To put this in perspective, online sales in just one day in China is more than Brazil’s total projected e-commerce sales for all of 2016. In fact, if Singles’ Day were a country and we ranked sales of that one
day against annual e-commerce sales of countries around the world, Alibaba’s Singles’ Day would rank as the 11th largest country in the world, just ahead of Brazil and just behind South Korea, according to statistics from market-research firm eMarketer.
This underscores that Western brands not only need a China strategy, they need a very specific Singles’ Day strategy — just as South Korea or Brazil might require their own strategy. The monumental size of the sale isn’t the only takeaway. Alibaba hosted me in Shenzhen, China last week, where we had a series of 11.11 events and discussions, and here are some other insights as we think about Singles’ Day strategy for 2017:
Integration: A core Singles’ Day theme was vertical integration. Alibaba is not just online marketplaces, the company has put in place a sprawling, self-contained e-commerce ecosystem that is almost an economy unto itself. Their affiliated Alipay (think Paypal) payment system handled more than 1 billion transactions during the 24-hour sale and Alibaba’s logistics arm, Cainao, helped deliver 657 million packages.
Mobile: Interestingly, 82% of 11.11 sales were on mobile. This shift from PCs and laptops to mobile is a strong boost to inclusivity because there are some 800 million Chinese with smartphones, meaning there are 800 million Chinese who carry a shopping mall in their pocket. Some 430 million of these people are active shoppers on Tmall, the main Alibaba platform.
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