Online shopping event for Spring Festival

A 30-day online shopping festival in preparation for the upcoming Spring Festival is underway in Shanghai.

Until February 18, more than 20 e-commerce companies and nearly 50,000 offline merchants will participate in various promotional events, according to the Shanghai Commission of Commerce.

E-commerce companies plan to give out coupons and vouchers worth more than 6 billion yuan and launch promotional activities offering large discounts. 

Special sections have been set up on platforms for goods necessary for Spring Festival celebrations, including products of time-honored brands and high-quality agricultural specialties. 

They are organizing 21 promotional activities and launching a series of over 5,000 livestreaming events to support easier online shopping of featured goods.

Meanwhile, e-commerce companies are joining food and beverage firms in supporting them to offer better delivery services for the Lunar New Year's Eve dinner.

The e-commerce platforms are also giving a boost to the sales promotions of nearly 50,000 local brick-and-mortar stores, which are launching 10 promotional activities to enable online sales by offline merchants.

So far, major e-commerce platforms have carried out nearly 30 promotional campaigns to welcome the Spring Festival.

On the first day of the event on Wednesday, Dingdong Maicai, a fresh produce and grocery e-commerce platform, saw its sales in the Shanghai area surging by 70 percent year on year.