Week five: .全球購物狂歡節(光棍節)

Singles' Day: China splurges $9.3bn in 12 hours on world's biggest online shopping day

This year’s Singles’ Day – the country’s answer to Black Friday, which began as an ‘anti-Valentine’s Day’ binge for singletons – tramples 2014 record

Shoppers have spent more than $9bn (£6bn) in the first 12 hours of China’s Singles’ Day sales, topping last year’s total for the world’s biggest online shopping day.

Total gross merchandise volume, a measure of sales, matched the 2014 Singles’ Day figure of $9.3bn just after midday, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba said. “The 2015 sale has eclipsed last year’s final results in a little over half the time,” it said.

By about 10 pm local time, shoppers had splashed out almost $13bn, according to a company blog.

Earlier, Alibaba’s chief executive, Daniel Zhang, said “the whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption” on Singles’ Day on Wednesday. 11 November is not a traditional Chinese festival but Alibaba has been pushing it since 2009, first marketing it as an “anti-Valentine’s Day” – 11/11 being a date heavy on ones – with hefty discounts to lure the country’s singletons and price-sensitive buyers.

Another of China’s main online retailers, JD.com, said it had completed more than 20m transactions by about 5pm. About an hour and a half later, one-day orders had passed the combined total of the five previous Singles’ Days, it tweeted.

Alibaba said its logistical division and its partners would use more than 1.7 million personnel, 400,000 vehicles, 5,000 warehouses and 200 planes to handle deliveries.

With sales hitting new highs year after year, Singles’ Day has become a lucrative business opportunity embraced by all online retailers in China, with competition between them turning increasingly fierce. China’s online population of 668 million is the world’s biggest.

The event has received vocal support from the government at a time when China’s economic expansion is slowing and Beijing is trying to transform the growth model into a more sustainable one driven by consumption.

Chinese premier Li Keqiang’s office phoned Alibaba chairman Jack Ma hours before the promotion began, “congratulating and encouraging the creation and achievement of the 11.11 event”, said a posting on a social media account of Tmall, the group’s business-to-consumer arm.

Buyers showed off their purchases on social media, with many lamenting that they had spent far too much money. “I can only afford to eat dirt for the next half year,” said a post on Sina Weibo, with an attached screengrab showing she had bought 42 items.

But some consumers also expressed concerns about fake products. “Good luck. Hope you guys will not get phoney products or things that turn out to be useless,” said a Weibo user.

Headquartered in the eastern city of Hangzhou, Alibaba does not sell products directly but acts as an electronic middleman, operating China’s most popular consumer-to-consumer platform, Taobao, which is estimated to hold more than 90% of the market.

Nasdaq-listed rival online marketplace JD.com reportedly filed a complaint with the government last week, accusing Alibaba of monopolising the market by restricting suppliers from participating in other operators’ promotion events on 11 November.

But Alibaba – listed on the New York Stock Exchange – shrugged off the allegations, asserting that it owns the Singles’ Day brand. “Today the chicken reported on the duck, accusing the duck of monopolising the lake,” said a spokeswoman for Alibaba’s promotional event, according to a Chinese media report.

Before the shopping spree, Alibaba mounted a television spectacular at Beijing’s Water Cube Olympic swimming venue, featuring Chinese and foreign celebrities including James Bond actor Daniel Craig, and Hollywood star Kevin Spacey in his role as President Frank Underwood from the Netflix series House of Cards.

In comparison with Singles’ Day, desktop sales for the five days from Thanksgiving until Cyber Monday in the US last year stood at $6.56bn, according to internet analytics firm comScore.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/11/china-singles-day-new-record-online-shopping-alibaba

Structure of the Lead：

• Who: Not given
• Where: China
• When: China’s Singles’ Day
• Why: Not given
• How: Not given
• What: Shoppers have spent more than $9bn (£6bn) in the first 12 hours of China’s Singles’ Day sales, topping last year’s total for the world’s biggest online shopping day.

Vocabulary:

• merchandise 商品
• executive 行政人員
• singletons 單身
• retailers 零售商
• tweet 鳴叫
• lucrative 賺錢
• monopolising 壟斷
• spectacular 壯觀
•  desktop  桌面