By Fazleena Aziz
China, Oct 28: The pandemic has seen phenomenal growth with significant trends rising in cross borders transactions.
Alibaba Group Chef Marketing Officer Chris Tung (pictured above) said they have seen 70.2 percent growth in China during the period as more consumers learn about digital life.
He said the pandemic accelerated business patterns as ecommerce became vibrant adding that Chinese consumers buy a lot of overseas products, but the cross-border barrier has changed the pattern from retail to online significantly.
Tung was speaking at the Alibaba Group 2021 11.11 Global Shopping Festival online press conference held yesterday.
“We are optimistic of the results from the festival but more importantly we are committed to building the future for the economy and online consumption.
“11.11 is more about how to leverage Alibaba’s latest technology to support the brands, merchants, to drive sustainable and inclusive growth in a more efficient way.
“This is what we call the Olympic game in the business world about how to leverage the best technology to shape the future,” he said in a media conference, yesterday.
Tung also spoke about the green initiatives by the company as they shift their focus to sustainable growth.
“We put our focus on how to promote the green agenda, really using our green technology together with our brand partners.
“With the influence and reach of 11.11, I think this is the best chance to sell the products and shift consumer mindset.
“This is the largest 11.11, we have more than 290,000 merchants participating, 14 million deals to over 900 million consumers. I am sure this is going to be another fun festival for all the shoppers to engage with all the brands they love from all around the world.
Meanwhile, the group’s online marketplace Tmall will showcase a range of energy efficient and low impact products.
Tmall will launch a dedicated vertical to highlight eco-friendly brands and products for consumers.
More than 50,000 products with officially sanctioned Green Product Certification have won green labels on Tmall.
“We have issued RMB100 million (US$15.7 million) worth of green shopping vouchers to incentify shopping decisions and green initiatives.
“It is important for Alibaba to continue promoting a sustainable growth agenda.
“We have a clear ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) strategy for the company and laser focus on delivering our agendas through the technologies together with brand partners on the platform. That is a top priority.
“We will continue to leverage most advanced digital technology on Alibaba through a cloud base operation system to support merchants and drive their business growth in a much more efficient way while making it easy to do business in the digital era.
On the consumer side, Tung said they have been putting the best shopping experience on the agenda while leveraging on their technology to incorporate more features, content creation for the brands and membership marketing to make sure consumers find the best products easier on their platform.
As part of its support to the merchants to grasp the opportunities from the festival, Tung added the company will continue to upgrade live streaming capabilities on its e-commerce platforms to increase viewer engagement, smarter selection of products and cover more different areas.
“Livestreaming has been a very important force driving in engaging customers and get more transaction.
“We have created many features on Taobao for counter marketing this year, so there are a lot of content services that were designed for merchants to introduce what the brand is about to the audience.
“On membership management capabilities, this year a lot of focus is put in CRM (customer relationship management), 11.11 will have top 500 brands launching their new membership programme to engage with their members with better deals and services as well as content,” he said.
“There is more demand for products from all over the world including luxury and lifestyle.
“I think we have a diverse consumer base in Tmall with strong demands due to the pandemic, where they want to buy everything they need online, so 11.11 is the time.
“The demand is huge,” he said.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited has officially kicked off its 13th annual 11.11 Global Shopping Festival with an emphasis on sustainability and inclusiveness.
This year’s Festival marks a new chapter for 11.11.
The Festival will once again have two sales windows – the first will be from November 1 to 3, and the second will be on November 11, on the day of the main event itself.
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