Social media drive helps lift ‘Double 11’ sales
November 28, 2013 Category Uncategorized
Alibaba and Tencent posted record transactions on November 11, also known as Single’s day, thanks to free gifts and rewards promoted on their online messaging platforms. Analysts said Alibaba, through its marketing on microblogging platform Sina Weibo, and Tencent, with campaigns on its popular WeChat social mobile-messaging service, had demonstrated the effectiveness of having a “social commerce” strategy for the shopping day. The total gross merchandise volume achieved by Tmall.com and Taobao Marketplace hit a daily record CNY35.01 billion. That topped the CNY19.1 billion total on November 11 last year and CNY5.3 billion in 2011. Rival Tencent’s 51buy campaign on WeChat allowed smartphone users to view, make orders and finish payment directly on the social mobile-messaging platform. On November 11, Tencent’s 51buy website offered the usual extensive sales that have become the norm on Single’s Day, one of China’s biggest online shopping festivals. Single’s Day brought over CNY500 million in profit to Tencent this year, partly thanks to an integrated campaign between the 51buy website and Tencent’s WeChat mobile app. The campaign allowed smartphone owners to view and order products available on 51buy with relative ease through WeChat’s menus, and was aimed at residents in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Despite these city restrictions, of the roughly 600,000 51buy orders made on Singles Day, those via WeChat exceeded 80,000. Members of China’s online community have labeled the process a low-key success, even going so far as to call it Tencent’s “secret weapon”. Others speculated that the ubiquitous nature of WeChat and the ease of shopping it provided was one edge that Tencent had over its chief rival Alibaba, which organized the majority of its Singles Day promotions through its websites. Tmall.com and Taobao.com both have mobile versions, but neither enjoy the popularity of WeChat, which boasts nearly 300 million monthly active users. Xiaomi said it sold more than CNY500 million worth of phones during its Singles’ Day promotion with Alibaba, which would equate to around 200,000 phones if one assumes an average price of around CNY2,500.
- KURT VANDEPUTTE (UMICORE) APPOINTED CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF THE FLANDERS-CHINA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE (FCCC)
- Webinar: “Knowing Your Chinese Partner” – May 26, 2021, 10 am – 12 am
- EMA starts rolling review of CoronaVac, WHO approves Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use
- The Global Times warns not to politicize the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI)
- Hainan to become biggest duty-free market in the world