Online luxury sales booming

China's online luxury market is likely to surpass 20 billion yuan ($3.17 billion) this year, according to Taobao, the country's largest e-commerce site.

By the end of April, Taobao was logging 1.8 million daily visitors to global.taobao.com, a sub-channel that guarantees 100 percent authentic luxuries sourced from around the world, according to the company's Online Luxury Sales Report, the first of its kind in China. The sales transactions of the channel saw a 100 percent year-on-year increase.

The website hopes to maintain its popularity among China's growing middle class by offering discounts on a number of highly sought items.

In 2011, the market for online luxury shopping hit 15 billion yuan, according to the report.

Apart from its growth in sales volume, the market is also expanding into new domains, such as healthcare and daily household products, the report found.