Alibaba Kicks Off Singles' Day Event with Emphasis on Value-for-Money Deals
Alibaba Group, 10/20/23
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA; 9988.HK) said today that a record number of brands and merchants plan to invest in the world's largest retail sales event, 11.11, which begins October 24.
Over 1 mln of them are promoting goods from down jackets to mānuka honey, said Alimama, Alibaba's monetization platform. Content creation is in the spotlight, with investment in short video campaigns jumping over fourfold year-over-year.
Alibaba is serving up a smorgasbord of discounts and coupons this year's shopping festival, also known as Double 11 or Singles' Day in China, to entice bargain-hunters while supporting merchants and content creators. Shoppers will also be able to call on artificial intelligence to help them find the best bargain around.
Shift to Thrift
11.11 takes place this year against a backdrop of global economic uncertainty, and many consumers are looking for value-for-money products.
Consumer behavior is becoming more sophisticated, noted Trudy Dai, CEO of Taobao and Tmall Group, the Alibaba wholly owned business group that houses the two digital marketplaces. High-income groups still value brands and new products while emphasizing consumer experience. On the other hand, lower-income consumers remain price-sensitive but are developing awareness of mass-market brands and increasingly want entertaining content. The mass affluent are highly price-sensitive.
Alibaba expects about 1 bln consumers to participate in the 11.11 event, where it sees over 80 mln products on offer at their lowest price for the year.
During the promotion, Alibaba's business-to-consumer marketplace Tmall is discounting RMB 50 (USD 6.84) off every RMB 300 spent (equal to a 17% discount) and consumer-to-consumer marketplace Taobao will knock off RMB 30 for every RMB 200 spent (or 15% off purchases). Products on offer during 11.11 Taobao and Tmall will introduce a large-scale direct discount virtual venue that offers an across-the-board 15% price reduction, in addition to the usual coupons that can be used across different stores. Tmall will tag products with the lowest price based on real-time price comparison with other e-commerce platforms in China.
The 19-day campaign runs from Oct. 24 to Nov. 11 and will be split into several phases. During pre-sales windows, consumers can add items to their shopping carts at 11.11 prices but can't seal the deal until a payment window opens.
Pre-sales on Taobao and Tmall run from 2:00AM China time on Oct. 24 to Oct. 31, then there will be two check-out windows - the first opening at 2:00AM China time on Oct. 31 and closing on Nov. 3 and the second opening between 2:00AM China time on Nov. 10 and 5:59AM China time on Nov. 11.
Staggering orders helps merchants handle the volume of trade that has made the promotion famous.
Global Event
Started by Alibaba in 2019 with just 27 brands participating, 11.11 is now in its 15th year. Initially, a 24-hour online sale, 11.11 has expanded globally with retailers offering Singles' Day sales in the US, Europe and Southeast Asia.
The number of products, brands and merchants participating in 11.11 this year continues to hit new highs. About 46,000 brands and merchants worldwide will promote overseas products.
Singles' Day was created by students at Nanjing University in 1993 to celebrate their single status. In 2009, Alibaba transformed the holiday from an "anti-Valentine's Day" into the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.
The festival is increasingly going high-tech. Shoppers' searches on the Taobao app will be AI-powered this year. The app's chatbot "Taobao Wenwen" will swing into 11.11 mode to answer queries such as the "best mobile phone to buy" or the "most value-for-money lipstick". It will also be on hand to add up all the discounts on offer to calculate the best prices, helping shoppers make decisions.
Based on the large language model's understanding of text and its generative capabilities, the chatbot helps consumers narrow searches by suggesting more relevant questions and offering detailed product recommendations in various formats, including text and short videos. Since beta testing began in September, over 5 mln people have used the AI application.
In a sign of gradually returning confidence, merchants registering new stores on Tmall, Alibaba's business-to-consumer marketplace, in the three months ending September more than doubled year-over-year, including French fashion house Courrèges.
Among them, 42% are direct-to-consumer brands built by Chinese manufacturers. The top five industries supplying the wave of store openings were consumer electronics, clothing & fashion, home decoration, food and health.
Down jackets brand Bosideng topped the clothing brand category during 11.11 last year, the first Chinese brand to do so. This year the brand's Senior Vice President Jinsong Rui "expects a greater breakthrough" at an 11.11 warm-up event in Hangzhou.
Keywords: marketing e-commerce Taobao Internet Alibaba Group Trudy Dai Tmall BABA 9988.HK B2C Singles Day C2C
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