Taobao (simplified Chinese: 淘宝网; traditional Chinese: 淘寶網; pinyin: Táobǎo Wǎng; literally: “searching for treasure website”) is a Chinese website for online shopping similar to eBay, Amazon[3] and Rakuten that is operated in China by Alibaba Group.

Founded by Alibaba Group on May 10, 2003, Taobao Marketplace facilitates consumer-to-consumer (C2C) retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online stores that mainly cater to consumers in Chinese-speaking regions (Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) and also abroad.[4]

With around 760 million product listings as of March 2013, Taobao Marketplace is one of the world’s top 10 most visited websites according to Alexa.[5] For the year ended March 31, 2013, the combined gross merchandise volume (GMV) of Taobao Marketplace and Tmall.com exceeded 1 trillion yuan.[6]

Sellers are able to post goods for sale either through a fixed price or auction. Auctions make up a small percentage of transactions. The majority of the products are new merchandise sold at fixed prices. Buyers can assess seller backgrounds by information available on the site, including ratings, comments and complaints.