"double eleven" festival in China

November 11th is coming soon, it is a special day in Chinese people's eyes. This day used to be called the "singles' day" (also called double eleven) in China because the four ones (11/11) look like four sticks, and Chinese culture uses the word "stick" to describe people who are single.

On November 11, 2009, Alibaba launched a huge promotion on that day. All the products on Taobao and Tianmao were sold at large discounts, which attracted countless consumers.

****Alibaba is a Chinese multinational conglomerate holding company specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. Taobao and Tianmao are Alibaba's online shopping websites, which can be understood as China's Amazon.****

Although the number of merchants and promotion efforts were limited at that time, the revenue far exceeded the expectation, so November 11 became a fixed date for Alibabald to hold large-scale promotion activities every year. Until now, 11/11 has become the annual event of China's e-commerce industry, and gradually influenced the international e-commerce industry.

On November 11, 2014, Alibaba's sales volume was 57.1 billion RMB. On November 11, 2015, the sales volume was 91.217 billion RMB. On November 11, 2016, the turnover of Tianmao exceeded 120.7 billion RMB. In 2017, the total turnover of Tianmao and Taobao on was 168.2 billion RMB. On Novembre 11, 2018, the turnover was 213.5 billion RMB.

It can be seen from these data that the turnover of Alibaba on the double eleven is constantly rising, and more and more other e-commerce companies have started to participate in the double eleven events. 

Behind such shocking data is e-commerce's mastery of consumer psychology and ease of application of marketing strategies.

Before the arrival of double 11, e-commerce companies began to use various media to advertise their products and set off the festive atmosphere. They began to publicize a series of activities such as "pre-sale" and "red envelope" to attract consumers' attention. Therefore, the demand increased rapidly. Even if e-commerce adopts the strategy of raising prices first and then discounting, it can also play a role in expanding demand. 

Although there are a variety of promotional products on double eleven, the most intensive promotion is still focused on clothes, daily chemicals, and snacks. It is understood that the top 10 categories of sales on double eleven are women's wear, mobile phones, beauty product, digital accessories, men's wear, bags, women's shoes and so on. Because the demand price elasticity of these products is relatively large, and the network shopping market faces the national and global markets, its demand price elasticity will be even larger, so the price drop will bring the sales soaring.

A large part of the reason is that consumers have herd behavior. People unconsciously take the opinion of the majority as the criterion and adopt psychological or behavior consistent with the majority. When e-commerce promotes various promotional activities through the Internet, television and other multimedia channels, many consumers who are not familiar with double eleven will also participate in the events under the influence of loyal consumers, thus increasing sales too.