Staying ahead of consumers---an analysis of 11.11 shopping festival
1155082223 Rachel Shi
In China, 11.11 is well known as the largest online shopping festival created by Alibaba while it’s real name “Singles’ Day” has been fading away. When the clock turned to 12th November of 2016, the gross merchandise volume on the Tmall Taobao platform reached RMB 120.7 billion, becoming the highest among 7 years. As Chief executive officer of Alibaba Group, Daniel Zhang said, “11.11 has evolved far beyond a 24-hours sales event. From today through November 11, consumers will discover, explore, play, watch, comment, share, recommend and shop across our entire ecosystem with our merchants both online and offline.”
So What was the marketing plan behind this incredible phenomenon? In this article, the marketing strategies and actions of Tmall team will be analyzed. Also, Tmall’s actions towards first three stage of consumer decision-making process will be introduced.
l Problem recognition by large-scale advertisement warm-up
11.11 advertising putting was totally integrated as they placed ads on TV, radio, newspaper, WeChat, Weibo, outdoor, portal, video, in short, where is traffic where is marketing information coming from T-mall. These large amounts of information bombing made consumers aware of their problems and consciously accumulated their shopping needs for 11.11 when there is a better deal. The photo below shows the large space of 11.11 advertising placing on different newspaper.
In addition, Tmall worked with many international brands including Macys, Costco, Metro, Watson’s, Kanebo and use these brands’ fame to attract their fans to participate in this big event. Also, Tmall added VR technology to shopping experience for the first time which was new and fresh to consumers, appealing to those who are passionate about IT field.
l Bring information to consumers proactively
By this stage, customers have generated the idea “I must participate in this shopping day, what should I buy?”. Naturally, they would look for information about several products that they are interested in. Luckily, Tmall has thought about it ahead of them and made highly-matched recommendations to each consumer. To make sure products and content meet consumers’ needs, Tmall extracted data from users’ past shopping experience and tailored personalized information and products to the individual consumer. Also, Tmall held an event called “Super national day, Global research institute” which basically means during the period of 21th October to 31th October Tmall team introduced a special national theme to customers each day, containing all the fun things and good stuff of this country which also were available on the T-mall platform. Also, T-mall team interacted with national tourist administration from these countries and embassy in China to make this event more official and believable. These actions allowed people to learn about brands they have never considered purchasing before and affected their cognitive attitudes by presenting the most valuable assets of a country. Here is a photo that presents Jack Ma and the king of Netherlands celebrating the day of Netherlands together.
l Eliminate consumers’ alternatives
The large number of “抢购“，“秒杀”and tense atmosphere can impose participants a ‘time pressure”, under which customers’ decision-making capacity can be reduced and can be more easily affected by marketers’ campaigns than usual. When they evaluate a large amount of homogenous alternatives under pressure, customers tend to make decisions through a more superficial, single and herd way instead of a rational way. Marketers take advantage of the fact that customers temporarily lose the ability to use comprehensive information so they use the phrase “Best-selling” “The most famous brand” “The same with celebrity” to highlight their features to let customers spot their product instantly and ignore all the other options.
Overall, the huge volume indicates that Tmall highly focused on user experience and always stands on the users’ point of view, supporting by its proactive strategies and advanced technology at each stage. It is worth mentioning that Tmall created an intense shopping atmosphere that pressured consumers to purchase stuff in case they would regret not buying in the future. Atmospheric effects on shopping behavior have been proved positively. Creating influential atmospheres is a significant marketing strategy for online stores. As a consumer, we should be more rational about buying decision during 11.11 and avoid buying things that we don’t need.
Reference
Reference
11.11 Global Shopping Festival 2016 : Official program of Tmall Alibaba big event.(2016,November 1). Retrieved from http://www.le-furet-du-retail.com/2016/11/11.11-global-shopping-festival-2016-the-official-program-of-the-tmall-alibaba-big-event.html.
CIW Team.(2016, November 11). Tmall Double 11 (Singles’ Day) Insights 2016.Retrieved from https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/19176/double-11-2016/.
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