Chinese e-commerce giants stay mum about sales figures for 618 shopping festival
CHINESE e-commerce giants JD.com and Alibaba Group have remained tight-lipped about their full sales results for this year’s 618 sales extravaganza, a sign that the recovery of consumer spending in the world’s second-largest economy might be proceeding more slowly than anticipated.
Sales on JD.com grew “more than expected” and “reached a new record” during the Jun 18 event, after the number of products involved in a 10 billion yuan (S$1.9 billion) company-initiated subsidy programme jumped ten-fold from March, the company said in a social media post on Monday (Jun 19).
The Beijing-based company also said that the number of online merchants and physical stores participating in the event rose to “a new record”.
Meanwhile, Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Business Group said in an article published on its news-sharing site Alizila that a record number of merchants on the Taobao and Tmall platforms participated in the shopping festival this year.
After midnight on Jun 18, the group reported that 305 brands racked up sales of more than 100 million yuan each on the two sites. The combined gross merchandise value (GMV) of 2.56 million small and mid-size companies topped last year’s festival, contributing to a two to three-fold year-on-year increase in total GMV, the company said.
The 618 event is China’s second-largest shopping festival after the Double 11 shopping extravaganza in November. It typically runs from late May until Jun 18.
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This year’s festival was closely watched by market analysts, as it serves as one of many key indicators of how fast consumer spending in China has rebounded since Beijing lifted strict Covid-19 restrictions at the end of last year.
JD.com’s sales rose 6 per cent to 8 per cent over this year’s 618 festival period, Reuters reported, citing a client note from Citi analysts. That beat Citi’s expectations of 2 per cent to 5 per cent growth.
That estimate was, however, still less than the 10.3 per cent growth logged for JD.com’s GMV last year and the 27.7 per cent growth in 2021, Reuters added.
Growth in retail sales slowed to 12.7 per cent year on year last month from 18.4 per cent in April, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics last Thursday.
This was weighed on by low consumer confidence due to slow income improvement, a weak property market, tightened local government spending, and pay cuts in some public and economic sectors, according to UBS Investment Bank economists. CAIXIN GLOBAL
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