How Chinese e-commerce giant created "Singles' Day"

1. Singles’ Day (Guanggun Jie)
Holiday popular among young Chinese
people that celebrates their pride in being
single

2. Popular shopping date Celebrate relationships
November 11th
Biggest online
shopping holiday
Over 4,000 couples
being married in
Beijing on this date in
2011.

3. Story of origin
• Sort of Anti-Valentines
• Most widely accepted theory is that the
holiday grew out of Nanjing University's
dorm culture.

4. How it became a national holiday?
Demographic &
Cultural changes
• Massive gender gap: by 2020 China will have 35 million
more man than it does women
• Immense family pressure on many young Chinese men
and women to find suitable partner
• Greater pie share of China’s internet users which are
young and urban
• Conformity bias: single parties became a new social circle,
even to the non single people just to express it

5. Singles day was about being with friends and celebrating now it is all about Online
shopping
AliBaba first capitalized on Singles’ day in 2009, to boost sales revenue.
2009
Purpose: Celebration
2018
Purpose: Online shopping
Conditioning by e-commerce
Singles’ Day Singles’ Day
Buy for ego
(Subconscious finding expression
through the culture created)

6. Alibaba’s Single’s Day is a massive, 24-hour sale that the Chinese
e-commerce giants holds on November 11 every year.
About the event:

7. The annual event kicks off on the midnight of 11 November and runs for 24 hours featuring steep
discounts

8. There is a star studded countdown gala to launch the proceedings on November 10.

9. A live-streamed event rolled into a multi - headliner concert and a New Year’s Eve celebration.

10. When the clock strikes midnight, a big board at the back of the stage displays live sales figure.

11. The Triangulation
Ali Baba
(Tmall)
Singles’
Day
Consumer
(Youth)
Brand Equity
Emotional & Self –
Expressive
benefits
Capitalization

12. Capitalization:
• Late autumn had no recurring retail sale period, November thus was the
perfect time for big online sales
• Focusing its marketing on single day
• Walk up deals start appearing three weeks before
• Bigger offerings, more brands and deeper discounts
• Launch of the anticipated movies, songs, etc
• Setting up new smart kiosks (AR/ VR fitted) just for the sale
• Hosting a 4-hour gala on the night before, with the biggest worldwide
celebrities
• Catalyzed the celebration and provided more choices
• To manage the high volume of deliveries, Alibaba opened automated, robot-
managed warehouse

13. Emotional and Self – expressive benefits
• The date: all of the ones in the date –
11/11 – reminds of loneliness (symbolism).
• The story of the origin: Postmodernist, non-
conforming, millennial driven.
• Advertising containing the original term used by the
university students
• Entertainment: Identity of the celebrities
• Singles’ day is a refreshing recent invention against
the holidays which can be traced thousand years
back