{"id":14266,"date":"2018-11-10T03:20:53","date_gmt":"2018-11-10T03:20:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=14266"},"modified":"2018-11-11T03:23:29","modified_gmt":"2018-11-11T03:23:29","slug":"singles-day-shows-chinas-global-retail-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/singles-day-shows-chinas-global-retail-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Singles Day shows China’s global retail power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venkatesh Shankar<\/a>, Texas A&M University <\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Nov. 11, or 11\/11, has been celebrated as Singles Day \u2013 a sort of anti-Valentine\u2019s Day<\/a> for single people \u2013 since 1993. Chosen because its date has four ones in a row, the holiday originated in China and has become the largest shopping day of the year, in both online and offline retail sales around the world. It\u2019s a signal of shifting power in the global retail sales market, moving away from the U.S. and toward Asia \u2013 specifically China.<\/p>\n

Alibaba, the giant Chinese e-retailer that promoted the day as an opportunity \u2013 or excuse \u2013 for single people to treat themselves with new purchases, has seen its revenues on Nov. 11 grow from US$100 million in 2009<\/a> to 250 times that in 2017, $25 billion<\/a>. And that was only two-thirds of total online sales<\/a> that day.<\/p>\n

Singles Day dwarfs the three other largest online retail mega-events. In 2017, Thanksgiving weekend online sales \u2013 including Black Friday<\/a> and Cyber Monday<\/a> \u2013 totaled $7.3 billion. The third, Amazon\u2019s Prime Day, in 2017 took in $100 million an hour<\/a> \u2013 but Alibaba raked in 10 times that amount<\/a> on Singles Day that year.<\/p>\n