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Online sales get Spring Festival boost

Update Date：2016-2-15 9:56:13 Source：BeiJing Tannet Views：1242

"Then I couldn't stop clicking on the pictures of other products. There turned out to be so many options online with even better deals compared with what regular shops offer."

Xu is among the growing number of Chinese consumers who are embracing online shopping. In doing so, they are spawning sales worth hundreds of billions of yuan from mid-January to mid-February for the Chinese New Year.

That's glad tidings for China's e-commerce players who are flush with the record-breaking success of so-called Singles Day online shopping festival on Nov 11.

"Chinese New Year is the most celebrated festival and holiday in China, and is traditionally a time to go shopping," said Frank Zhang, general manager of SAP Hybris Greater China, an e-commerce software company. "This is a great opportunity for e-commerce companies to increase business, and for low-profile major rural brands to get exposure in smaller cities."

E-commerce companies are even selling foreign goods, hoping to entice Chinese consumers who wish to add an exotic twist to their Spring Festival shopping.

Leading the charge is Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Multinational brands and retailers on its Tmall Global, an online platform dedicated to selling imported products to Chinese shoppers, began preparations for this year's Spring Festival sales offensive as early as November. On offer are imported goods of 5,000 brands from 25 countries.

Lest the offerings be interpreted as an invasion by foreign brands, Daniel Zhang, Alibaba Group's chief executive, said at this year's sales launch the aim is "to enable rural customers to access an extensive range of New Year's goods from home and abroad, while making products from rural China more available among urban customers".

The overseas goods Zhang talked of include 150 tons of chocolates made in Italy, 20,000 Canadian deep-sea lobsters, 50 tons of Australian beef and 500,000 bottles of wine from France.

Alibaba said its best-selling imported goods are maternity and baby products, accounting for nearly 30 percent of total sales and imported food, accounting for about 25 percent.

JD.com Inc, Alibaba's main rival, began a month-long Spring Festival sales drive on Jan. 4, offering consumers a host of products including food, beverages, baby and maternity products, and cosmetics.

Amazon.cn, the China unit of the US e-commerce giant, launched a Chinese New Year sales festival on Jan 11 with more than 9 million overseas products. It worked out its logistics four months before the Spring Festival.

The article transsshipment from China Daily

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