Feature: How does "Double Eleven" spark shopping boom in Hong Kong?

HONG KONG, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- It's time for Hong Kong's annual shopping craze as this year's "Double Eleven" shopping festival kicks off on Thursday.

Shopaholics in Hong Kong have been looking forward to this annual shopping extravaganza. Yau, who lives in the Tuen Mun district, had her alarm set before going to bed, preparing for the flash sale starting at midnight on Thursday.

Wong, who has just found a job in Hong Kong, is a young expert in online shopping. She shares her excitement with Xinhua as she found a lot of offline brands that became newly available online this year, with some of them providing satisfying discounts.

HUGE MARKET POTENTIAL IN HONG KONG

The "Double Eleven" shopping festival, also known as the Singles' Day shopping festival, is first started by Alibaba's e-commerce platform on Nov. 11, 2009. It quickly grew into a major online shopping spree worldwide that can serve as a barometer for China's consumer confidence.

The annual shopping event usually lasts for a period of around 10 days with several discount periods. In 2020, the 11-day event recorded a gross merchandise volume of 498.2 billion yuan (74.1 billion U.S. dollars). This year, as the first wave of the "Double Eleven" sales period kickstarted at midnight on Nov. 1, the turnover of 2,600 brands exceeded that of the whole day on Nov. 1 last year within the first hour.

Seeing the high consumption vitality in the mainland, the Alibaba group launched "Tmall Hong Kong" in May this year, a new local Business-to-Consumer (B2C) platform, in order to meet the rising demands towards e-commerce in Hong Kong, which has attracted more than 5,000 local brands to join since its establishment.

ONLINE SHOPPING AS A RISING TREND

Online shopping has become a rising trend in Hong Kong, a city renowned as "shoppers' paradise." In the first three quarters, preliminary official data estimated a 43.5 percent year-on-year increase of the value of online retail sales in Hong Kong, as its retail business flourishes once again under steady economic recovery.

A joint survey by KPMG China, GS1 Hong Kong and HSBC released in June this year showed that 60 percent of Hong Kong's "generation Z" consumers prefer a "contactless" shopping experience.

Louis Sham, senior head for e-commerce and marketing of the Hong Kong supermarket city'super, said that traffic for their online platform is five to six times more than usual within the first two hours after the "Double Eleven" sales started on Nov. 1.

GREAT CAPACITY IN E-COMMERCE

"Hong Kong local brands have great interest in expanding their business online," said CK Chan, Head of Hong Kong and Macao, Tmall Taobao World. Coupled with the effects of the consumption voucher scheme launched by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government and the annual "Double Eleven" event, Chan expects the number of businesses joining Tmall Hong Kong to be on the rise.

Under the pandemic, the market penetration rate of Hong Kong's e-commerce recorded a five-percent increase compared to pre-pandemic levels. "This change in the mode of shopping is closely related to the COVID-19 pandemic," said Katie Sham, Principal of Retail and Consumer Goods at Oliver Wyman.

Nevertheless, Hong Kong's e-commerce is still at its initial development stage compared to the mainland. Annie Yau Tse, Chairman of the Hong Kong Retail Management Association, stressed that businesses in Hong Kong should try their best to explore new sales platforms to adapt to changes in the current markets.