Alibaba welcoming more partners to join Singles Day bonanza

Alibaba's digital retail facilities, such as its on-demand delivery platform Ele.me and Hema Fresh Market, will participate in the Singles Day Shopping Festival's 10th anniversary this year.

"The steady growth of quality consumption sought by Chinese shoppers ... also showcases the development of the Alibaba ecosystem over time, expanding well beyond e-commerce," Alibaba chief executive officer Daniel Zhang said.

The Internet giant is also sparing no effort in pushing forward its offline lifestyle services. It's local lifestyle services site Koubei will offer up to 50 percent discount on catering, entertainment and beauty activities.

"We will continue to join forces with partners to help existing commercial facilities evolve and stick to our core mission to make it easy to do business anywhere in the digital age," Zhang told a press briefing in Beijing today.

It will also unveil a reward program to offer incentives for online shoppers that use Alibaba's other business affiliates, such as online video streaming, mapping, and music streaming to attract more participants to join the shopping festival.

The first Singles Day was introduced in 2009 to promote online shopping, an idea conceived to lift sales in a traditionally low season for e-commerce site. 

Sales hit US$7.8 million on November 11 in 2009, growing to US$25.3 billion last year as consumers embrace the digital shopping trend.

Alibaba's overseas business divisions, which include Tmall World, AliExpress and Lazada, will also bring the shopping bonanza to overseas users, covering more than 200 markets and regions and 300 million overseas consumers.

The Tmall Singles Day countdown gala, which will be held at the Mercedes Benz Arena in the Pudong New Area for the second year in a row, will showcase the evolution of retail and commerce over the past decade, and also how the e-commerce platform has facilitated the consumption upgrade.

Tmall also strives to become a platform where import goods are to be introduced to the domestic market — a total of more than 3,700 types of import goods on Tmall now come from 74 countries and regions.

Tmall's strategy to bring quality products to Chinese consumers also corresponds well with the first China International Import Expo to be held in early November in Shanghai, which seeks the more speedy introduction of imported goods into the domestic market.

Alibaba Group is part of the CIIE's procurement alliance to help introduce imported brands at the expo.