Viya won by a huge margin selling merchandise worth RMB 335 million ($48 million) against Austin with “only” RMB 200 million ($28 million). Fifty percent of merchants claimed that live-streaming has become their most important area of growth. Taobao Live alone recorded sales of RMB 20 billion ($2.85 billion) - accounting for around 7.5% of Alibaba’s overall sales.
Another important trend that could be observed during this year’s shopping extravaganza was the strong purchasing power coming from lower tier cities and villages. According to Jiang Fan, CEO of Tmall/Taobao, more than 77% of 100 million new customers on the platforms this year came from those cities. Also, half of all orders for iPhone 11 and Huawei Mate30 Pro originated there. This is relevant as Alibaba needs to find ever more pockets of growth going forward.
One other interesting aspect is the way Alibaba combines the shopping frenzy with lots of entertainment to make sure that the audience/consumers don’t get bored - while Amazon during PRIME day solely relies on the lure of discounted prices.
So 11-11-2019 ended with a huge live gala featuring international stars like Taylor Swift: