Would Double 11, the biggest shopping event in China, remain the most important shopping festival in 2021? The total amount of GMV this year will be twice that of 2019, reaching about US$85 billion, according to App Annie’s forecast.
Alibaba Tmall Double 11 Shopping Festival
Alibaba Group kicked off its Tmall Double 11 Shopping Festival 2021 on 20 October 2021. This is Alibaba’s 13th annual Double Eleven shopping festival in China with an emphasis on sustainability and inclusiveness.
This year marks the largest Double 11 Festival to date, with a record 290,000 brands participating. Alibaba Tmall is offering more than 14 million deals to over 900 million consumers in China. Double 11 2021 will once again have two sales windows – the first will be from November 1 to 3, and the second will be on November 11, on the day of the main event.
Livestreaming will be a key consumer engagement mechanism for brands and merchants to build awareness and drive sales. Starting on October 20 throughout the Festival, Taobao Live will feature 700 leading KOLs, celebrities and brand representatives in livestream sessions.
In addition, Taobao will roll out a new feature for users to share their “shopping cart” items with friends and family, creating a more social shopping experience.
Taobao app introduced an option for “senior mode“, a new feature designed to make the user interface more accessible for senior citizens.
It offers voice-assisted technology, simplified navigation, larger font size and icons. The app homepage also offers games for elderly users to unlock special discounts for groceries, making the experience more engaging for the silver generation.
Consumers are encouraged to share their “Goods for Good” purchases with their friends and family, and Alibaba will make a RMB1 donation for every successful social media share.
Launched in 2006, Alibaba’s “Goods for Good” program enables merchants to donate a portion of their sales to charitable organizations of their choice, while consumers can support their favorite charitable causes through their purchases.
The donations from this year’s Double 11 Festival will provide support to three major beneficiary groups: elderly citizens living in solitude, “left-behind children” in remote areas and low-income workers.
Tmall Double 11 Pre-sale
At 8 p.m. on October 20, Tmall Double 11 officially opened the pre-sale. This year, Tmall’s Double 11 will collectively discount 14 million products, of which all the popular products in 1000 brand flagship stores will be subsidized to 50%.
According to Taobao live streaming data, Li Jiaqi, one of the top anchors, listed 439 products on the evening of October 20. The cumulative transaction value of the live broadcast room is as high as 11.5 billion yuan, and the estimated sales volume is 37.71 million.
In addition, the maximum sales volume of a single product was 1.8777 million yuan, the maximum sales value of a single product was 389 million yuan, the average customer purchase was 306 yuan, and 2.83 million new followers.
Another top influencer Viya started live streaming at 12:55 on October 20, with a cumulative live streaming duration of 14 hours and 28 minutes. The total sales reached 8.533 billion yuan and the average customer purchase was 317 yuan.
There are 499 products listed and the estimated cumulative sales volume is 26.89 million. The maximum sales volume of a single product is 605,600, and the maximum sales value of a single product is 490 million yuan.
Alibaba Tmall Double 11 Sales/GMV
In 2021, Alibaba’s Tmall Double 11 shopping festival achieved a new record of US$84.54 billion in gross merchandise volume.
More than 2.5 million consumers purchased green products on Tmall. Tesla, for example, sold more charging stations for its electric cars within the first minute on November 11 than it had during the entire festival last year.
JD Double 11
Presales
On October 20, the 2021 JD”s Double 11, Singles Day Grand Promotion, began with the pre-sale rolling in at 8 pm. The number of customers who placed orders within the first four hours increased by nearly 40% compared with the first day of the pre-sale in 2020.
The first order delivered by JD’s on-demand “Shop Now” service was swiftly fulfilled within only 10 minutes.
According to JD, an increasing amount of young people joined the pre-sale as consumers aged 18-35 accounted for over 70% during the pre-sale period. Since many brands also opened pre-sales at 8 pm, they swiftly shattered the pre-sale record set on the first entire day of the pre-sale last year.
This shopping enthusiasm was fully ignited across China. Within the first four hours of the pre-sale, Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Beijing took the top 3 in order amounts; and when it comes to the product category, large appliances took the lead, followed by phones, sports shoes and bags, and facial care products.
Haier ranked the most popular brand out of all the large appliances during the pre-sale period, and Siemens came after.
On computers and digital products, hardware devices for education purposes came out strong.
Xiaomi, Huawei, and OPPO were also among some of the highly popular tech products, as the pre-sale order volume for Xiaomi phones in the very first hour exceeded that of the first entire day last year.
Within the first four hours of the pre-sale, order amounts of OPPO phones this year increased by 227% YoY.
This Singles Day, JD provided e-CNY (CBDC) red envelopes for users in 11 cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Dalian, Xi’an, Chengdu, and more, in collaboration with China Construction Bank (CCB).
Users located in these cities, who have never opened an e-CNY account, can search “e-CNY” on JD’s app to get access to the activity page. The red envelopes can be used on JD’s e-commerce app to purchase first-party products.
JD Double 11 Sales
JD.com reported a record-breaking Singles Day Grand Promotion on November 12, 2021, with transaction volume totaling RMB 349.1 billion yuan at midnight of November 11, ending the 11-day promotion that started from 8 pm on October 31.
The transaction volume of 31 brands surpassed RMB 1 billion yuan with Apple surpassing RMB 10 billion yuan.
Users from lower-tier markets account for 77% of all users for JD’s Singles Day Grand Promotion this year. JD has seen rapid growth of consumption from these markets in the categories of home appliances, medicine, and home decoration.
For example, the transaction volume of dishwashers and sweeping robots increased 2 to 3 times, with some smart home appliances even increasing 5 to 10 times.
Over 100,000 customers used e-CNY on JD’s app during the promotion period.
Xiaomi
During November’s Singles’ Day Shopping Festival, Xiaomi and Redmi brand smartphones together ranked No.1 in sales volume on Tmall.com, JD.com and Suning.com. The Group’s premium smartphones also ranked No.1 among Android smartphones priced above RMB4,000 on Tmall.com and JD.com.
In addition, during the shopping festival, the total sales volume of Xiaomi’s smartphones from its offline channels increased by more than 110% year-over-year.