Costco opens TMall store

According to a research note from Zacks Equity Research and the global management consulting firm Boston Consulting Group, Chinese Internet users will soar to 730 million in 2016 from 460 million in 2010. Zacks said the number of online shoppers in the country is expected to reach 380 million in 2016, up from 145 million in 2010.

Overall, the e-commerce industry should account for 7.4 percent of China's total retail value by 2015, up from 3.3 percent in 2011.

It took the US almost a decade to reach that level, noted Zacks.

Earlier this year, Beijing-based iResearch said it expects online retail sales in China in 2014 to grow nearly 46 percent to 2.76 trillion yuan ($450.6 billion) from an earlier forecast of 2.45 trillion yuan and a growth rate of 32 percent.

"On behalf of Chinese consumers and our innovative Tmall Global platform, I would like to extend a warm welcome to Costco.

"This important partnership will help give Chinese consumers a better shopping experience, and will enable us to better support the expansion of cross-border retail sales of consumer goods into China," Daniel Zhang, Alibaba's COO, said in a statement.

"As Tmall.com and Costco deepen their collaboration, Tmall.com will connect Costco with our Group's C2C (consumer-to-consumer) platform, Taobao and group-shopping site, Juhuasuan. Together, we will develop and explore innovative market campaigns to unlock Costco's membership value," added Maggie Wu, general manager of Alibaba's International B2C division.

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