Holidays are a good excuse for sales promotions, and shoppers love discounts. E-commerce companies led by Alibaba are creating one shopping spree after another on major holidays. And the e-commerce giant has just announced another Lunar New Year shopping record in its latest report.
Lunar New Year is as important for Chinese people as Christmas for westerners. Alibaba launched another shopping festival for Lunar New Year from January 17 to 21. Last November, during the Double 11 festival, Alibaba made record-breaking sales of RMB 91.2 billion (USD 14.3 billion) in 24 hours.
China has once again proven its unrivaled purchasing power. The report co-produced by Alibaba and Alibaba-backed First Finance Commercial Data Research Center suggested that, during the five-day festival, 2.1 billion products were ordered from four of Alibaba’s platforms, which have 407 million active users altogether, including Taobao, Tmall, and Cun.taobao.com, a site for rural shoppers. About 70% of these orders were made on mobile terminals, and 15% were from rural areas. The post-80s and post-90s generations made the majority of purchases, taking up 81% of total orders.
In general, products sold on the platforms are clothing, food, electrical appliances, home furnishings, maternity and child care products, beauty products and entertainment services. The top two categories of clothing and food dominated more than half of the orders but took up a smaller proportion compared to last year. Travel and entertainment services provided on the platform witnessed growth, as more and more people choose to celebrate the new year by traveling and going to events.
A highlight of the report is Chinese women’s love for brand-name products from overseas, especially food, beauty products, maternity & child care products. The top three countries supplying these products are USA, Japan and Germany. The most popular products for Chinese people are infant milk powder from Germany, skin care products from Korea, diapers from Japan, and almonds and glucosamine from America.
Another highlight from the report is the potential of rural regions in China. Thanks to emerging e-commerce in rural regions, more and more local delicacies and handicrafts produced by people from rural areas are being made available online and consumed by city dwellers. In addition, orders made by the 12,000 offline e-commerce service stations set up in rural areas by Alibaba increased 331% during the holiday season. Alibaba, together with other e-commerce giants, has been amping up efforts to stimulate consumption in rural areas since 2014. These service stations are part of its strategic rural plan.
(All photos from Baidu Images.)
