Singles’ Day is no longer what it used to be in China: faced with the slowdown in the world’s second largest economy, this celebration of consumption and sales, invented in 2009 by Alibaba, looks set to be calmer this year. THE “double 11” (November 11) has long represented a measure of the dynamism of consumption in China and the popularity of Alibaba, but sales are expected to stagnate in 2023, according to analysis of pre-sales recorded in recent weeks and surveys carried out.
Out of 3,000 consumers surveyed by the American consulting firm Bain and Co, only 23% indicate they want to spend more on this occasion, compared to 51% in 2021. A campaign to regulate tech companies, from which Alibaba has suffered since 2021, has also pushed the online commerce giant to communicate less: for two years, there has been no gala in the presence of stars to introduce the event, nor real-time counting of sales.
Now adopted by all sales players, this big day of sales should however exceed 1,000 billion yuan (128 billion euros) in turnover for all platforms and brands, like in 2022, all the same “more turnover than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined”recalls in a note VO2 Asia Pacific, a digital consulting company based in Shanghai, on the basis of pre-sales carried out since the end of October.
Lackluster consumption
“In 2022, Chinese tech giants had promoted sustainable consumption. For this fifteenth edition, they are resorting to old methods to encourage people to spend their accumulated savings: Alibaba has announced its desire to offer the best prices, JD.com has named its campaign “JD 11.11 is Really Cheap ”, VO2 score. Apparently without convincing, since platform pre-sales fell by 7.5% over one year, notes the company.
After three years of drastic zero Covid policy, the hoped-for recovery did not really take place in 2023 in China. Several factors are to blame: the real estate crisis is weighing on household confidence, weak global demand has led to a continued decline in exports for more than a year, while tensions with the United States are pushing Beijing to favor measures in favor of security rather than growth.
The situation is not catastrophic: Chinese growth should reach the official target of 5% this year, but on a low base in 2022, and far from the dynamism of the pre-Covid years. In October, the consumer price index fell by 0.2%, for the second time this year: in July, prices had already fallen by 0.3% before rising slightly in August.
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