Singles Day 2015 just became the biggest online shopping day in history
What is Singles Day and is it bigger than Black Friday?
November 11th is known as singles day in China, also called “bare sticks holiday”. On that day, online retailers offer massive promotions and shoppers happily gobble up the bait, and some have called it “a 24-hour orgy of consumption.” Alibaba, China’s largest online retailer, turned the day into an excuse to go shopping when it began offering special deals on the holiday in 2009. Since then, the company’s sales have increased dramatically.
This year, $14.3 billion in goods was sold through Alibaba’s platform during 24 hours of Singles Day. Within eight minutes after the sales began, Alibaba had sold more than $1 billion in goods. The Chinese post office estimated that 760 million packages would be shipped by e-commerce sites on that one day.
Customers bought clothes, shoes, jewelry, furnitures, electronic devices, and even pets online. Especially females, they bought a lot of clothing and cosmetics. They are more willing to purchase online rather than shopping in physical store not only because of the convenience, but also because of the lower pricing and diversity. This help to promote the economy of China greatly. Customers are attracted by the very low prices and other preferential activities like buy one get one for free, or 50% off, therefore, they bought many things that were not really necessary for them.
I am a fan of online shopping, and i bought many things online through Alibaba last year during Singles day as well. It was really attractive to me and i was sitting in front of my laptop a hour earlier in order to get the goods that had very limited amount. It has now become a popular online shopping festival in China.
