Consumers from China’s smaller cities lift Alibaba to new Singles’ Day record as buyers shrug off trade war
- Alibaba’s Singles’ Day shopping festival, which falls on November 11 every year, is the world’s largest of its kind
Consumers from China’s smaller cities helped lift Alibaba to a new Singles’ Day record of 268.4 billion yuan (US$38.4 billion) in sales, as the 24-hour shopping extravaganza indicated that people are still keen to spend if they find a bargain.
The final tally for this year's Singles' Day compared with gross merchandise volume (GMV) of 213.5 billion yuan last year, an increase of almost 26 per cent compared with 27 per cent the year before, as buyers shrugged off the effects of a months-long US-China trade war and a wider slowing in China’s economy.
Alibaba said that Juhuasuan, its e-commerce platform that targets tier-3 cities and below, had 7,000 items that hit over a million orders and 576 items that received over 10 million orders.
“This result shows the continued ability of e-commerce giants to generate and capture demand online,” said Michael Norris, a strategy manager with management consultancy AgencyChina. “One of the stand-outs this year was live-stream, taking consumers from product discovery to purchase within a few clicks.”
Alibaba’s Singles’ Day shopping festival, which falls on November 11 every year, is the world’s largest of its kind, where shoppers scoop up everything from consumer electronics to luxury items and even cars.
