This year’s ‘11.11 Global Shopping Festival’ will be bigger than ever with up to 500 million buyers in more countries around the world purchasing online from over 200,000 brands, Alibaba Group promised today as it kicked off the countdown to the mega-event on November 11.
Although the online shopping festival remains overwhelmingly a Chinese event, it will be more international than ever this year, the e-commerce group made clear. More than 200,000 brands will participate in next month’s 24-hour event, with 22,000 of them from 78 overseas markets, the group announced.
In Asia Pacific, Alibaba’s Southeast Asian flagship platform, Lazada, and South Asian platform Daraz will take part in 11.11 for the second time, comprising 11 markets in those regions. Also, India will celebrate through the UC Shopping Festival, in association with Paytm, VMate and 9Apps.
Europe will also play a bigger role this year. B2C shopping site AliExpress, which mainly connects international consumers with Chinese companies and products, will bring merchants from Russia, Spain, Italy and Turkey into the 11.11 fold for the first time.
Earlier this year AliExpress added retailers from these four countries to its marketplace alongside Chinese sellers. The business has also just closed its joint venture deal with Russian internet group Mail.ru, telecoms group MegaFon and sovereign wealth fund Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) to create a new Russian online ‘eco-system’ combining communications, shopping and entertainment.
Fast rise in consumption by customers in lower-tier areas
In terms of overall planning and targets for this year’s ‘11.11 Global Shopping Festival’, Alibaba said more than 500 million consumers are expected to shop during those 24 hours, which would be about 100 million more than last year. In 2018, some 400 million customers bought more than one billion items worth RMB 213.5 billion (US$30.8 billion) from 180,000 participating brands during the event.
Tmall and Taobao President Jiang Fan said increasing consumption both by coastal city inhabitants and people living in lower-tier inland areas would drive sales this year. So far this year 70% of the 226 million new monthly active users have been from less prosperous parts of the country.
“Our goal is to stimulate consumption demand and support lifestyle upgrade in China through new brands and products,” he explained. “We will enable merchants in China and around the world to grow their businesses through data-driven product innovation and consumer insights, as well as leverage our recommendation technology and content-driven user engagement to delight consumers in urban coastal cities and less-developed areas of China.”
Upgraded Tmall flagship stores
Tmall has this year rolled out new ways for brands to reach the 730 million customers shopping on the group’s platforms. In July, the B2C shopping site unveiled the Tmall Flagship Store 2.0, which delivered a range of new tools available to brands for interactive marketing. Through the revamped storefronts, brands can now create more-personalized experiences for consumers, create content tailored to loyal customers and help drive foot traffic to brick-and-mortar stores offline.
“Taobao and Tmall previously offered a standard mode of shopping, but we want to offer more personalized experiences and allow different industries to customize according to their needs and inspire the creativity of third-party developers and use innovation to bring higher efficiency,” Jiang explained. “Flagship stores are not only shelves for products, but channels for service and touch points for marketing.”
Similar to recent years, Alibaba will also host a “See Now, Buy Now” runway show and Countdown Gala Celebration in the run-up to 11.11. The two-hour, livestreamed show, called Tmall Collection, will take place Monday night in Shanghai just hours after the kickoff press conference. Aimed at China’s Millennial and Generation Z consumers, the show will feature not just clothing and apparel but also fast-moving consumer goods and electronics from 24 Chinese and international brands, including MAC, Levi’s, Polo Ralph Lauren, Johnnie Walker, Sisley and Burberry.
Making 11.11 more sustainable
Alibaba Group also wants to make the online shopping event more sustainable by creating a network of recycling stations for packaging across China. Cainiao Smart Logistics Network will set up 40,000 recycling stations while its express courier partners will host an additional 35,000 locations. Consumers will also be rewarded “green energy” points on Ant Forest for their recycling efforts.
“In the past 10 years, we’ve continued to set new GMV records and with that our responsibility has grown,” Jiang said. “For 11.11 this year, it will not only be about our GMV volumes but also about sustainable development.”
