Welcome to Mona's world

“Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a Chinese e-commerce company that provides consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals.” 

     November 11 is Remembrance Day in the Western Country, but it is Single’s Day in China. The reason why people call it Single’s Day because 11.11 looks like four single men. In 2009, Alibaba Group took the first move advantage and created the Single’s Day Sale on Taobao, which is an online shopping platform belongs to Alibaba. Single’s Day Sale is similar to Black Friday Sale in the western country, but it sells everything online and only for 24 hours.

Jack Ma, the chairman of Alibaba Group, believes that there is a huge opportunity in creating Chinese customers’ incentive to buy more things online, because it is cheaper and convenient. He is definitely right. Single’s Day sales started with many cheaper, local and everyday use products. Alibaba Group spend After Alibaba Group launched this Single’s Day Sale project, Chinese customers started to spend more money on online. One reason behind this is that customers feel a sense of urgent for the 24 hours sales. They believe that if they do not buy something within 24 hours, they will suffer lost when they buy things at full prices later on. Many customers even buy lots of things that they do not need.

Even though the revenue was not very high in the first year, the sales went up quickly after many well-known brands started to join in, such as Siemens and Lancome.  The sales of Single’s Day increases dramatically from 52 million Yuan, Chinese Dollar, in 2009 to 111 hundred million Yuan in 2016.

Why is Single’s Day Sale so successful? 

1. Good Choice on the Date. The Single’s Day, “11.11”, is not only a special day for single people, but also easy to remember.
2. Win-win. Both Alibaba Group and individual sellers can make high profit by lower retail prices. For Alibaba Group, the more sellers sales, the more they will make. For individual sellers, through selling discount products online, individual sellers can attract customers to try their products and buy more things later on. Moreover, it will raise awareness of these brands and build connections between customers and sellers.
3. Promotion. Alibaba Group spend billions of money on online and offline promotions. It increases customers awareness of these deals and creates incentive for them to buy more.

 [Ads On billboards]

[Ads On the Website]

[Coupons]

[Discounts]

[deals on Foreign countries]

Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group

http://quotesgram.com/jack-ma-quotes/

Pony Makeup YouTube Channel

Hye-Min Park, also known as Pony, is a famous South Korean beauty expert who has been blogging about Korean makeup for years. She creates makeup tutorials and posts them on YouTube. Because of her clear descriptions and trustworthy products’ reviews, she has approximately 2 million subscribers and many makeup brands, especially South Korean brands, are asking for Pony to review their makeup products. Now, Pony becomes a trendsetter in South Korea and she even creates her own beauty brand called Pony Effect.

1. Celebrities Makeup Tutorials

This type of tutorials helps Pony to gain more public reactions in international bases. It can also attract fans from those celebrities, such as Taylor Swift, and get high number of views.

2. Tutorials’ Positioning

A large number of people are seeking the right bloggers to help them making chooses before they purchase makeups. Pony is the most popular one in South Korea. She is targeting viewers in their 20s and 30s and uses both affordable and high-end makeups in her tutorials to fulfil needs in these two ranges. Pony also mixes of both soft and strong makeup styles for viewers with different makeup preferences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxkVZxWjxKo

3. Pony Effect

In 2015, Pony launched her own makeup line called Pony Effect. Pony is the celebrity of her own brand and viewers continue buy makeups based on her videos. Since Pony has a great reputation on makeups, many of her viewers start to buy her products. This is a common digital marketing strategy: building brand loyalty, increasing brand awareness, and creating purchase intents. It usually works very well.

Images Credit to Review: Celeb Makeup Artist PONY’s Makeup Line PONY Effect

Pony did a great job on transforming from a YouTube blogger to a brand owner. Since all videos on Pony’s YouTube channel are benefiting both viewers and Pony’s company itself, it is a long-term and health marketing strategy.

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is my first post. Feel excited to start blogging!