Baijiu helps e-commerce gauge consumer pulse

Predicting the changing tastes of China's consumers is becoming easier, thanks to the country's e-commerce giants, who monitor sales that can exceed $17 billion in a single day.

JD.com Inc, the country's second-biggest web-based retail platform, already has dozens of new indexes tracking sales of products from liquor to appliances. Larger rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd plans to publish its own spending gauges in coming months.

Their data is vital to large global companies like Starbucks Corp and Wal-Mart Stores Inc that are looking for insights into what's hot among China's billion-plus consumers. Online shopping indexes reflect millions of transactions daily, whereas traditional consumer surveys can only test a tiny sample.