The Double 11 shopping bonanza’s gross revenue blazed past USD1 billion (RMB6.9 billion) in only one minute and 25 seconds and surpassed USD10 billion in just over one hour.
On the 10th anniversary of its Double 11 shopping festival, e-commerce leviathan Alibaba smashed its last year’s sales record of USD25.3 billion in orders on Tmall during the first 16 hours of November 11.
According to Alibaba, Tmall Global has expanded to 74 countries and regions, boasting over 18,000 brands under 3,700 categories: among which beauty, health, mother and baby items are the most popular products.
The internal data shows that more than 50% of this year’s customers are millennials under 30 years old. Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and Shenzhen top the list of the highest-spending cities.
Behind the scenes of the shopping bonanza, the organizer of the world’s largest online sales event used cutting-edge technology to better serve its millions of customers.
Alibaba applied artificial intelligence (AI) to various aspects of Double 11 shopping events to improve consumers’ shopping experiences and support merchants’ marketing strategies. During the festival, AI robots are assisting merchants with sales volume predictions and companies with real-time price adjustments. They are also providing sellers with optimized inventory management software.
Cainiao Network, Alibaba’s dedicated delivery business, developed a cloud-based monitoring system called the “Sky-Eye Program” that helps companies identify abnormalities in their logistics and delivery processes.
This year’s festival has seen 657 million delivery orders, a number that surpasses the total number from 2016. This year, it only took 8 hours and 13 minutes to match the sales numbers from 2017, Alibaba said.
(Top photo from Alibaba)