China's 'Singles Day' shopping bonanza loses its luster
Posted: Sun Nov 12, 2023 9:09 pm
China's 'Singles Day' shopping bonanza loses its luster
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https://japantoday.com/category/busines ... its-lustre
BEIJING
China's annual "Singles Day" sales bonanza wrapped up at midnight on Saturday, but consumers this year appear largely unswayed by its flashy deals and discounts as the world's second-largest economy slows.
Conceived by tech giant Alibaba, "Singles Day" -- which this year spanned well over a week -- was launched in 2009 and has since ballooned into a yearly blockbuster retail period.
Sales for last year's Singles Day reached 1.1 trillion yuan ($153 billion), according to a recent report by consultancy firm Bain.
But among consumers surveyed by Bain this year, 77 percent said that they did not plan to spend more than usual during the sales event.
"These days people are consuming less, people don't really have much of a desire to buy lots of things," recent graduate Zhang Chuwen, 23, told AFP.
She said her friends were instead using the sales to buy "everyday necessity products".
Others say that this year's Singles Day deals aren't as good as in the past, and that some websites had raised prices beforehand, only to cut them for the holiday.
"The prices are not that different compared to other days," Guan Yonghao, 21, told AFP. "So I didn't buy anything. We will save a little because we are making less money."
Jacob Cooke, co-founder and CEO of Beijing-based e-commerce consulting firm WPIC Marketing + Technologies, told AFP that Singles Day had "lost its luster" thanks to a combination of trends.
"The proliferation of livestreaming and secondary shopping festivals... means that the relative attraction of Singles Day as a time to load up on discounted goods has been reduced," he said.
Read more here:
https://japantoday.com/category/busines ... its-lustre
BEIJING
China's annual "Singles Day" sales bonanza wrapped up at midnight on Saturday, but consumers this year appear largely unswayed by its flashy deals and discounts as the world's second-largest economy slows.
Conceived by tech giant Alibaba, "Singles Day" -- which this year spanned well over a week -- was launched in 2009 and has since ballooned into a yearly blockbuster retail period.
Sales for last year's Singles Day reached 1.1 trillion yuan ($153 billion), according to a recent report by consultancy firm Bain.
But among consumers surveyed by Bain this year, 77 percent said that they did not plan to spend more than usual during the sales event.
"These days people are consuming less, people don't really have much of a desire to buy lots of things," recent graduate Zhang Chuwen, 23, told AFP.
She said her friends were instead using the sales to buy "everyday necessity products".
Others say that this year's Singles Day deals aren't as good as in the past, and that some websites had raised prices beforehand, only to cut them for the holiday.
"The prices are not that different compared to other days," Guan Yonghao, 21, told AFP. "So I didn't buy anything. We will save a little because we are making less money."
Jacob Cooke, co-founder and CEO of Beijing-based e-commerce consulting firm WPIC Marketing + Technologies, told AFP that Singles Day had "lost its luster" thanks to a combination of trends.
"The proliferation of livestreaming and secondary shopping festivals... means that the relative attraction of Singles Day as a time to load up on discounted goods has been reduced," he said.