If you’d like to dip a toe in the pool of Chinese e-commerce space, the waters are warm and inviting, but online shoppers there have a different mindset than they do here.

According to a report released by the e-commerce and digital marketing firm Acquity Group, China’s middle class will swell to about 800 million people in the next 20 years,  online consumers there have a total spending income of more than $2.7 trillion, and Internet and mobile penetration rates are growing, reaching 34% in January 2011 with about 457 million users.

Acquity surveyed more than 1,000 people in 150 cities to report on the motivations and preferences that guide online shoppers in the country.  The company found that people in China most often choose to shop on the Internet for three reasons: there’s more choice in products, they get a chance to compare prices from different vendors, and they enjoy its convenience. Survey results also showed that price comparison is big–65% of the survey respondents said they first compared retailers, rather than heading straight to a retailer they knew they wanted to buy from.

Acquity also found that Chinese shoppers spend smaller amounts for each online transaction because in China there’s yet to be a culture of reliability established in the online shopping space so shoppers still lack the complete trust in products that people have when buying expensive things on Amazon.com or Zappos in the U.S.

Read more at FastCompany ^[1].