Shopping records point to shifting economic trends

China’s annual shopping spree festival saw a string of records, while behind these numbers underlie the country’s shifting economic trends.

E-commerce giant Alibaba said sales on its online shopping platforms reached a record 268.4 billion yuan (US$38.28 billion) on November 11, or Singles Day, marking a year-on-year growth of about 25.7 percent.

JD.com hit 204.4 billion yuan from November 1 to 11 and Suning’s order volume increased by 76 percent year on year during that day.

The annual shopping spree has seen a growing community of online shoppers, expanding further into different age groups and tiers of cities.

Over 500 million consumers shopped on Alibaba’s major e-commerce platforms this year, increasing by some 100 million over one year ago, data from Tmall showed.

Among them, consumers born after 1995 accounted for about 30 percent, while those above 50 years old reported the highest growth rate, rising 42 percent year on year.

JD.com saw the per customer transaction in third-tier and lower-tier cities grew 130 percent, with their orders making up over 80 percent of the total.

“Online shopping is already part of the lifestyle of Chinese people, be them young or old, urban or rural,” Alibaba Executive Chairman and CEO Zhang Yong said at the “Observing China” forum last week, which aimed to analyze new economic trends.

Along with the growth of Chinese consumers’ purchase power, consumption demands are diversifying in terms of brand preference and categories.

Over 200,000 brands worldwide joined the festival on Tmall. Among the platform’s 299 brands with sales for each brand beating 100 million yuan on Singles Day, tens of them were fresh players, said Zhang.

While big foreign brands continued to reap big during the shopping festival, many domestic brands, especially in smartphones and apparel, are winning more consumers.

Services consumption is also rising.

Door-to-door beauty care, luxury product maintenance and other services were popular on e-commerce platforms during this period.