When it comes to the “Double 11”, the online shopping festival that takes place every year on Nov 11, Chinese online shopping platforms are fiercely fighting with prices.
It is indeed a great part of the online shopping platforms’ annual turnover. Last year, Alibaba’s platforms, Taobao for C2C and Tmall for B2C generated a total of $5.75 billion transactions on the annual shopping’s 24 hours. Alibaba wants to break 2013’s Double 11’s festival sales record. It would indeed be significant for the firm. Since the e-commerce giant, already broke the record of the largest US-listed initial public offering with a $25-billion worth IPO, in September this year.
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Also called Single’s Day, by Chinese younger generation, because the date is composed of four ‘1s’ those are supposed to represent four singles. A lot of events are organized on this special date to help the lonely hearts to find a partner. In 2009, Alibaba the Chinese e-commerce’s giant decided to launch a shopping festival on the same date.
The online event involves promotions up to 70% for local brand as well as for foreign brands. The influence of the 11th of November is indeed so important that major international brands have to take part in the promotions. So that Nike and Tesla Motors already announced special offers for the Double 11 festival. Tmall even launched early birds operations with pre-sale, pre-order, and money-incentives from Oct 15 to Nov 10.
What about Hong Kong?
The annual shopping festival is also very popular on the mainland but Hong Kong residents are also eager to spend money on the Double 11 day. They like to purchase through online retailers to enjoy big discounts just like mainland Chinese citizens.
Thanks to the Double 11’s promotions, mainland online retailers offered some products with much lower prices than in Hong Kong and free delivery on top of that. Hong Kong customers are however worried about the quality of the products bought from mainland Chinese online retailers, especially when it comes to electronics goods. They are concerned with the counterfeited goods that might be found on Taobao or Tmall. Moreover with the huge number of orders placed during these 24 hours, goods may take longer than the usual period to be received by the customers…
From Online to Offline?
Physical shops want to bring the online shopping craziness to offline stores. A few department stores in Shenzhen, such as Maoye Department Store in the Nanshan district and Haiya Department Store in the Bao’an district will also be offering up to 80 percent promotions on clothes, cosmetics and women’s shoes. They are therefore hopping to have their share of the huge sales profits of the Double 11’s festival period.
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We are going through a most exciting and creative period of time in history, in China. If you enjoy the feeling of “contributing and experiencing something great”, you are not going to miss living in China now
If this 11 Nov is a signal that China’s domestic consumption is on the rise, that tide will lift the boats of economies worldwide, as well as happily increasing the standard of living within China. I, for one, have been fascinated with Chinese culture ever since I was a teenager, when I picked up a computer strategy game based on the Three Kingdoms period. Teaching that alongside the King Arthur stories (or the stories of the Roman Empire) would be an easy and fun way to integrate that into Western education. (Outlaws of the Marsh can stand up alongside Robin Hood, too.)
I think there’s a great opportunity for worldwide culture if Peter Jackson — another Pacific Rim resident — would be willing to work with a Chinese counterpart in turning Three Kingdoms into a blockbuster movie series. Connecting the dots along the Pacific (Hollywood, New Zealand, China) to produce a popular collaboration like that could strengthen friendly ties and cultural understanding in an ever-cozier world
It probably changed later. I think the law was very difficult to put into practise, else you had some revolt, fights… In fact during the very strict years of implementing the law, they would force abortion. Though parents would modify the date of birth of the child (pretend he was born before the one child policy… that’s my wife story) or give birth in another city to hide the pregnancy.