Move over Cyber Weekend; Singles' Day dominates holiday shopping

With the holiday season coming up, shoppers all over the United States are preparing for Thanksgiving weekend. Unlike the general perception of a sizeable majority of the American public, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are nowhere near the biggest shopping events in the world. That title is reserved for Singles’ Day, the biggest shopping festival in China.

Also called Double 11 (as it falls on November 11), Singles’ Day was started by young individuals at Nanjing University to celebrate being single. The primary reason for selecting 11.11 for this celebration was that the number 1, which looks akin to a ‘bare branch,’ the slang for an unattached person, originated from the idea that the person in question will not add branches to their family tree. While the festival started as “Bachelor’s Day,” targeting men primarily, retailers have also begun marketing this towards women as time has passed.

This celebration continued to spread to other universities in China, and these students started buying presents for themselves. Like how Valentine’s Day was quickly capitalized on by corporations like Hallmark, Alibaba noticed the immense potential of this event, where single people indulged in purchasing gifts for themselves. The other major e-commerce company in this shopping extravaganza is JD.com, another Chinese retailer.

The world of e-commerce has been evolving, and there is genuinely no end to consumer expenditure during large-scale sales promotions. Alibaba has transformed this event from a one-day deal with only 27 brands participating in 2009 to a two-week-long shopping festival with over 290,000 brands offering deals in 2021. The 10th Singles Day celebration in 2019 started with a massive, opulent gala hosted in Shanghai that Taylor Swift headlined.

The sales volume for Cyber Monday and Black Friday, the two biggest days for online shopping in the United States, combined with Thanksgiving Day sales totaled 35.3 billion US in 2022, marking a new record of consumer spending. This is not a small number and showcases great revenue growth. However, the 2022 Singles Day shopping festival generated sales close to 84.5 billion USD, completely dwarfing the Thanksgiving sales.   

Since the conception of this shopping festival, US retailers have yet to capitalize on these significant opportunities. Over the past few years, some companies like Sephora and Nike have started selling Singles Day Products and distributing discount codes. With more Western brands willing to participate in this colossal shopping festival, shoppers in the US should keep a lookout for online sales before Black Friday.

Singles Day has been evolving to be a lot more than just a celebration of being single. It is undeniable that in terms of sales volume, this is the biggest shopping festival in the world. However, apart from that, it has evolved to be more than just a large-scale sales promotion. The significance of this event in Chinese culture has been developing over time. From an American perspective, Chinese dating culture has been virtually non-existent for a very long period, with most meetings between single people ending almost instantly if either party is not interested in getting married. The idea of being “single” itself is new, coming in from increasing influence from Western culture, when the term has been a rather pessimistic “unmarried” for the longest time. Rather than just celebrating the freedom achieved from being single, many people are trying to make this their last singles’ day alone by attending events like karaoke and speed dating during the two weeks of this festival to find a partner. Several individuals purchase gifts for people they are interested in during this shopping extravaganza. It can be seen as an opportunity to find the ideal gift to woo the person one wants to be with. 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday have been spreading to other countries as US retailers attempt to introduce the start of the holiday season shopping all over the world. Responding to this, local retailers in other economies are also promoting these days to ensure that they remain competitive. However, as of now, with all the cultural impact, China’s massive population and consumer spending, and e-commerce giants’ efforts, Singles’ Day is the largest shopping festival and is only expected to grow with increasing awareness and greater participation from Western retailers.