Unexpected revelations about Singles’ Day – the world’s’ craziest ‘shopping festival

Singles’ Day is the largest shopping event in the world. In less than a decade, Alibaba Group has turned a celebration for single young adults into a global event that attracts thousands of retailers and hundreds of millions of shoppers. all ages. It has even expanded into other e-commerce businesses.

1. Why is it called Singles’ Day?

11/11 every year consists of 4 numbers 1 the same. It makes people think of loneliness and sound similar to the word “forever alone” in Chinese. So since the 1990s, a Chinese university campus has used this day to celebrate being single – emphasizing its relationship – as opposed to Valentine’s Day. The rise of the middle class here has made it a phenomenon.

2. Why is Singles’ Day related to shopping?

That’s thanks to Alibaba founder Jack Ma. When Ma started building the company, Jack Ma came up with the idea to focus on shopping promotions during the holidays, inspired by America’s Black Fiday day with the tradition of super discount.

He chose November 11 starting in 2009. Initially, the message the company’s marketing team made was to encourage customers to treat themselves like a royal when they were single. However, this day has far exceeded the limit for lonely people and it is aimed at all classes.

3. Is this an Alibaba exclusive event?

Although Alibaba was the first unit to create Singles’ Day, many competitors later joined the event. JD.com has also implemented promotional advertisements with Vipshop Holdings and a number of other e-commerce companies.

Amazon.com, a competitor of Alibaba, also launched Prime Day in 2015 in the US to drive customers to such a crazy shopping style. One key difference between Alibaba and Amazon is that the Chinese company is a digital platform for merchants and customers to find different shopping addresses while Jeff Bezos’ empire has its own warehouse for sales. .

4. Is Singles’s Day only for Chinese customers?

Although the revenue is mainly domestic, Alibaba is trying to attack globally. This means they want to allow foreign brands to sell goods to the Chinese. They are also enthusiastically promoting the English website as the Alibaba.com wholesale platform. It is expected that Singles’ Day 2018 will also link to AliExpress – a website targeting foreign customers and Lazada – the platform operating in Southeast Asia.

5. How big is Singles’s Day?

Twice the amount of merchandise sold within 24 hours compared to all US 5-day purchases starting from Thanksgiving, to Black Friday and finally to Cyber ​​Monday. This figure is higher than the previous year each year, with sales up 39% to 168.2 billion yuan ($ 24.2 billion). In comparison, this figure is equivalent to the GDP of several small European countries. Most customers shop through Taobao and Tmall – Alibaba’s two main platforms.

6. How will Singles’ Day be different this year?

It remains to be seen whether the impact of the stock market will plummet in China and the new import duties on Chinese goods to the US. However, Alibaba has stepped up its investment on shopping malls, convenience stores and food delivery services – part of the “new retail” initiative.

In addition, any transactions paid through the Alipay service will be monitored.