I’m always interested in Chinese company ranking lists because they tell me the kind of domain names end users prefer. So, I was delighted to find the 2016 Top 100 Public Retailing Companies list in an eName news story today. eName did a wonderful job by adding the domain names used by these companies. Because of time constraint, I selected only the top 50 for my study.
1 JD.com
2 Suning.com
3 Taobao.com
4 SunartRetail.com
5 WandaPlazas.com
6 Gome.com.cn
7 Jztey.com
8 Eascs.com
9 VIP.com
10 BailianGroup.cn
11 Yonghui.com.cn
12 e-cbest.com
13 DashanGufen.com
14 LHegou.com
15 Watsons.com.cn
16 Hiteker.com.cn
17 YuyuanTM.com.cn
18 HeilanHome.com
19 WFJ.com.cn
20 YoungoR.com
21 Wushang.com.cn
22 SZRainbow.com.cn
23 Yum.com.cn
24 Intime.com.cn
25 Intmedic.com
26 Whzb.com
27 GEretail.com
28 eeBBK.com
29 Beijing-Hualian.com
30 YinzuoGroup.com
31 NJXB.com
32 ChowSangSang.com
33 CCOYmc.com
34 Anta.com
35 JKL.com.cn
36 Hengdeli-Repair.com
37 MaoYe.cn
38 SpringlandGroup.com.cn
39 RenRenLe.cn
40 CPlotus.com
41 HFBH.com.cn
42 BJSSJT.com.cn
43 Cachet.com.cn
44 LachaPella.cn
45 EastAll.com
46 CCCgroup.com.cn
47 SemirBiz.com
48 Aeon.com.cn
49 Shiseido.com.cn
50 XHBH.com.cn
Here are my observations.
1.
The mainstream extensions in China remain to be .com and .cn. All 50 retailers use either .com or .cn domain names. In this study, .com leads slightly by having 54% of the retailers using it and the best five prefer .com. As shown by Number 1 Jing Dong’s JD.com, if you want to be the best in China, you have to have a good .com name.
2.
Regarding the Chinese extension, only three retailers are using .cn but the majority are still using .com.cn, even though .com.cn is now a minor player in terms of registration number. As I see it, the world is moving to just one dot in a domain name, so I speculate most .com.cn domain names will migrate to .cn. We need to revisit this topic in the future to see if Chinese retailers will transition to just one dot.
3.
A lot of the retailers are still using subpar domain names such as No 7 Jiu Zhou Tong (九州通) with its English name being Jointown. Its official website is Jztey.com which does not exactly match the company’s Chinese or English name. In my opinion, a better name may be JZT.com, JZT.cn, Jointown.com, or Jointown.cn. Companies need to understand the benefits of a short domain name matching their company name.
4.
I also analyzed the company names to see how many pins they could be if Pinyin domain names were used (some already are Pinyin names though). Here is the result: 28 retailers could use 2-pin; 14 retailers could use 3-pin; and 8 retailers could use 4-pin. This suggests the 2-pin and 2L domain names have the largest potential in China. The chance of a Chinese company acquiring 5-pin or 5L domain name is very slim.
The entire Top 100 list together with domain names is available in Chinese at http://news.ename.cn/yuming_20160913_106064_1.html.
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