Online 'life festival' to boost city sales

Shanghai launched its first "online life festival" on Tuesday to bolster the steady growth of the city's consumer market.

The event, to run to December 15, is being held by the Shanghai E-Purchasing Chamber of Commerce under the guidance of the city's Commission of Commerce. Its aim is to help maintain the flourishing consumer market and thus realize positive growth in overall social retail sales, according to Zhou Lan, deputy director of the commerce commission.

"In order to further explore the online economic development model and potential benefits, give full play to the role of large platforms and large user flow, we in the second half of the year have launched four major themed activities," Zhou said.

Among them, the Shanghai online life festival is an important part of the Online Shopping Carnival Season, with eight e-commerce giants — ele.me, Meituan, Hema, Dingdong Maicai, Dada Group, Trip.com, Xiaohongshu, Tuhu — taking part. 

The festival focuses on the four themes of catering, brand consumption, household consumption and travel.

Shanghai has introduced a number of measures this year to boost consumer confidence, including its Double Five Shopping Festival.

In October 2020, the city’s online shopping turnover of goods topped 60.26 billion yuan (US$9.16 billion), an increase of 15 percent year on year. From January to October, the overall turnover reached 552.02 billion yuan, up 12.9 percent from a year earlier, according to data from the commission. 

"The emerging consumption pattern represented by e-commerce has played an important role in this regard," Zhou said.