Singles' Day has ended in China: the most interesting figures. Alibaba sold $5 billion worth of goods in an hour on Singles' Day in China November 11 is celebrated as Singles' Day in China

Let's remember that last year, buyers spent $17.8 billion on Alibaba-owned platforms, of which $5 billion in the first hour alone.

Alibaba sources also shared other data from the 2017 sale:

The Chinese spent the first $10 billion in 1 hour 6 minutes. 9 sec.
- Of these, 92% of orders were placed via smartphones.
- In the first 10 minutes, 43 million parcels were processed.
- 100 million orders were paid in the first 7 minutes.
- After 10 hours: 467 million parcels have been processed (this is more than in 2015 for the entire day of the sale), of which 100 million have already been sent.
- Peak loads: 325 thousand created orders per second, 256 thousand successful transactions per second.
- Alibaba’s turnover reached $20 billion by 18:00 Beijing time.

What items did you buy on sale?

In the first hour of the sale, 179 tons of goji berries (枸杞 guoqi), which the Chinese consider to have healing properties, were sold.

In the first hour, 220 thousand plus size bras (D, E, F) were sold. By 9:00 in Beijing, 5,000 tons of infant formula had been sold, and by 9:30, more than 1 billion diapers had been sold. In addition, 43 million pieces of various types of shrimp, 15.8 million pairs of underpants and 50 million pieces of condoms.

Data from AliExpress

Let us remind you that the global part of the Alibaba sale began on AliExpress on November 11, 11:00 Moscow time (that is, 16 hours later than in China).

According to company sources, in the first two hours of the international sale alone, orders were placed by users in 184 countries and the daily turnover of November 11, 2014 was exceeded. By the fourth hour of the sale, 10 million orders had been paid for (the whole world, not only Russia).

The first package from AliExpress in Russia was delivered in 1 hour 8 minutes. In Spain - in 1 hour 59 minutes.

Also, the AliExpress mobile application was included in the list of recommended free applications in the Apple App Store in several countries (including Russia).

However, after similar sales last year, many buyers still had doubts about the reality of the discounts that sellers were able to offer.

This year, we decided to check how fair discounts customers can expect on the 11.11 sale day and monitor the situation with pricing.

Input data

So, starting data:

• The number of tracked products is 510,797 in all categories available on the site.
• Tracking of changes began on September 16 of this year.
• During monitoring, indicators such as price changes, discount changes, changes in the number of orders, and changes in the number of reviews were collected daily for each product.

From our selection, 412,000 items will be included in the sale.

Number of products according to the main sections of the site:

The first swallows

However, 11 days before the sale (i.e. 11/01/16) the discounts began to “disappear”, so on 10/30 there were 388,606 discounted items, and today (11/06/16) the number of discounted items is only 424.

At the same time, a list of promotional products and their future prices appeared on the Aliexpress website. The official advertisement for the upcoming sale has been launched.

Conclusion: before the sale, almost all discounts were removed, even those that had existed since the start of price monitoring.

How fake discounts were identified

• an item on sale will cost 10% or more lower than the minimum price* for the previous month – real discount;
• the product will become cheaper, but will not become cheaper than the minimum price* for the previous month – fake discount;
• the product will become cheaper, but the discount will be from 0 to 10% compared to the minimum price* for the previous month – the discount is insignificant- this is also a negative result. Why do you need to announce large discounts, but sell the product with insignificant or even zero discounts?

General results

The results are as follows: every fourth product participating in the 11.11 sale will be sold at a “fake” discount. Every second product is without a discount, or with a slight reduction in price.

The probability that you will purchase an item at a good price is 1 in 4– great pricing, right?

The highest percentage of fake discounts is observed in the following product categories:

• women's clothing,
• childen's goods,
• computers and network equipment,
• consumer electronics,
• lamps and lighting.

We selected products that had 100 or more orders as of 11/06/16.

Results for products in demand

Filters for “calibration” of discounts gave the following results:

Like World Shopping Day. He is not yet very famous, but is gradually gaining popularity. As soon as a person learns about this pleasant event, he quickly joins the ranks of its adherents. Many people look forward to this day all year long! The publication will tell you why. We will also consider when and by whom this holiday was organized, and how it should be celebrated.

The Origin of Singles' Day

What does this event have to do with it? It is directly related to World Shopping Day. But this will be discussed a little later.

