Breaking Record

American consumers are familiar with the largest sales of the year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In recent years, Amazon’s Prime Day has become more popular than Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Amazon gives Amazon Prime members free two-day shipping. Amazon carries just about everything you could possibly want, so instead of looking at individual sales at different stores, Amazon gives customers that ease of getting their shopping done on one website. Consumers today love buying things cheap and getting them quickly.

Just like the competitive market in the United States, China has a day full of unbeatable sales, called Singles Day. Back in the 90s, Singles Day started out as an “Anti-Valentine’s” Day in November. According to The Telegraph[1] (Davidson, 2018), a few single students attending Nanjing University started this holiday to celebrate their single lives. This holiday takes place today, on November 11, which numerically is 11/11. The Chinese E-Commerce conglomerate spotted an opportunity and adopted this idea. Although, it started out as a day just for singles, this holiday is a day where everyone can buy themselves something nice. This holiday has been going strong for ten years. According to CNBC[2] (Soisson, 2018), consumers are predicted to spend about $32 billion this year. Singles Day has pushed its way to the top, beating Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Amazon Prime Day’s Sales. Alibaba predicted that this year would be the biggest success for Singles Day. CNBC2 (Soisson, 2018) states that last year consumers spent approximately $19 billion on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. On Amazon Prime Day, July 16th, they reported about $4 billion in consumer sales. Alibaba’s strategy to beat these American holiday sales is by promoting sales for Singles Day in brick-and-mortar stores and online. Alibaba gets the upper hand in sales because Amazon only has an online presence at the moment. Alibaba is one of Amazon’s largest global competitors. China’s population is much larger and the people are more into technology. China is a little more advanced than the United States, and because of this they end up blowing us out of the water in consumer sales every year.

Alibaba didn’t quite meet their goal, but they set the new record for the highest number of sales on Singles Day. According to CNBC[3] (Kharpal, 2018), the GMV is approximately $20.8 billion in consumer sales. The article3 (Kharpal, 2018) states that Alibaba made $1 billion in sales in a little over a minute of kicking off Singles Day. Whether Alibaba made their goal or not, they must be doing something right.

Sources:

[1] Lauren Davidson; Emily Allen; Ashley Armstrong. (2016, November 03). What is China's Singles Day and how does it compare to Black Friday? Retrieved from https://www.telegraph.co.uk/black-friday/0/what-is-chinas-singles-day-and-how-does-it-compare-to-black-frid/

[2] Soisson, I. (2018, November 10). Here's how Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day stack up with China's biggest shopping day. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/09/how-black-friday-prime-day-and-chinas-biggest-shopping-day-stack-up.html

[3] Kharpal, A. (2018, November 11). Alibaba smashes through $25.3 billion Singles Day sales record. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/11/alibaba-singles-day-2018-record-sales-on-largest-shopping-event-day.html