Note: Today’s article is part of our “Editor’s Choice” series where we highlight recent articles published by our sponsors that provide supply chain information and advice. This article is by Audrey Dong, KNAPP, and examines e-commerce in China and the impact of Singles Day.
Electronic commerce in China has grown rapidly over the past decades, with currently more than 25% of total retail sales generated online. Partly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers are increasingly switching from offline to online shopping, and the e-commerce market is expected to grow from around $ 2.1 trillion in 2021 to $ 3 trillion in 2024.
Omnichannel provides a seamless and convenient shopping experience, with just the click of a button, consumers can place orders anytime, anywhere and get the products same or next day. Meanwhile, live streaming is becoming the hottest trend in selling products online and is expected to grow 95.5% this year. Digitization and the development of logistics technology are the driving force behind the scenes, which is even more evident at peak times.
Double 11 record online sales witnesses
Double 11 (AKA Singles Day), known as the world’s largest online shopping festival, was originally launched by Alibaba on November 11.e in 2009, then adopted by other e-commerce platforms and retailers. With the shopping fever generated by customers nationwide, Double 11 is generating record sales every year. For example, Alibaba Tmall’s gross merchandise volume increased from $ 5 billion in 2013 to $ 78 billion in 2020 as the graph below. In comparison, total Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales in the United States were around $ 19.8 billion in 2020. Although Tmall accounts for around 50% of the total Chinese e-commerce market share B2C, China’s large population and growing middle class offer potential for consumption.
Additionally, the Double 11 2021 festival was the biggest yet, with over $ 139 billion in sales generated on major ecommerce platforms like Tmall and JD.com. In the past, the event only took place on November 11e. This year’s event had two sales windows on November 1-3 and November 11. It also included the presale for the first sales window starting October 20.e allow consumers to secure their orders by paying a deposit, the balance to be paid on the official date of the sale. For example, JD’s big one-day promotion started at 8 p.m. on October 31.st, with 190 million products sold in 4 hours.
Fragmented and complex orders put pressure on logistics to handle billions of packages. Even in the COVID 19 environment, a total of around 675 million packages for orders from all online platforms were delivered during the double 11 in 2020, and the volume is expected to increase annually by 26%.
To read the full article, click here.
