Star-spangled gala to set the tone for shopping bonanza

Prior to the main Singles' Day event, the shopping festival, started by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in 2009, would be a star-spangled extravaganza set to rival the Spring Festival Gala on China Central Television, one of the most-watched television programs in the world with 690 million viewers in 2015.

E-commerce firms plan flurry of events to keep consumers interested in festival

At the stroke of midnight on Tuesday, history will have been made as scores of Chinese shoppers log on to the Internet to be part of the mammoth 24-hour shopping festival.

Joining them would be scores of retailers, big and small, offering discounts and freebies so that they could keep the cash registers ringing well into the next few weeks or even next year.

But this year, the frenzy is set to start much earlier. Prior to the main Singles' Day event, the shopping festival, started by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in 2009, would be a star-spangled extravaganza set to rival the Spring Festival Gala on China Central Television, one of the most-watched television programs in the world with 690 million viewers in 2015.

Po Tian, who is in charge of marketing at Alibaba's Tmall business-to-customer platform, said the company's gala would have a digital twist and provide an experience of "what you see is what you get".

"Anything you see on broadcast, whether the clothes worn by celebrities or the items used in performance, you can get the related information on your smartphone," he said.

According to Alibaba, viewers can watch the gala at 8:30 pm on Tuesday, on television, tablets and mobile phones. Moreover, they can also win coupons and discounts on items by shaking their smartphones during the broadcast.

The new model of this kind of "from TV to online" gala has quickly caught on in China's hyper-competitive e-commerce industry. JD.com Inc, Alibaba's biggest rival in e-commerce, also held a gala to lure customers before Nov 11.

The Beijing-based company said it would offer e-coupons worth 3 billion yuan ($472 million) to smartphone shakers during the broadcast on Tuesday.

Adam Xu, partner with Strategy& Ltd, said Nov 11 has become a big volume-driven sales season for brands that are not profitable to drum up sales.

"The impact on 'eyeballs' is much more important for brands," he said, adding there is no better way to attract "eyeballs" than hosting a gala.

No doubt, the annual shopping event has been getting louder, bigger and more crowded than ever before with the participation of merchants from both online and offline channels, buyers from both in and out of China. Last year, Alibaba generated $9.3 billion in gross merchandise volume.

However, Nicholas Kontopoulos, global head of fast-growth markets & marketing innovation at SAP hybris, a Switzerland-based e-commerce company, said to survive and thrive in today's era of "digi-tail" means taking advantage of technology to create something that consumers can connect with. Alibaba has done so by creating this gala event, he said.

"Customers have become more digitally connected, socially networked and better informed than before; and this transformation has enabled customers to access product information in the comforts of their homes, on mobile phones and tablets. Thus, businesses need to figure out a way to keep them engaged and entertained beyond the stores－what better way to reach out to potential customers while they are watching TV," he said.