Tag: mobile commerce trend

The Chinese mega-giant company has worked hard to broaden its global reach this year.

Singles Day mobile commerce predictions continue to roll in as the big day approaches on November 11. Alibaba has made tremendous efforts to help to bolster its own successes on this unique Chinese day. At the same time, it is hoping to encourage a growing number of consumers to participate.

That said, most analytics firms have agreed that the participation in Singles Day 2016 should break records.

Millions of people have already been making Singles Day mobile commerce purchases. Alibaba’s CEO, Jack Ma, is hoping to be able to use this m-commerce trend to achieve greater results outside of China, as well. Though Singles Day was invented in China and is celebrated primarily there, Alibaba is looking to use it as a jumping off point.

November 11 is Veterans day in the United States. This makes it unlikely to be a great date to try to carry Singles Day over to this part of the world. That said, the company is hoping to keep the shopping momentum going in the US as the holiday season follows closely on its heels.

Singles Day mobile commerce is a more recent phenomenon that started over desktop in 1993.

The day was created by a group of male Nanjing University students. They decided that 11/11 was the perfect numerical date to represent a celebration of being single. Though it had a slow start and was limited to a small local movement over e-commerce, Alibaba made it big. The company decided to take hold of the movement, which saw growing popularity, and monetize it.

By 2009, the company’s massive e-commerce platforms, Taobao and Tmall, were raking in cash through online purchases. The first Singles Day observance brought an estimated $7 million in sales. Even in a market the size of China, that figure is impressive, though not at all tremendous. By 2010, far more retaielers were on board, including one of the main rivals of Alibaba in China, JD.com.

The next year, Alibaba alone generated $820 million in sales. By last year, that figure had risen to $9.3 billion, credited greatly to Singles Day mobile commerce trends. Since 2012 the sales have been greater than those seen on Cyber Monday in the United States and it is expected that they will be even higher this year.

This online marketplace appears to be the top starting point for people looking for products.

When it comes to the search for information, Google still reigns supreme, but when consumers have a product in mind, the mobile shopping trends now show that Amazon is the place where they are most likely to start.

A recent study has shown that 45 percent of mobile shoppers look to Amazon first when seeking a product.

While 63 percent of mobile consumers will still use Google when they are trying to find information about a topic or a product, when the time comes that they actually want to make a purchase, their attention is turned to Amazon for that first query, 45 percent of the time. The mobile shopping trends study was conducted in the form of an analysis of tracking data with regards to the decision process of a panel made up of 2,000 mobile shoppers, online. The study was conducted by both Pymnts and Amazon, which are both companies involved in mobile payments.

They discovered some very insightful mobile shopping trends, regarding searching behaviors.

What they discovered was that when consumers want to buy something online 64 percent will begin by conducting a search at an online marketplace, while another 48 percent will begin their effort at a specific favorite merchant. Only 40 percent started a shopping experience by using a search engine.

In terms of mobile commerce, this searching trend does make a great deal of sense, as these devices are not used in the same way as laptops and desktops. Someone who is trying to find a product while using a smartphone is much more likely to be conducting a search for something specific, and may be looking for the item based on their current location, as opposed to absolutely everything that is available online.

While many laptop and desktop users conduct searches with the intention to buy online, mobile shopping trends show that many of their product queries are for products that they want to better understand but then purchase in a brick and mortar shop. They will often try to ensure that the retailer does sell the product, that it is in stock, and that they have the best price that can be found locally.