The countdown to Single's Day has begun
Nov 03, 2016
Chinese eCommerce giant Alibaba has officially started the countdown to Single's Day, the world's biggest online retail event, and announced that it has expanded its annual promotions into a 24 day celebration, in what it has called the '2016 11.11 Global Shopping Festival'.
Single's Day, which takes place annually on the 11th November, is the single consumer's Valentine's Day, a chance to celebrate singledom as characterised by the four number ones in the date 11/11. Seven years ago Alibaba used Single's Day to promote a huge sale, as it would be a memorable date and fell suitably between Golden Week and Chinese New Year. Single’s Day quickly became an event and now other e-tailers are capitalising on it, seeing it as a chance to target young consumers with big bargains. Not only does it see heavily discounted goods delivered to customers around the world, but also encourages the most popular international retailers to export their goods into China, which remains by far the biggest source of revenue for the event. The bulk of the shopping day’s growth has been driven by Alibaba, now the trademarked owner of the term ‘double 11’ to symbolise its devotion to the date.
Single's Day exceeded all expectations last year and resulted in consumers spending a staggering $14.3 billion online in just 24 hours, $1 billion of which was generated in the first eight minutes!
Alibaba expects to surpass the record $14.3 billion in sales this year by rolling out new activities such as virtual fashion shows and augmented reality games to entice shoppers and whip them into a spending frenzy.
It will certainly be interesting to see how this year's Chinese shopping phenomenon unfolds. How will Alibaba keep up the momentum over the 24 day period? Will the novelty wear off with the discounts being stretched over a longer period of time? We're looking forward to seeing what Alibaba has in store and we're sure it will a huge success. Whatever's in store, here at wnDirect we're ready...bring it on!
