Alibaba Singles Day sales likely not affected by the pandemic

• Alibaba Singles Day, the world’s biggest shopping party, will likely see its retail sales grow strongly this year.
• China has fared much better during the pandemic than other countries, and this has resulted in strong economic growth.
• Insider Intelligence analyzes this industry and several others to provide detailed analyst reports, proprietary forecasts, customizable charts, and more. Learn more about what we offer.

Today is Alibaba Singles Day, a retail holiday in China that Amazon modeled its Prime Day after, and the world’s largest shopping holiday in terms of total sales volume and reach.

Singles’ Day is almost ubiquitous in China, with 96% of consumers saying they plan to participate in the holidays this year, according to AlixPartners data from October 2020. Additionally, 39% of respondents said they plan to spend more on holidays in 2020, while only 15% said they would spend less. With this in mind, we believe Singles Day will see strong sales growth despite the pandemic, for a few reasons:

• Singles Day sales growth has consistently hit double digits for the past few years. From 2018 to 2019, Singles Day sales grew 30.6% to RMB410 billion ($ 59.34 billion), according to estimates by Bain & Company. Even if that growth slows slightly this year due to the pandemic, the company has plenty of room to buffer.
• Other online shopping holidays have been very successful this year. Specifically, we estimate that Amazon Prime Day generated $ 6.17 billion in sales in the US in 2020 (up 42.8% from last year) and $ 9.91 billion worldwide (up 43.0%), despite that its main markets in the US and Europe are still experiencing economic declines.
• China has fared much better during the pandemic than the United States and Europe. The country has not reported a single coronavirus-related death since April (although the accuracy of China’s pandemic reports has been questioned), and its recovery from the coronavirus has translated into an economic one – it was reportedly the first to see economic growth since the pandemic began. .
• Lastly, China’s retail e-commerce market is the largest and most developed in the world. According to our estimates, retail e-commerce sales will reach $ 2.09 trillion in China this year, accounting for 41.2% of all retail sales. In the US, the second largest e-commerce market, sales are expected to reach $ 794.50 billion, which is only 14.4% of total US retail sales. of China’s retail sales are done online, the country’s shoppers are well prepared for an omnichannel shopping holiday like Singles Day, and its logistics infrastructure is also well-prepared to handle such a large volume of orders.

China’s e-commerce market has more than high sales figures to expect; We also expect to see innovation in the online shopping space. Recent Singles’ Days have introduced new technologies like virtual reality (VR) shopping and shopping live streams, for example. The influx of e-commerce shopping amid the pandemic has only accelerated the adoption of this technology and fueled innovation, which will likely be showcased during this year’s event.

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