for the next delivery, which will have its own code.
Another wrinkle in online shopping is "Singles Day" - every year on November 11 (11/11, get it?)
Alibaba originated what is now probably the largest shopping day in the world. All retail companies now participate by offering discounts on online orders. Chinese families prepare well in advance, with detailed lists of what they want and often are prepared to begin ordering at one minute after midnight, because if they don't get their order in quickly, the items they want may be sold out. In 2016, Alibaba alone racked up nearly $18 Billion in sales, which, according to an article in Forbes Magazine, would rank 11th among all countries' annual e-commerce sales.
A common consequence of online sales affects China, too
Due to increased online sales, many categories of brick-and-mortar stores are experiencing declining sales. The Foreign Language Bookstore in Nanjing was, about five years ago, a marvelous, huge store with books for Chinese learning English or foreigners learning Chinese (or any one of several other languages), novels, current best sellers, maps, dictionaries, travel books, AV media, and on and on. Now, it is a mere shadow of its former self, occupying a fraction of its former space. On the other hand, the downtown Xinhua Bookstore has renovated its facility recently and its six floors are buzzing with books and media of all kinds, mimicking the most modern Barnes & Noble stores in he US, with a coffee shop and snack bar. Go figure.