China gears up for world's greatest online shopping festival
Chinese consumers are expected to spend tens of billions on from fresh food to luxury goods during this year’s Singles’ Day online shopping festival, as the united states recovers from the pandemic.
The shopping festival, which may be the world’s largest and falls on Nov 11 each year, is an twelve-monthly extravaganza where China’s e-commerce companies, including Alibaba, JD.com and Pinduoduo, offer generous discounts on the platforms. Last year, shoppers spent $38.4 billion on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms Tmall and Taobao.
This year’s festival will be closely watched as a barometer of consumption in China, which is merely starting to bounce back from the coronavirus pandemic after months of lockdown earlier in the year.
Analysts expect Chinese consumers to invest more on imported products and foreign luxury brands, because so many Chinese tourists were not able to travel internationally due to the coronavirus pandemic and tightened travel restrictions.
A survey by consulting firm Oliver Wyman found that 86% of Chinese individuals are willing to spend exactly like or more than during last year’s Singles’ Day festival.
“In the last half a year roughly, wealthy households have actually spent additional money,” said Sean Shen, customer and strategy competence leader for EY in Greater China. “We also see that purchases of luxury segment products are increasing because of the international travel restrictions.”
Sales of electronic goods and health and wellness products are also likely to rise, as more persons home based and pay more focus on their health amid the pandemic, according to a report by consultancy Bain & Company.
To greatly help merchants cope with the impact from the coronavirus, online platforms have extended the shopping festival period this year hoping of boosting sales.
Both Alibaba and JD.com, the country’s two biggest e-commerce companies, started out offering discounts on Oct. 21, three weeks before Nov. 11. Some brands and merchants that slashed their prices booked hundreds of millions of yuan (tens of huge amount of money) in sales just hours in to the shopping festival.
Tang Chenghui, a power engineer who lives in Beijing sees Singles’ Day as an possibility to fill up on snacks and imported products such as for example milk from Australia. Prior to the festival, Tang pre-ordered 3 boxes of duck eggs, 10 packets of soybean milk powder, two boxes of yogurt, coffee and wine.
“I’m buying more snacks this season because I’ve just moved into a new apartment and also have enough space for storage to stockpile the snacks I like,” said Tang. “Some of these products are actually cheap through the Singles’ Day discounts.”
Unlike Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S., Singles’ Day in China is not only about deep bargains. Alibaba pioneered the concept of Singles’ Day and holds an gross annual gala on Nov. 11 with celebrity performances to entertain shoppers.
E-commerce sales via livestreaming and Alibaba’s twelve-monthly gala are part of a “shoppertainment” trend which blends shopping with entertainment to be remembered as more desirable and engaging to shoppers.
Mini games within online shopping platforms entice shoppers with deeper discounts while encouraging them to invest additional time within the app.
“Because of COVID-19, brands and retailers have doubled down on e-commerce and livestreaming commerce to drive growth, and it'll show strongly on (Singles’ Day) this season,” said Wang Xiaofeng, a senior analyst at Forrester.
But while an incredible number of shoppers spend hours on mini games hoping to snag better bargains, some are irked by the complexities required to win such discounts.
“Black Friday discounts have a tendency to be better, plus they are more straightforward,” said Liu Zhirou, a 27 year-old Beijing-based accountant. “Now, I still ask my friends to help me buy things from the U.S. during Black Friday.”
“The guidelines around Singles’ Day discounts now are receiving an increasing number of complicated,” she said. “I usually just spend my money on Black Friday, and buy less on Singles’ Day.”
Source: japantoday.com
