By the numbers: Black Friday versus Singles' Day
Two weeks after China’s massive Double 11
(November 11) or Singles’ Day shopping event, Americans threw their own
shopping bonanza, Black Friday. Though the numbers are still coming in,
Adobe Analytics estimates that this year’s sales has already exceeded
the figure of 3.54 billion US dollars sold during Black Friday last
year.
In what amounts to a consumer holiday,
retailers in China and the US have managed to turn shopping into
somewhat of a sport. In the US, competition for the best deals can be
fierce, and sometimes violent, as people race into stores to start their
holiday shopping. China’s Alibaba has in recent years turned the
Singles’ Day into a form of entertainment with a performance by Pharrell
and a Nicole Kidman cameo during this year’s event.
Aside
from the spectacle, both shopping events are often seen as a pulse on
the health of the economy. Volume of sales is often an indicator of
consumer confidence, while the types of items purchased can point us
toward consumer trends and how comfortable people are with adopting the
latest technology.
As the numbers continue to roll in, we take a look at some of the eye-popping numbers and their significance, from the two big November shopping frenzies:
Over 41 billion US dollars in sales
The
two shopping events combined for over 41 billion US dollars in sales.
For reference, Germany spent about this same amount on defense last year
(35 billion euros, or 41.7 billion US dollars).
China’s
Singles’ Day by far makes up the majority of this 41 billion. The
one-day shopping event brought in 38 billion US dollars, breaking the online sales record. Alibaba, by itself, brought in more than 25 million US dollars.
As
of 8:00 pm ET, Black Friday sales in the US had reached 3.54 billion as
tracked by Adobe Analytics, a platform that looks at about 80 percent
of online transactions from the 100 biggest web retailers in the US.
This already breaks last year’s sales of 3.34 billion and for many, is
an indicator that the health of the US economy is growing.
Tmall reached the 10 million yuan mark in 3 minutes and 1 second
It
took a mere three minutes and one second for Alibaba’s Tmall, a
platform that allows international and local businesses to set up shops,
to reach the 10 million yuan mark, or 1.5 million US dollars. This is
half the time it took to get to this number last year (6 minutes, 58
seconds).
Tmall is home to a large selection of
international brands including Nike, L’Oreal and LEGO. Sales from Tmall
are part of a greater trend among China’s rising middle-class for
higher-quality products.
Because Black Friday
includes a larger number of individual retailers and therefore more
fragmented data, there’s not a comparable number for the US. However,
Shopify, a software platform that powers online stores, is tracking in real-time sales for its over 500,000 businesses. At its peak, Shopify businesses were raking in over half a million in sales per minute.
Amazon driving 45-50 percent of all Black Friday e-commerce sales
Market
research firm GBH Insights reported Friday that Amazon saw
"eye-popping" sales, estimating that the tech giant was driving up to 50
percent of all e-commerce sales. The online retailer released their
deals early and slashed prices on their AI-powered Echo products and
Prime memberships among others.
The company earlier this year joined the rankings of the world’s richest companies, hitting the half-a-trillion market value mark.
Similarly,
Alibaba’s Tmall accounted for 66 percent of all sales during this
year’s Singles’ Day, while Amazon China made up almost two percent of
sales in the country.
Sales on mobile drove 90 percent of purchases for Alibaba, 34 percent of sales on Black Friday
While
online shopping has taken off in both countries, China’s consumers are
much more comfortable making purchases on mobile devices. Alibaba said
90 percent of its Singles’ Day sales were purchased on mobile devices
this year, a dramatic increase from the 69 percent recorded in 2015.
In China, online shopping is mobile shopping, with third party payment systems like Alipay and WeChat wallet being a ubiquitous part of daily life.
In the US, mobile devices are used mostly for browsing, with consumers making the actual purchase in-store or on a desktop. IBM’s Bluemix Analytics
panel is finding that about 50 percent of online traffic is coming from
mobile devices, but only 34 percent of sales are mobile. This is still
up eight percentage points from last year.
Adobe’s
VP of marketing and customer insights Mickey Mericle, attributes this
shift to the need for speed, telling TechCrunch that "shoppers looking
for discounts are getting better at using smartphones to quickly close
the deal, and we are seeing better mobile conversion this season at over
10 percent growth."