Retail activities and their spatial organization have always been one of important research themes in urban/economic geography. With the popularity of the new advanced information and communication technologies, online shopping as a new form of retailing is increasingly being accepted by retailers and consumers. The impact of this trend on retail value chain, business models and spatial organization can not be ignored. These were a new area of study—the implications of the growing prosperity of e-commerce for the geographical patterns of consumption—which has been paid more and more attention by Western-based geographers. However, compared with high-speed expansion of online retailing, the emergent commerce remained a neglected area in geographical research in China. This paper attempts to carry out a preliminary study of spatial organization of online retail business and its influencing factors.We take a case of Dangdang.com which is one of the largest Chinese-language online retailers, and explore its spatial organization and spatial dynamics of market extension. The result reveals that the geographical factors play very important roles in the development of e-commerce. Three conclusions are drawn. First, just like previous technological innovations, the spatial expansion of online retail enterprise in China still follows the hierarchical path. Secondly, information infrastructure, fulfillment and logistics services, and payment methods are three major influencing factors of the development of online retailing. Furthermore, these conditions depend on the level of local economic development. Finally, at the macro level, the difference of spatial organization between online retailers and traditional retailers is not significant, and still subject to geographical factors.
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