China’s 618 shopping festival ends with Alibaba, JD.com declaring victory amid ‘waning’ interest

Alibaba Group Holding and JD.com touted impressive growth trends but declined to reveal total gross merchandise value (GMV) figures for their midyear 618 shopping festival events, as China’s major e-commerce players remain locked in a heated battle to get consumers to open their wallets amid the country’s economic slowdown.

Both e-commerce giants declared victory as they fend off competition from rivals Pinduoduo, operated by Temu owner PDD Holdings, and Douyin, the Chinese equivalent of TikTok owned by ByteDance, but some analysts warn that consumers are growing weary of the non-stop online promotions.

As of midnight Tuesday, a total of 365 brands on Tmall surpassed 100 million yuan (US$13.8 million) in GMV, while over 36,000 brands had doubled their GMV, according to data from Taobao and Tmall Group, the domestic e-commerce unit of Alibaba Group Holding, which also owns the South China Morning Post.

Membership of 88VIP, Taobao’s paid programme which offers members extra benefits across its ecosystem of services, saw a 65 per cent increase from last year in the number of new members, a record high achieved during the sales campaign which ran from May 20 to June 20.

Meanwhile, JD.com, a major rival of Alibaba, said on Wednesday that its transaction volume and orders during the midyear sales extravaganza broke records, without disclosing the exact figures.

JD.com said 500 million customers took part in its sales promotion, with orders contributing to over 1 billion yuan in sales across 83 brands, representing 50 per cent sales growth for more than 150,000 small and medium-sized merchants.