By 1.00pm on 11.11.2014, consumers had spent more than RMB 35bn (€4.6bn) with Alibaba, beating last year’s total spend in just 13 hours of trading. And it took only three minutes for the website to reach its first milestone of RMB 1bn (€ 131m.) in transaction volume – down from the 1 hour taken in 2013!
But the most significant figure to note this year is that of the number of transactions that happened via smart phones and other mobile devices. The 2014 sale saw almost half (46%) of Alibaba’s total online transactions coming from mobile devices, up from 25% last year. The Chinese consumer obviously has no issues with using mobile devices for online shopping.
Drawing from the growing trend of m-commerce, Alibaba put together algorithms that predict and display items that people might like on their phones, encouraging purchasing straight from the phone. And it worked!
Chinese online shopping website Alibaba started the 11.11 24-hour online shopping festival in 2009. Since then, on 11.11, millions of Chinese consumers rush online to Alibaba’s website, attracted by the deep discounts offered on a wide range of products.
2014 saw the Chinese online shopping specialist roll-out the sale on a worldwide scale, offering Western brands in the sale, whereas in the previous years it had been mainly a China mainland event. “Chinese consumers have a tremendous desire to buy overseas products and Alibaba knows this” said Julia Zhu, founder of Observer Solutions, a Chinese e-commerce research and advisory firm.
Liu Xiaobin, Vice President of Nielsen China added that the cross-border e-commerce trend has huge potential and that as it matures, it will bring a positive impact on online sales in the future.
