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SINGAPORE – The tills were ringing on Sunday (Nov 11) as many retailers here raked in more sales from the annual Singles’ Day shopping event.
Compared to a year ago, there was a 279 per cent jump in the number of online transactions in Singapore on Sunday’s Singles’ Day, according to data from Criteo, an advertising platform.
Singles’ Day, also called “Double 11”, originated from China and is reportedly the world’s biggest online sales event, even larger sales-wise than Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which are shopping holidays in the United States.
“Singles’ Day is definitely no longer an event only for consumers in China, but widespread, prominent and embraced by consumers in South-east Asia, especially Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam,” Criteo’s managing director for South-east Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan Alban Villani told The Straits Times.
Mr Villani added that retailers which were successful on Singles’ Day combined data to create seamless shopping experiences across online and offline channels.
He said some retailers encouraged shoppers to make purchases by using artificial intelligence to remind shoppers about specific products they indicated interest in, as well as to customise discounts for them.
The three most popular e-commerce merchants in Singapore were, in no particular order, Lazada, Qoo10 and Shopee, according to data from Shopback, a performance-based marketing platform.
Shopback said that the average shopper spent $190 on Singles’ Day this year in Singapore, a 36 per cent increase from 2017.The most popular time slot for online shopping on Singles’ Day was 12am to 1am.
Retailers said they have seen a jump in sales as well.Qoo10 Singapore said that the online shopping firm saw a more than 60 per cent increase in sales compared to 2017, while Shopee said that more than 11 million orders were received on Sunday, an increase of more than four times from 2017.
Qoo10 attributed the rise to increased marketing and advertising efforts, more acceptance of online shopping among Singaporeans, and customers becoming more savvy at making use of promotions to get discounts.
While Lazada did not disclose sales figures for Singapore, a spokesman said that there was a “record-breaking” rise in this year’s Singles’ Day sales here compared to a year ago.
Customers’ hot picks across the three retailers included technology gadgets, beauty and sanitary products, and even food items. Some examples are wireless mice, the Nintendo Switch game console, robot vacuum cleaners, face masks, headphones, wet wipes, sports shoes, oranges and chilled dim sum.
There were also retailers who jumped on the Singles’ Day bandwagon for the first time. One of them, supermarket chain Giant, said it was “quite encouraged by the sales on that one day”, adding that a 20-inch luggage which the chain had advertised as part of its Singles’ Day sales sold out before 12pm.
Another first-timer, Resorts World Sentosa, said that it had a “very strong response” from customers purchasing discounted tickets to its attractions during this period, and that there was a three-fold increase in average daily sales compared to early November.
Retailers said they were not worried about Singles’ Day sales affecting festive season trade.
Qoo10 said that customers look for different products for these shopping periods.
Shopee said that “it is important to keep the momentum going for shoppers after 11.11, as Black Friday and Christmas sales are also known to be some of the biggest sales events during the festive season”.
Singles’ Day shopping might complement traditional shopping too.
Associate Professor Wenlan Qian from the National University of Singapore Business School said that a closer examination of Singles’ Day spending trends in China showed that spending tended to concentrate on certain kinds of physical goods, rather than dining, entertainment or travel services.
“Purchases of everyday supermarket household products also do not see the same level of impact,” she said of sales during Singles’ Day.
“This suggests that while Singles’ Day is undoubtedly a huge and rapidly-growing online success, it is a complementary retail experience rather than a complete substitute for traditional shopping.”
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