China's online retail sales to touch USD 1.6 trillion by 2020

China's online retail sales fired by firms like Alibaba are expected to rise to USD 1.6 trillion by 2020 emerging as one of the main growth engines for the Chinese economy, a report said today.
The e-commerce sales will have penetration rate doubling from the 2014 level to 22 per cent, a report by Bain&Company and Alibaba said.
Business to customer, mobile Internet commerce and trans-border Internet commerce will be the main growth engines. Retail sales by online firms are expected to rise to 10 trillion yuan (USD 1.6 trillion) by 2020 becoming one of the main growth engines for the economy, the report said.

It said Chinese consumers' awareness of brands has been growing in the last several years.
Ding Jie, a partner at Bain&Company, said Internet commerce helped the brands accommodate segmented demands and reach the market in third and four-tier Chinese cities.
In this transformation, companies should build digitalised operation models and understand digitalisation's impact on research and development, supply chain and sales, state-run Xinhua news reported.