Festival promotes retail, e-commerce, livestream shopping

The Shanghai Digital Life Festival was launched on Friday, as an important part of this year's Double Five Shopping Festival, aimed at promoting its e-commerce platforms, online retail brands and livestream shopping.

Focused on stimulating consumption and providing consumers with new intelligent experiences, the festival, which runs from April 28 to May 12, features 88 promotional activities that incorporate big data and 5G technology, online and offline consumption, and the sales of high-quality agricultural products from the city's partner areas.

For instance, the festival will fully leverage the advantages of deep integration between the city's e-commerce platforms and commercial enterprises. It will organize e-commerce platforms including Tuhu Car, Xiaodu Mall and Ele.me to offer life services such as car maintenance, education and fitness.

The festival also showcases the development of high-quality digital life services and promotes high-quality digital consumption.

Shanghai has established a digital transformation think tank, which has developed a comprehensive and inclusive solution and product directory system for small and medium-sized enterprises.

This initiative is supported by service partners, collaborative partners, and government partners who are working together to offer major services on policy promotion, diagnostic assessment, resource matching, scenario opening, and talent training. These services are helping SMEs identify the most suitable digital transformation path based on their cost-benefit analysis.

At the festival's opening ceremony, the think tank partnered with seven service providers, including Pinduoduo, Meituan, Ele.me, Freshippo, Trueland, Weimob and Baozun, to release the preliminary results of the city's commercial digital transformation partner action plan.

In 2022, Shanghai's e-commerce industry experienced rapid growth, with third-party agencies estimating that the city's livestreaming e-commerce transactions exceeded 200 billion yuan (US$28.89 billion), making it the leader among all cities in China. The city's instant retail industry also grew by over 50 percent compared with the previous year, with business expanding from "delivering food takeout" to "delivering everything". The Yuyuan Garden Malls and the Bund Financial Center have been recognized as the first batch of national demonstration smart business districts and smart stores.

Since the beginning of the year, the city's e-commerce industry has maintained a steady growth with a 5 percent increase in e-commerce transactions in the first quarter, adding to 796.6 billion yuan. Among these transactions, online shopping rose 10.8 percent year on year to reach 350.3 billion yuan.