Alibaba said its Chinese marketplaces saw strong growth during this year’s 6.18 shopping festival, which is China’s second-largest shopping festival after 11.11 Singles’ Day event held in November.
A record number of merchants participated in China’s mid-year shopping festival 6.18 via Alibaba Group’s Taobao & Tmall marketplaces.
“Merchants’ gross merchandise value (GMV) rose two to three-fold year-over-year, the group said. Just after midnight on June 18, 305 brands had racked up sales’ above RMB100 million ($13.99 million). The GMV of over 2.56 million small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs) topped last year’s festival.”
Alibaba added that 1.18 million SMEs broke through GMV of RMB10,000 each.
Alibaba said the 6.18 festival runs from May 26 to June 20 and has been closely followed by market analysts for signs that Chinese consumers are once-again willing to spend post-pandemic.
The company made a point of highlighting live-shopping activity on its consumer marketplace in its announcement:
“The daily average number of people watching short videos on the consumer-to-consumer marketplace Taobao during the 6.18 festival surged 113% from last year. The number of influencers and Taobao merchants releasing short-form videos on a daily basis jumped 200% year-over-year and 55% year-over-year respectively.
“The number of content creaters who started livestreaming on Taobao during 6.18 leapt by 139% year-over-year. Meanwhile, consumers’ viewing time on the app doubled.”
Apple did its first livestream on an ecommerce platform where it offered rare discounts and offered tips – the broadcast garnered 300,000 likes and 1.3 million viewers within an hour, Alibaba reported.
And while it touted sales growth, Alibaba said the 6.18 shopping festival was more about unleashing a new aggressive push:
“For China’s largest e-commerce platform, Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group, 6.18 was also an early test of its aggressive new strategy to attract users with “historic” levels of investment to defend its leadership in the world’s largest e-commerce market.
“In a three-pronged attack, it vowed to unleash a stream of content, support for merchants and influencers, and harness the potential of artificial intelligence to make e-commerce more efficient and entertaining. Boosting gross merchandise value (GMV) and monetization was less of a concern than bolstering its ecosystem ahead of the economy revving up.”
