Facing gloomy China consumers, Alibaba's Taobao replaces Dec 12 shopping spree with new event

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The 12.12 shopping festival, held annually on Dec. 12 since 2012, was the less-celebrated sister of November's Singles Day sales festival, which traditionally fell on Nov. 11 but has in recent years ballooned into a multi-week event beginning in late October.

This year marked the second time Alibaba declined to release its sales results for the Singles Day festival period, but data provider Syntun estimated cumulative gross merchandising volume (GMV) sales across major e-commerce platforms rose 2.08% to 1.14 trillion yuan ($156.40 billion) compared with growth of 2.9% last year.

According to Alibaba, 80 million products were offered at their deepest discount of the year for Singles Day.

Analysts saw Alibaba's focus on discounts this year as an attempt to fight rivals such as Douyin and PDD Holdings' (PDD.O) Pinduoduo that have changed the landscape of Chinese e-commerce in recent years by selling lower-cost and discounted items year-round.

Chinese consumers are in a thrifty mood, amid a deepening crisis in the country's giant property sector, where most of the country's household wealth is parked, spending cuts by highly indebted local governments, youth unemployment rates surpassing 20%, and falling wages in some sectors of the economy.

"Macroeconomic headwinds are causing consumers to be more value-conscious," consultancy Bain said in a report released earlier this month focused on Singles Day sales.

The original article contains 301 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 27%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

3 comments

AliExpress makes alibaba/taobao products available to intl shoppers, do the mentioned competitors have similar intl offerings, or are they China-domestic only?
- I was under the impression that AliExpress just allows Taobao sellers to make (different) listings for the international market. You certainly don't get the variety of stuff offered on Taobao.
  The article mentions Douyin, which is the domestic version of Tiktok (so no), and Pinduoduo which I don't know much about.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The 12.12 shopping festival, held annually on Dec. 12 since 2012, was the less-celebrated sister of November's Singles Day sales festival, which traditionally fell on Nov. 11 but has in recent years ballooned into a multi-week event beginning in late October.
This year marked the second time Alibaba declined to release its sales results for the Singles Day festival period, but data provider Syntun estimated cumulative gross merchandising volume (GMV) sales across major e-commerce platforms rose 2.08% to 1.14 trillion yuan ($156.40 billion) compared with growth of 2.9% last year.
According to Alibaba, 80 million products were offered at their deepest discount of the year for Singles Day.
Analysts saw Alibaba's focus on discounts this year as an attempt to fight rivals such as Douyin and PDD Holdings' (PDD.O) Pinduoduo that have changed the landscape of Chinese e-commerce in recent years by selling lower-cost and discounted items year-round.
Chinese consumers are in a thrifty mood, amid a deepening crisis in the country's giant property sector, where most of the country's household wealth is parked, spending cuts by highly indebted local governments, youth unemployment rates surpassing 20%, and falling wages in some sectors of the economy.
"Macroeconomic headwinds are causing consumers to be more value-conscious," consultancy Bain said in a report released earlier this month focused on Singles Day sales.
The original article contains 301 words, the summary contains 219 words. Saved 27%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!