For Alibaba, Singles Day Is About More Than Huge Sales

Christmas comes early in China. November 11 (11/11), known as “Singles Day,” is the world’s biggest 24-hour shopping event. Originally a cynical response to Valentine’s Day for bachelors, the day was transformed in 2009 by Alibaba executive (now CEO) Daniel Zhang into “Double 11.” The day has come to represent a unifying cultural event of unabashed retail therapy, coupons, lightning promotions, and gamified social media campaigns from retailers across the country. The statistics are staggering, both for the sheer volume of sales transacted in just one day and for year-over-year increases that, so far, defy the gradual slowdown in China’s overall economic growth. 2019 was no exception, with e-commerce giant Alibaba reporting sales activity totaling 268.4 billion yuan (USD38.4 billion), surpassing last year’s haul of 213.5 billion yuan (USD30.5 billion) by nearly 26 percent. As a comparison, that’s more than 2.5 times the U.S. sales of last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. Read more at Harvard Business Review.