China’s largest e-commerce player ‘Alibaba’ group shattered
all the previous records of sales through its Singles' Day sale which is
celebrated in China on 11th of November every year. This year the
figure crossed of a whopping Gross Merchandise value of $14.32 billion as
compared to the figure of approximately $9 billion last year on the same day.
Although Singles' Day was initiated by a group of
youngsters in the 1990’s sarcastically to celebrate and pamper themselves being
single, Alibaba has added a whole new dimension to it by offering huge discounts
which are difficult to resist. Having such an astonishing sales figure in a
single day clearly demonstrates the purchasing power of the Chinese consumers
and also the market potential.
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| Image Credits: Forbes.com |
Imagining the robustness of their technical infrastructure which
can handle such a huge number of navigation and transaction on a single day can
clearly estimate the platforms technical maturity. Also if so many people have
bought goods which is huge in number, then definitely there would be actual
discounts on the products.
Recently a lot of E-commerce players in India also have tried
their level best to capitalize different festive seasons by declaring promotional
sales. But as a consumer, I feel that
there is not actual discount on the products. Their prices are inflated and
then they cut down to the actual price showing
a certain percentage discount. People initially were blindly shopping through
online marketplaces because they were thrilled to try this thing which was new
to them. But now even Indian consumers have gone intelligent while shopping
online and they do a lot of price check, reviews etc.
So with the consumers becoming demanding and knowledgeable,
it is clearly evident that online Indian marketplaces need to devise strong
strategies and technology to avoid inflated price and then discount technique
used by majority of the registered merchants.
The Singles' Day sales figure by
Alibaba clearly demonstrates the power of Online Market Places and definitely a
thing which is impossible to ignore.