Consumption has a positive effect on happiness. In the United States, the ‘Black Friday’ Festival (on November 27th this year) is a day when shoppers scramble for bargains in major shopping malls.

In China, there is no need to compete to see who can run faster, as the country's major shopping festival is held online. Every year on June 18, November 11, and December 12, there are large online sales, among which "Double Eleven" is the most famous. The originally sentimental "Singles’ Day" (the four "1s" stand for being single or remain single) has been transformed by online shopping platforms into the biggest shopping festival in China.

In the 2020 Singles' Day Shopping Festival, some 5,000,000 businesses with over 250,000 brands on T-mall platform has alone attracted more than 800 million consumers, generating billion USD in turnover.

On this day, almost all online businesses will offer incredible discounts to boost sales. Besides, watching celebrities/internet icons livestream selling is also one of the reasons to join in the Festival.

"Double 11" is not only a shopping festival, it has become an online carnival for all the people who participated. Many people flooded their online shopping carts some ten days in advance just to get their hands on their dream products. As always, popular products were snapped up within a second after the midnight when the Grand Shopping Festival commenced. If the discounts alone failed to convince you to empty your pockets, then how about a 7-day No Reason Return Policy plus an Interest-free Installments payment program? There are more promotion tools available than one can ever imagine and as always at the end of the day some would prove to be useful and be adopted by the sales break your last line of defense.

E-commerce has been booming in China in the past decade. People can literally shop at their fingertips without leaving their homes. In addition to conventional products such as clothes, food and household items, people can even order ice-cream, pets, rare mechanical parts and even airplanes, yachts and houses online. In short, there is nothing you can't buy online.

Big data and AI (Artificial Intelligence) help accurately analyze and predict consumer’s behaviors. Brands will act as “personal concierges” for a consumer’s needs, knowing what they want and how and when they want it before the consumer has to say anything at all. For example, after you put a pot in your cart, the system will automatically present you a list of related merchandise from such as spatula, a set of knives, a set of dishes and a bunch of seasonings. Chinese young people often jokingly refer themselves as "Hand-choppers” (a group of online shopaholics) suggesting that they can’t stop impulsive buying unless they have their hands ‘chopped off’.

Big data and powerful logistics systems have significantly reduced delivery time. In the past, people would have to spend over 10 days in waiting before the merchandise bought in Shopping Festival could be delivered to them received because the entire logistics system crashed under tremendous pressure.

Now, with the adoption of new technologies, the industry has been completely changed. A new record for the shortest online shopping delivery time in China has just been set by Jingdong Mall (JD E-Mall) as it took only 13 minutes to deliver a brand-new cellphone a customer had just ordered online.

Have you ever shopped online in China and what is your take on the Singles’ Day Shopping Festival? Please share in the comments section below.

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