Single’s Day and Black Friday: Amazon’s Ambition for China Market

Amazon had just launched its Amazon Prime service to China market, a gesture of armouring up for the upcoming Single’s Day and Black Friday.

by Azoya

Single’s Day (also known as Double Eleven) is just a few days away, and retailers all over the world are paying grave attention to this prominent sales event, say Amazon. Another famous shopping holiday, the Black Friday, is also gaining popularity in China over the years, thanks to increasing number of cross-border e-Commerce giants introducing this event to Chinese online shoppers. With limited resources in hand, what should overseas retailers do to improve sales this November? Opinions differ.

Although online overseas shopping was booming during Single’s Day in 2015, it was reported that the proportion of cross-border e-Commerce orders only accounted for 5% of the total GMV generated. In 2016, the entire cross-border e-Commerce players were pressured by the newly issued Customs policy, which directly resulted in their mediocre promotion beforeSingle’s Day. But are overseas retailers dropping out from Chinese holiday sales? Recent activities in the industry tells a different stories.

Amazon had just launched its Amazon Prime service to China market, a gesture of armouring up for the upcoming Single’s Day and Black Friday. While Mia, a B2C retailer went through a new funding rounds also indicates that the window for cross-border eCommerce still exists. In H1 of 2016, e-Commerce cross-border import grow to 500 Billion CNY and taking bigger share of the entire cross-border trade volume. Aggregated shopping holidays at year end is also a reason for most overseas retailers to remain optimistic for their GMV in Q4 2016.

One of many factors that reduce interest in pursuing greater sales during Single’s Day perhaps is the soaring cost to acquire traffic. In situation like this, Amazon's scheme of playing a ‘cultural’ card sounds like a good option. Western culture is getting popular in China and the discussion of latest HBO series Westworld on Chinese social media is a sign. Black Friday, originally an American shopping holiday, is gradually becoming a part of shopping culture for educated Chinese shoppers, who yearn for high-quality foreign products from trusting brands. And of course, overseas retailers shouldn't miss that.

Azoya will be publishing a latest research on Chinese holiday sales this November, giving an in-depth analysis of strategies to tackle the China market.


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