The report is about a campaign of online shopping company in China. I will introduce the campaign, analysis the reason for its success, and some opinions upon the online shopping issue in different countries.

Nov.11 is a common day for Chinese people, but it is now the craziest shopping day these years. It is called “single’s day” since 1 means single, and it is 11.11., but why we are all crazy for this day? It is a festival which is set by the biggest online company in Chinese, Taobao.com, which belongs to Alibaba.

The official data of the sum of business transaction of Taobao.com on Nov. 11, 2013 is ￥35 billion (about $ 6billion). It is three times as the transaction volume of Cyber Monday of U.S.. Last year the data is 19.5 billion, and it increased 188% this year.

I really think it is a perfect case for the internet marketing, so I change my report to this topic when I saw the news about the result, I also think it is interesting to discuss the marketing method of Taobao.com.

I think the success of Taobao.com results in reasons as follow:

ü  The involvement of most stores. The shopping festival involved almost all the online stores on Taobao.com, from the underwear, to the household appliances, it makes anything you want can be find from the promotion.

ü  Crazy discount. Mao Yun, the Chairman of Alibaba, said that the initial purpose of the shopping day is to create a thanksgiving day for online consumers. He hope all the stores can appreciate their customers with the lowest price on that day.

ü  Marketing Campaign. Before the Nov.11, Taobao.com made many efforts to promote the shopping festival by lots of method, for example, on their own website, outdoor advertisement, interesting joke on social media, these methods makes almost everyone know the concept of Nov.11 shopping day, even my parents who don’t shopping online heard of there is a great promotion on Nov.11. It really amazing.

ü  Hunger marketing. The business volume of the first minute is ￥117 million (about $2 million) , and ￥6 billion (about $1 billion) for the first hour. Thousands of people waiting for the time when the Nov.11 began. It is because there are many discount are sniping, you must make your choice before the event began and place an order as quickly as you can, otherwise you will miss it. It proves a successful marketing method.

ü  Social media. Taobao.com did a very good job in attract consumers to communicate with others, they develop an app, which allow customers to show what they bought, so the other customers can compare and make their own choice. It is interesting, and most girls have that app in China, even they don’t really buy so many clothes online, they also like to look at what the others buy.

ü

The business model of Taobao.com is different from Amazon, ebay and even JD.com, which is also the big online shopping company in China. These online shopping companies are mostly operate by themselves, they have their own supply chain, logistic, customer management department, even have their own products. However, Taobao.com have none of them, they regard themselves as a platform for the online stores, and their direct customers are the owners of online stores. So their job is helping their stores attract as more customers as possible.

From this aspect, Taobao.com is more like a marketing company. The chairman believes that online shopping is the trend of next decades, and online trade volume will grow sustainable and play a more important role in China.

I find that there is few online shopping in Vancouver, and online shopping seems not so popular. However, it is very common in China to shopping online, you can almost get everything you need from the website, no matter you want a car or just some tissue, and you can also order hourly worker to clean your house. I thought internet should be much popular in North America before I come here, however, I find it is different. It is interesting to think about the reasons. The technology is not a problem, maybe the demand for convenient shopping and logistic costs are the major different. I haven’t done any research on this issue, but I think we can find opportunity from the compare between the two regions.