Alibaba gets ready for Singles Day
A Tmall billboard inside a Shanghai's Metro station on Monday ahead of this year's Singles Day shopping festival.
Alibaba says it aims to serve 100 million more consumers on this year's Singles Day on November 11, with lower tier cities a crucial channel for fueling future growth.
Jiang Fan, president of Alibaba's retail sites Tmall and Taobao, said savings from brand and platform promotions and coupons could reach 50 billion yuan (US$7 billion) this year as the e-commerce giant launched pre-sale activities for the 11th global shopping festival on Monday.
Driving new consumption and new demand in its home country is a key strategy, said Jiang, and the company's goal remains to stimulate demand and support lifestyle upgrades in China through new brands and products.
The company was taking the annual celebration into its second decade with a focus on “new consumption,” “new business” and actively contributing to a greener society.
In the last quarter, over 70 percent of Alibaba’s new consumers came from lower-tier cities.
Given its huge scale, minimizing environmental impact was essential and it would join with logistic firms to encourage the recycling of packaging and trade-in for unwanted items.
Helping merchants from both home and abroad to access the huge domestic market was also the e-commerce giant's ambition to move up the value chain.
As many as 100,000 products will make their debut at the Singles Day this year and Tmall's goal is to eventually foster 5,000 brands with annual sales over 100 million yuan over the next three years.
