Chinese Consumers Plan To Spend More, Buy Fewer American Products On Alibaba’s Singles Day Event

Words by Luhar Singh

Chinese Consumers Plan To Spend More, Buy Fewer American Products On Alibaba's Singles Day Event
Chinese Consumers Plan To Spend More, Buy Fewer American Products On Alibaba's Singles Day Event

Two-thirds of Chinese consumers plan to avoid foreign brands and shop for domestic products on Alibaba’s Singles Day sales, which marks the world’s biggest online sales event.

According to a recent survey by Alix Partners, 62 percent of consumers cite patriotism as their reason for buying Chinese products, up from 51 percent who said so last year. 

With growing interest in buying domestic products, Chinese consumers plan to spend less on products sold by international brands. Fifty-seven percent said they planned to spend less on American products and 39 percent plan to reduce their spending on European brands.

While this bears good news for Chinese sellers, it means American and European brands will need to be more creative with their marketing strategy to appeal to Chinese consumers. After all, Alibaba’s Singles Day event represents a huge opportunity for businesses to increase their sales and boost their bottom lines.

“Companies that stumble on Singles Day stand to lose out on weeks, if not months, of pent-up buying activity,” according to the Harvard Business Review.

Last year alone, sales on the annual November 11 event topped $38 billion. In comparison, last year’s five-day Black Friday season clocked less than $25 billion in sales.

“Historically, American products scored very highly on [brand] attributes,” David Garfield, global co-leader of the consumer products practice at AlixPartners and a managing director at the firm, said in an interview with CNBC. But, “Chinese consumers increasingly are feeling like they can get these benefits elsewhere,” he said. “It goes beyond geopolitical talk or any trade flow impact.”

This year’s Singles Day event is all the more important as businesses worldwide are still reeling from the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The survey found that 39 percent of Chinese consumers will spend more on Singles Day in 2020 compared to last year and only 15 percent plan to spend less due to the pandemic’s impact on the Chinese economy.

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