Alibaba celebrates successful merchandise volume at global shopping festival

As it aims to build the future infrastructure of commerce, leading Chinese e-commerce company, Alibaba, announced its high gross merchandise volume (GMV) from this year’s event.

11.11 shopping on the up​

Settled through Alipay on 11th November 2017, this year’s celebrated $25.3 bn (€21.5 bn) GMV signifies a total GMV increase of 39% compared to 2016. In addition, mobile played a big part in this year’s sales, with mobile GMV accounting for 90% of 2017’s total GMV, compared to 82% last year.  

"More than $25 bn of GMV in one day is not just a sales figure,"​ commented Daniel Zhang, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group. "It represents the aspiration for quality consumption of the Chinese consumer, and it reflects how merchants and consumers alike have now fully embraced the integration of online and offline retail."​

Festival scalability​

Alibaba’s economy at scale is visible when analysing the 11.11 shopping festival since it first began in 2009. Then, the 11th November event had participation from 27 merchants as it sought to raise awareness of the “value in online shopping”​.

This year’s event saw more than 140,000 brands and merchants — up more than 40,000 compared to last year —  take part. Alibaba’s first delivery arrived 12 minutes and 18 seconds after midnight, the company revealed in a recent press release.

Over the course of the 11th November shopping festival, Alibaba-owned third-party mobile and online payment platform, Alipay, processed a total of 1.48 bn payment transactions. This represents a 41% increase from 2016.

Speed of purchase​

The cloud computing arm of the conglomerate, Alibaba Cloud, recorded a high of 325,000 orders per second, while Alibaba’s parcel tracking brand, Cainiao Network, processed 812 million total delivery orders.

With Chinese consumer demands, trends and brand launches dominating the online shopping and beauty and personal care world, a host of international markets have increased their focus on the nation in 2017.

Japan, Australia, South Korea, the US and Germany were among the top countries selling items to China from a total of 225 countries and regions.

Out of the 60,000 international brands and merchants available to Chinese consumers, 167 merchants each surpassed $15.1 mn (€12.8 mn) in sales. Out of those sellers present, 17 of these went beyond the $75.4 mn (€64m) mark, and six generated more than $150.9 mn (€128.2 mn) in sales.