So, this holiday originally began to be celebrated in China in the nineties of the last century. Then students from various universities in Nanjing decided to come up with Singles' Day and celebrate it widely. They chose the date not by chance. The fact is that 11.11 is the date on which the holiday falls. It consists of four units. They, in turn, in China symbolize people who are not in a relationship with the opposite sex. The Celestial Country takes the magical influence of numbers seriously. Its residents believe that November 11 is the most suitable day for starting a love relationship and establishing romantic acquaintances.

After graduation, former students spread the event throughout the community. Today, Singles' Day is a special date for all young people, as is World Shopping Day.

Singles' Day traditions

A few years later, this date began to be celebrated by young people in many countries around the world. You can highlight the most traditional way to celebrate this event. On this day, it is customary to invite your best friends over for lunch or dinner. This is how young people who prefer to live alone express their independence and reluctance to start a romantic relationship with anyone.

There is also the opposite way to celebrate November 11th. Those who are looking for a soulmate, on the contrary, invite a person they like to dinner. Also on this day, blind dates are often organized. They can even be arranged by happy couples for single friends to say goodbye to single life.

Sales in stores for Singles' Day

Many stores in China have sales on November 11th to coincide with Singles' Day. It would seem, how is it related to shopping? There is a completely logical and fairly simple explanation for this. We can even consider that this was the beginning of World Shopping Day on November 11th.

As you know, the strong half of humanity does not love shopping. So the sellers decided to try to attract more men by promising them big discounts. It’s even possible that some of them will meet the woman of their dreams in the store and decide to say goodbye to their bachelor life. After all, representatives of the fair sex usually come to sales.

From the very beginning, Shopping Day was conceived as an event that could make shopping dreams come true. Thousands of products were offered, even for sophisticated tastes, from underwear to innovative electronics. Moreover, they could be purchased in any quantity with breathtaking discounts of up to 75 percent.

Is November 11th Black Friday?

In fact, Shopping Day is an analogue of the famous “Black Friday”, which was invented by the Americans. It is believed that this is a holiday of rational people who know how to count money. Global sales are timed to coincide with it, in which almost all stores and retail outlets in the world today take part. The history of Black Friday dates back to the Great Depression, and this is the main difference. World Shopping Day is complete without fights over goods, bruises, stress and hours of standing in line.

Online shopping day

There are many fans of active online shopping among men and women. For them, searching for the most interesting and profitable offers has long become a routine habit. For these and other people, in 2009, the largest Internet platform from the Middle Kingdom, Alibaba Group, made a marketing move. She called it Shopping Day, coinciding with Singles' Day. The owner of the company held the largest sale on his resources, in particular in the Aliexpress online store, where half-price discounts have long been the norm. It is generally accepted that this is how the history of the holiday officially began - World Shopping Day.

The idea was quickly picked up by other online platforms, and they also began holding grandiose online sales. They typically only lasted 24 hours and offered discounts of up to fifty percent on a million items. The main idea was to hold the promotion during the off-season, when sales are not usually held. In this way, the organizers decided to express gratitude to regular customers.

Shopping Day success

The organizers of the event planned for it to become an annual event. Users were offered a significant discount that was simply impossible to refuse. This helped turn a potential buyer into a real one. The company was not mistaken, because the success was stunning.

In 2013, the participation of a million people in World Shopping Day promotions per day brought the Chinese Alibaba Group platform almost six billion dollars. So the holiday turned into the world's largest online sale, which left behind Black Friday, Cyber ​​Monday and other analogues.

Development of the holiday in Russia

In 2014, representatives of Alibaba Group announced that store owners represented on the international online platform Aliexpress would also actively participate in the online sale. Thanks to this, since November of the same year, Russians have had the opportunity to “celebrate” this grandiose event. Every year more and more people make purchases on Shopping Day, as evidenced by statistics.

Sale records

The November sale on Aliexpress has long been a major event for people from many countries. Thus, in 2014, Russians were in third place in terms of the volume of purchases made, because they ordered the largest number of goods on the site. Every year the number of purchases is only growing. People know what World AliExpress Shopping Day means and prepare for this event in advance.

