Singles' Day VS Black Friday? Which Will Be More International in the Next 10 Years?

BEIJING - Sept. 28, 2018 - PRLog -- As the shopping season approaches, CouponBirds conducted a research on the behavior distinctions of customers and merchants between Eastern and Western over the past several years. Based on the research, CouponBirds adjusted itself to fully prepare for the upcoming enormous demand.

Alibaba once revealed the most popular merchandises of 2017 Singles' Day for Chinese online shoppers were Chinese wolfberry (sold for 179 tons), bigger size brassiere (sold for 220K pieces), milk powder (5,000 tons), long johns (1.58 million), condoms (50 million) and Mexican avocado (1 million). In the United States, Adobe Analytics analyzed data from 100 largest U.S. retailers, brought out the best-selling items of Black Friday. Apple AirPods sales on Black Friday 2017 were ten times more than the 2016 average. The sales of Sony PlayStation VR, PJ Masks, L.O.L. Surprise toys, Pokémon Sun and Pokémon Moon, and Nintendo Switch were ranking in the top ten.

The research data from CouponBirds indicates that Chinese customers were willing to purchase almost anything online from clothing, food, electronics, books to cosmetics, medicine, furniture, and even animal waste. However, the categories of best-selling items online on Black Friday and Cyber Monday remained stable in the last 5 years. Another glaring difference between Black Friday and Singles' Day was that Black Friday was originally an offline promotion campaign with online trading volume growing year-on-year, while Singles' Day was a purely online game. Except for customers, Alibaba, JD.com, and logistics companies were the only players in the game.

CouponBirds also found the discount rules of Chinese merchants in Tmall and Taobao were far more complicated than that of American sellers. For example, one cosmetics store on Tmall gave a bigger discount for one of its popular lipsticks on Singles' day, but it required buyers to pay deposit one week before. To drive sales, the shop owner and Tmall both distributed coupons every day in a specific time during the Singles' Day week, so shoppers were competing to click those electronic vouchers. To get these coupons to cost buyers Tmall points, which was like gift cards. For this particular lipstick, coupons from store owner could not be used at the same time with Tmall coupons. Moreover, part of the discount was cash refunding. Buyers must wait till the package was delivered home confirming the order then money would be returned to their Alipay accounts, so actually online shoppers were overwhelmed by various kinds of coupons and deals. Waiting, competing for network speed with other millions of people, and collecting coupons were exhausting. Unlike in America, there were no coupon platforms like CouponBirds and RetailMeNot providing and validating coupons in China, making it easier for shoppers to make decisions. Keeping a close watch on the coupons was required in order to get the biggest discounts.

When saying that Chinese Singles' Day, during which Alibaba sales amounted to $25.5 billion U.S. dollars in the year 2017, outshone Black Friday and Cyber Monday total sales $7.9 billion, it was also worth noting that 70% of Chinese Singles' Day online consumers were age 25-39. " Chinese young generation tends to care more about product quality, shipping speed, and after sale services nowadays." Commented by Tracia Liu, Director of Operations of CouponBirds, "Their purchase power is growing stronger. The domestic market cannot satisfy them anymore. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have witnessed booming orders from China."

While Chinese millennials take a place in Black Friday, more and more foreign customers join in Singles' Day. Packages from Singles' Day with products made in China swarm into Southeast Asia, Russia, and Europe. Global retailers and brands enter into Tmall, customized marketing strategy to cater to Chinese customers.  So which will be more international in the next 10 years? Singles' Day or Black Friday? Will Jack Ma's succession strategy have an impact on that?

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