Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo launch campaigns for Singles’ Day shopping festival on same day

The e-commerce rivals’ respective promotions look to benefit from healthier consumer spending on the back of Beijing’s stimulus measures

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An advertisement for Alibaba Group Holding-owned Tmall platform’s Singles’ Day promotion at a subway station in Shanghai on November 4, 2023. Photo: Bloomberg

Ann Caoin Shanghai

Published: 8:29pm, 14 Oct 2024

Major Chinese e-commerce platform operators Alibaba Group Holding, JD.com and Pinduoduo on Monday kicked off their respective campaigns for Singles’ Day, the world’s largest annual shopping festival, just weeks after Beijing unveiled wide-ranging economic-stimulus measures.

Taobao and Tmall Group, Alibaba’s domestic e-commerce business unit, launched at 8pm on Monday the presale stage of its promotion for Singles’ Day – also known as 11.11 or Double 11, referring to the shopping extravaganza originally observed on November 11 – as the company anticipates a record-high volume of users taking part in this year’s festival. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

“This year’s 11.11 is unfolding as Chinese consumer sentiment is improving,” Alibaba vice-president Liu Bo, who serves as president of Tmall, said in a statement. “We are making unprecedented investments to incentivise our users and support our brands and merchants to drive high-quality growth.”

JD.com and PDD Holdings-owned Pinduoduo also rolled out their respective Singles’ Day promotions on the same day, marking a departure from 11.11 campaigns over the past few years. The three e-commerce rivals used to launch promotions on different days partly to avoid direct, side-by-side comparison of their respective sales numbers ahead of November 11.

Alibaba Group Holding offered discounts of at least 50 per cent and free nationwide shipping when it first promoted Singles’ Day as an annual online shopping event in 2009. Photo: Shutterstock

The annual Singles’ Day festival, which was initiated by Alibaba in 2009 as a 24-hour online retail event, has become a proxy for many investors to track consumer spending in China as well as an important barometer of the country’s economic health.