Yahoo Taiwan (www.yahoo.com.tw) is enjoying booming e-commerce business through its on-line shopping and auction services, with the total sales value having grown 50% from 2003 to NT$16.5 billion in 2004, the largest figure in Taiwan for e-commerce, according to the company’s e-Commerce Business Director Charlene Hung.

Yahoo Taiwan started operation of its e-commerce business by establishing a B2C (business to customer) on-line shopping channel in 2000. The company further set up a C2C (customer to customer) on-line auction platform in 2002 and its second shopping channel in March 2004, Hung indicated.

The first shopping channel is a platform that allows sellers to operate virtual retail stores, whereas the second shopping channel enables a marketing agent (selected by Yahoo Taiwan) to handle on-line sales services for sellers, Hung pointed out. In either case, sellers are able to apply for an official business license and pay NT$137,000 a year to Yahoo Taiwan for the online retail space, Hung said. The two channels had about 400 sellers (virtual retailers) as of the end of 2004, Hung added.

While the two shopping channels and the on-line auction platform are operated independently, Yahoo Taiwan will begin to integrate them soon, with B2C commodities to be included within the scope of the Yahoo search engine during the first half of this year, according to Hung.
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Source : DigiTimes