Alibaba Group’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, the world’s largest 24-hour online sale, started Nov. 11 at midnight China Standard Time (CST). Check this live blog for updates as the sale progresses.
“We see that playing out today in 11.11,” said Evans, noting also that these overseas goods “will be in demand for a long time.” During the sale so far, there have been transactions from 207 countries and regions.
As this commerce plays out online and across borders, the biggest players will not in fact be multinational corporations but instead small and medium-sized enterprises and singular brands and retailers. Alibaba, and Executive Chairman Jack Ma especially, has repeatedly emphasized the size and scale of global commerce among this group of SMEs, and that will be “the core of our global business in the future,” Evans said.
Evans pointed to Alibaba’s investments in e-commerce company Lazada Group in Southeast Asia and online payments provider Paytm in India as signs of the company’s intent to make sure the above-mentioned consumers are shopping and transacting on its platform. The goal now, he said, was to continue expanding that consumer base.
Alibaba observers need only look for markets with high internet penetration rates and consumers who access the web largely through mobile devices, “and you can figure out exactly where we’ll be going next,” Evans said.
