
Singles’ Day 2019 beats records
Over $30bn’s worth of discounted merchandise was sold across twenty-two thousand brands from eighty countries in 24 hours, making the festival bigger than its US competitive Black Friday. This discount day has been slowly moulded into a global cultural phenomenon, with American pop star Taylor Swift, having flown over to China this year to kick start the launch of the event. Her presence, and the impressive sales performance of the day generally, is a stark reflection of China’s ever-rising influence over online consumer spending habits across the globe. So with British retailers already cutting costs in honour of the new wave event, is it time to welcome “Singles’ Day” with open arms?Craving a shared experience

A new experience, not a ‘tired’ flash sale
What’s more, Alibaba has marketed the day as more of a celebratory festival as opposed to a tired flash sale. The decline of the high street has largely been linked to peoples’ boredom with queues and dried up retail brands. Monday’s sale, on the other hand, was not a sale in the traditional sense, but a “shared experience” says Sophie Cheng, General Manager, FutureBrand, China, explaining further, she said: “Discounting is an important part of the event, but brands are moving away from seeing the festival as a race to the bottom. Instead, the experience is becoming widely seen as one of the keys to the festival’s success, for example through celebrity endorsement and the gamification of the Alibaba platform.” Fast facts:- Alibaba turned China’s informal Singles‘ Day into a shopping event in 2009 and built it into the world’s biggest online sales festival.
- This year, the Alibaba Group netted $1bn in sales in just 68 seconds and first $10bn in 30 mins
- The event rakes in the majority of its sales via online purchases
Are China’s habits heading west?

Where ‘tech’ comes in
These tech-laden stores even let customers pay by scanning their faces at kiosks. This does not seem like such a stretch from Amazon Go which has been popping up over the US over the last year and a half. Similarly what these stores offer is a retail experience free of cashiers or a mere self scanner. The removal of human interaction in purchasing is an ever-growing trend in today’s world, but while it can be a brief relief to dodge a nasty shopkeeper when your feeling worse for wear, is it really that helpful for our society in the long run?China’s ‘lonely economy’

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