How Alibaba Plans to Reemploy Retail with 11.11 Global Shopping Festival

Nine years ago, Alibaba used Singles Day to offer massive discounts to attract consumers to purchase on their platforms. During these years, Alibaba has successfully redefined and re-branded the “Singles Day” as “The 11/11 Global Shopping Festival”. The Global Shopping Festival 2016 launched in China a few days ago. Not surprisingly, the online shopping festival generated a $1 billion in sales in 4 minutes and 54 seconds (Cheang M, 2016).

Alibaba Group’s purpose on holding the 11/11 event was to reemploy and digitizing retail, first in China and then globally. So how Alibaba held this event to remake global retail and become the first global e-commerce platform?

1. Going grand

This year’s Gala was very successful because of the involvement of Hollywood producer David Hill, famous for his work on the Oscars, Super Bowl. Alibaba hired him to direct and produce this year’s four-hour live entertainment spectacle. And celebrities like the Beckhams, Kobe, One Public filled in this event, to count down the hours to 11/11. It was very important to invite celebrities from other countries so that to attract consumers globally and strengthen the brand value.

2. Going global

This year was Alibaba’s first time to open the Global Shopping Festival to consumers in Taiwan and Hong Kong, in addition to its 450 million customers on the Chinese mainland, which was the first step in turning 11/11 into a global shopping event. Ultimately, Hong Kong and Taiwan would provide Alibaba with new customers and data, the feedback and the blueprint for engaging 1.5 billion new customers in the coming years to join Alibaba’s platforms. It is expected that Southeast Asia will be added next year and many more markets in the following years.

3. Going digital

The old way of promoting  is no longer working effectively.  So Alibaba would apply a new retail model that benefits brands and retailers first and itself second. So Alibaba introduced a number of innovative digital and O2O (online to offline) elements to this year’s event.

The new tech-driven additions started with an eight-hour fashion show streamed online on October 23. Viewers instantly placed orders for what they saw on the catwalks. Top brands from Burberry to Trussardi, Paul Smith to La Perla showed their latest offerings for the season.

Other digital additions include an augmented reality game, where consumers can follow the Alibaba ‘black cat’ in online and offline environments to win prizes and discounts and a virtual reality shopping set-up that takes customers through the entire shopping experience, from browsing to nodding at the item you want to buy, through payment.

By connecting online and offline retail channels with a wide array of digital tools and a digitization of the shopping experience, it should make buying in stores and online equally attractive and convenient for consumers.

      Conclusion

This year’s 11/11 event provided many opportunities for brands and retailers to find new global customers, to engage in cross-border commerce and find the model for making all of their sales channels seamless and digitized. And by going grand, global, digital, Alibaba can become a truly global e-commercial platform in the near future.

Liu Yixuan

References:

Cheang, M. “Singles’ Day: Alibaba smashes records at world’s largest online shopping event”. Accessed 14 Nov, 2016 from: http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/11/singles-day-news-alibaba-poised-to-smash-records-at-worlds-largest-online-shopping-event.html