The results of the 2015 sale are simply stunning! Almost fifty million customers were placing orders simultaneously from 212 countries. The Visa and MasterCard systems simply could not withstand the load. Users were unable to pay for their purchases for almost an hour until the glitch was fixed. The first billion was earned in record time - in just eight minutes. As a result, more than thirty million parcels were sent.

In 2016, Russian buyers alone (there were more than six million of them) spent almost $18 billion. As a result, about thirty-five million orders were paid with an average bill of seven hundred rubles.

Forecast

Based on the results of last year's sales, experts suggest that the number of orders in online stores in China could increase 20 times compared to normal days. The number of buyers will also increase, and their average bill will be more than seven hundred rubles. People are expected to buy smartphones, tablets, portable chargers, clothes and New Year's souvenirs.

As you can see, the holiday is becoming more and more popular. Be sure to try to grab big discounts on World Shopping Day. Enjoy the shopping!

05.11.2016 08:18

Singles' Day in China

We all already love the holiday of February 14 - St. Valentine's Day or Valentine's Day. But many Chinese are looking forward to the date 11.11 - eleventh of November. In China, this is an unofficial and recently very fashionable holiday, Guanggongjie 光棍节 (Guānggùn jié) or Singles' Day.

Why 11.11

The date was not chosen by chance, because it includes four units. Knowing the special meaning that the Chinese attach to numbers, it is not difficult to guess that the date of the eleventh day of the eleventh month is associated and symbolizes the day of solidarity among all single people.

The holiday first began to be formed and celebrated in the late 1990s among young people and students. The students grew up, but the tradition was to celebrate Singles' Day stayed. Recently, the holiday has gradually begun to spread through the media and the Internet to the entire Chinese society. Single young people happily embrace this tradition to celebrate their joyful single life.

Moreover, the Chinese liked this holiday so much that three versions of the holiday were invented:

• January 1 (1.1) - little singles day
• January 11 (11.1) and November 1 (11.1) - average single day
• and finally November 11 (11/11)- super singles day (since it contains as many as four units)

How to celebrate Singles' Day in China

Single young people happily celebrate Singles' Day. Young people get together, have dinners in restaurants or cafes with similarly lonely friends, and toast optimism in anticipation of the day when the status of loneliness will end.

Many Chinese try to hold a wedding on this day, i.e. I say goodbye to my lonely life. Collective youth weddings are often celebrated.

But perhaps the most important event is why many are looking forward to Singles' Day, these are huge discounts and sales that Chinese online stores offer. Sometimes 11.11 discounts reach 70%! Therefore, despite the fact that single people are supposed to celebrate Singles’ Day, all lovers of online shopping in Chinese stores are joining the celebration.

Thus, on the well-known resources Taobao.com, Tmall.com or 1688.com, 11.11 sales are held annually and almost all sellers and stores participate in the promotion. The event causes a huge stir among Chinese and foreign buyers.

Already now, website visitors can see a similar mark next to the product:

If you find such a product, it means that 11.11 You can buy the same product at a significant discount.

Singles' Day: history of the holiday
It should be noted that this holiday was originally celebrated in China. It was first widely celebrated by students at universities in Nanjing in the 90s of the last century.

The name "Singles' Day" comes from the date on which the holiday falls. Celebrating Singles' Day on 11/11. As we can see, this date consists of four units, which in China symbolize people who are not in a couple.

In the Chinese tradition, the magical influence of numbers is taken very seriously. It is believed that November 11 is the most suitable day for romantic acquaintances and the beginning of new love relationships.

Singles' Day: Celebration Traditions

Over the past few years, young people in many countries around the world have begun to celebrate Singles' Day. The most traditional way to celebrate this holiday is to invite your only friend to dinner or lunch. By this, those who prefer to live alone seem to emphasize their reluctance to build a romantic relationship with someone.

But those who, on the contrary, are looking for their soulmate, invite the person they like to dinner. On this day, so-called blind dates are often held. They can even be organized by happy couples for their single friends.

Singles' Day: sales in stores

In China, on November 11, many stores organize sales, dedicating them to Singles' Day. It would seem, what does shopping have to do with Singles' Day? But the explanation for this is quite simple and quite logical.

Many men, as you know, are not very fond of shopping. Big discounts are an attempt by stores to attract more men by promising them bargains at good prices. By the way, perhaps one of them will decide to give up their bachelor life on this day, having met the girl of their dreams in the store. After all, representatives of the fair sex will definitely come to the sales.