Alibaba keeps low profile again on China’s Singles Day
Beijing, Nov 11 (EFE).- As happened last year, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba celebrated “Double Eleven” or Single’s Day, the country’s shopping festival, with a low profile and without conceding importance to sales volume.
The group didn’t organize the usual gala of past years in which a large screen updated the volume of transactions in almost real time throughout the day.
This figure, the great obsession of the group in past editions, is not even a hot topic on Chinese social network Weibo, equivalent to Twitter, in which Alibaba had not published any message until Friday afternoon.
Other e-commerce platforms have remained relatively active: JD.com began its 28-hour discount campaign on Thursday at 8:00 p.m. local time (12:00 GMT), in which brands such as the American Apple surpassed RMB 1 billion yuan in the first minute ($140 million.)
A report on consumer trends on Singles’ Day by JD.com says concepts such as “rational and healthy consumption” are in vogue and that health, education and sports products are “increasingly popular” because Chinese buyers see in them “a return on their investment.”
Despite the foreign brands such as Apple or Estee Lauder cosmetics have stood out at this year’s event, Chinese consumers prefer local products when it comes to taking advantage of sales: among the 102 brands that exceeded RMB 100 million turnover in the first hour of discounts on the Tmall platform, more than half were Chinese, reported the Xinhua agency.
According to the Chinese consultancy Xingtu, the cumulative turnover of e-commerce platforms between 8:00 p.m. Thursday local time (12:00 GMT) and 8:00 a.m. Friday (0:00 GMT) reached RMB 223 billion. EFE
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