We know that Alibaba able to reach huge sales and revenues. But, what are the marketing strategy used by Alibaba to increase the sales and revenues? What challenges will be faced by Alibaba during the implementation of those marketing strategy?
Let have a look to know more about marketing strategy used by Alibaba. Today, we will discuss on the various types of Special Events organized by Alibaba in its platforms.
“Special Events”
SuperDeals
Save BIG on top quality items!
AliExpress has held Super deals that allow customers to save big on top quality items that updated daily. Customers can buy those selected products at high quality with lowest discount prices (1).
Every day, there are around 400 items that belong to multiple categories that offer to public at the discount prices. For examples, the categories of products are varies from clothing, phone and accessories, sports and outdoors, health and beauty, toy, kids and baby and so on.
Customers can take this opportunity to buy their favourite products at lower prices. Buyers can also subscribe to SuperDeals alert to get more information through the email inbox (1). This technique successfully attracts new customers and retains existing customers.
Flash Deals
Flash Deals is a brand new shopping channel under AliExpress (2). This deals only available for limited time. For every 6 hours, brand new deals will be released. There are 4 rounds of flash deals per day. The products offers are all popular and best sale products. Flash deals offer better selling prices for past 30 days.
If you missed out a great deal, you can click on “I WANT IT” to book for second chance.
Singles’ Day / Double Eleven / 11.11
Shopping Festival
Singles’ Day (November 11) or Double Eleven Shopping Festival is labelled by Alibaba as the Global Shopping Festival which is the world’s biggest online shopping event. This day is the most influential and powerful annual online shopping day in China as according to the (3). AliExpress had also organized various activities during this period of time.
Singles Day is held on 11 November every year. During these 24 hours, you will find there are dozens or thousands of both international and local brands offering at discounted prices on the firm’s marketplace and online stores.
According to Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang, this global shopping Festival has been extended from a one-day event to a three-week event, running from October 21 to November 11 for year 2016 (3).
There is even an AliExpress 11.11 Sale Guide prepared to direct shoppers for joining the activities before the shopping festival start (4). There activities such as preview flash deals and 50% off products, set sale reminders, play game, win coupons and collect coins in order to exchange for more and more coupons.
It took 12 hours’ time to break 2014 whole-day record of $9.3billion in year 2015. On those particular shopping days, AliExpress was able to achieve US$5.8 billion in 2013, US$9.3 billion in 2014 and over US$14.3 billion in 2015 (5).
Alibaba's sales reached 1 billion yuan within one minute of the start of China's 2016 Singles Day online sale (6).
Alibaba's sales volume broke 10 billion yuan within seven minutes of the start of China's Singles Day online sale (6).
According to Alizila, the news centre from Alibaba Group, Year 2016's 11.11 Global Shopping festival was ended with a gross merchandise volume of RMB 120.7 billion ($17.7 billion USD) (7).
Besides that, AliExpress also organised sale on Chinese New Year Festival, 14 February Valentine Days, China National Day Celebrations, and Halloween Day.
Obstacle:
In accordance to Wang (2016), the event is also controversial and argumentative on the basis of revenue reporting standard (12). The US Securities and Exchange Commission is studying how Alibaba reports a single-day sales figures earlier this year, which the company disclosed in its annual report in May. Alibaba said at the time it was working with the authorities, while the SEC's investigation was not seen as a sign of its violation of federal securities laws.
The Chinese authorities are also considering single-day sales. According to the China government newspaper "People's Daily", the State Administration for Industry and Commerce warned that the Amazon, Alibaba, Jingdong and Suning and other e-commerce companies on matter regarding the production of sales data and misleading advertising (12). Even though this event is successful in attracting more customers and boosting higher sales to an incredible level, but its revenue reporting standard was complex and arguably.
References
- Super Deals - AliExpress.com. (n.d.). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from https://superdeals.aliexpress.com/en
- Flash Deals Homepage. (n.d.). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from https://flashdeals.aliexpress.com/en?spm=2114.11010108.21.1.uGzc95
- Weinswig, D. (2016). Alibaba 11.11 Singles’ Day Global Shopping Festival Day One Takeaways. Retrieved March 5, 2017, from http://www.deborahweinswig.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Singles-Day-Day-1-November-11-2016-2.pdf
- 11.11 Sale Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from http://activities.aliexpress.com/1111_sale_guide.php
- Singles Day: Alibaba breaks record sales total. (2016). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from http://www.bbc.com/news/37946470
- Singles Day sales shatter record. (2016). Retrieved March 03, 2017, from http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2016-11/11/content_27346275_5.htm
- Live Updates: Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. (2016). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from http://www.alizila.com/live-updates-alibabas-11-11-global-shopping-festival/
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