11.11 Shopping Frenzy
The origin of Global Shopping Day and how it slowly transformed consumer behaviours.
I started seeing the 11.11 advertisement popping up. Encouraging e-commerce purchases on 11.11 (November 11th) originated from China, mainly through Alibaba. 11.11 Global Shopping Day used to be called 光棍节 — Single’s Day in mandarin. Back then 11.11 sales were meant to target people that are ‘Single’, as number 1 (one) resembles ‘bare stick’, an internet slang for men who aren’t married, the duplicated number 1 also emphasizes the meaning of being lonely — Single.
Promoting the idea of ‘Single’s Day’ has good rationales. while there are occasions for people to buy and celebrate with their partner (Valentine’s day), or friends and family (Christmas, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day), people that are single back then opt to spend more time online. They do not participate in a lot of socialising, thus spending less on group entertainment or luxury items. Since they don’t spend a lot, they might have higher spending power, so let’s put up discounts on some higher ticket items that these people might like — Electronics, games, merchandise, and furniture.
It worked. As e-commerce sales grow significantly, especially during November 11th, more sellers participated in the sales, clever marketing that crowns it as an occasion for singles to pamper oneself, word of mouth effect comes in. Now, this shopping frenzy on 11.11 it’s all over Asia on most e-commerce platforms (Shopee, Lazada, Taobao, Qoo10, etc). I have seen retailers and some service companies participating as well.
It started with an e-commerce company finding a niche — Singles (or maybe not a niche), persuading their vendors in giving discounts on a specific day, and creating narratives that resonate with the potential buyers. Then people started buying, sales improved, following with sellers started offering greater discounts, more people recognize that they could save more buying on this specific day, so they joined the shopping frenzy, and the cycle goes on…Then finally the e-commerce platform changed the narrative to 11.11 Global Shopping Day.
Imagine if some random e-commerce platform just come and tell the world ‘Let’s declare this day a global shopping day’. Without going through the processes above, consumer behaviours wouldn’t change substantially. Companies will have to spend a tremendous amount of money to offer huge discounts in order to gain attention, and chances are they will incur crazy losses. Sounds a lot like growth at all-cost tech companies, isn’t it?
Sales on 11.11 this year in Southeast Asia will plummet, and probably China as well. The hyper-growth in e-commerce that happened for the past 2 years will be halted now that the global economic outlook is looking dim. I do not have the sales number for SEA e-commerce on 11.11, we’ll see how Shopee or Lazada act latest couple of months after 11.11 this year, that should give us a pretty good idea.
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