Chinese e-commerce leading brand Alibaba broke a sales record on Double 11 24-hour shopping event - also known as Singles Day - this year, the Central News Agency reported on November 12. At the end of the event, GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) arrived at 268.4 billion Yuan (US$38 billion; US$ 1 = 6.89 Yuan), representing a 26% increase compared to 2018. Last year, Alibaba’s Singles Day sales already outperformed the spending by US consumers during any big single US shopping holiday such as Black Friday or Cyber Monday. The US is the second largest country by GMV, next to China. This year, there were 200,000 brands and 10 million discounted goods were available for over 500 million Tmall subscribers. The top-selling products included 5G version of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro and the Apple iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max.
According to Taiwan’s government-backed IT research Institute MIC (Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute), there were over 70% of Taiwan’s consumers planned to make purchases on Double 11 and the top 3 products that they would like to buy were home appliances (including smartphones), daily goods, and clothes/accessories; among all Double 11 promo activities, 46.8% of netizens are more willing to shop on Double 11 because of the free delivery services, especially female netizens; 40.8% of them due to credit card rewards, 35.5% due to limited sales/discounts/new releases of goods, 31.5% due to all promo activities related to Double 11, and 27.2% due to online coupons. Nevertheless, the price remains the most critical factor when it comes to online shopping.