What began as a day to celebrate the singledom of students at Nanjing University in 1993 turned into one of the world’s biggest shopping festivals, thanks to commerce giant company Alibaba in 2009, and Singaporean consumers as well as businesses, particularly e-commerce ones, are not exempt from the hype surrounding 11.11.
A recent study by iPrice Group has identified several trends utilised by leading e-commerce players in garnering the interest of Singaporeans towards the 11.11 shopping deals, as well as the spending habits and patterns of Singaporeans throughout 11.11, namely the following:
- Search interest for 11.11 peaking twice a week before the event;
- Merchants introducing various types of promotions;
- In-app games appearing to be trending in 2018;
- Credit cards being the most popular payment method amongst Singaporeans; and
- New features to cater the high demand on 11.11 such as same-day delivery and live streaming on social media platforms.
Search Interest for 11.11 Peaked Twice a Week Before the Event
Singaporeans appear to be highly interested in the 11.11 shopping event, as observed in the search interest for the term 11.11 via Google Trends a week before the event, according to iPrice.
Greater interest was observed in 11.11 on 28 Oct, with a gradual increase before reaching the peak of its popularity on 30 Oct.
Shopee, the e-commerce merchant backed by Sea, launched its 11.11 campaign on 29 Oct, which iPrice suggested “might be one of the factors that contributed to the huge spike of interest in 11.11 on the same day as shown by Google Trends.”
However, the search interest showed a slight drop on the last day of October. The volume of the search interest rose again upon entering the month of 11.11 before reaching its peak of interest on 3 Nov.
Qoo10, the most visited e-commerce website in Singapore began promoting its 11.11 online shopping campaign on Facebook on 1 Nov. EZBuy was seen launching their 11.11 campaign on the same social media platform two days later.
Singaporeans, in response, appear to be receptive towards the promotions, showing “high interest” even a week before the official sales day.
Promotions highly focused on mobile applications; “in-app games” appear to be in trend this year
According to marketing technology company Criteo, online sales for Singapore during 11.11 last year rose 60 per cent compared to 2016, and all online engagements — including browsing and purchasing — were also reported to be 2.4 times higher between both years.
There’s a shift in term of the trends in promotion for 11.11 this year. E-commerce merchants are introducing various new ways of marketing, whereby some discounts and promotions can only be obtained by downloading the mobile applications. For example, the in-app games offer very attractive deals such as vouchers for selected brands and virtual coins, which can be used to save on purchases.
Shopee introduces Flash Deals reminders to notify users when new deals are released. These mobile-focused promotions share a similar trait whereby they encourage interactions between users and mobile applications. It also allows users to spend more time on the apps and provide more visibility to other products and offers.
According to Go-globe, e-commerce user penetration is expected to increase to 68.3 per cent compared to 64.7 per cent last year. Therefore, 11.11 Singles’ Day is one golden opportunity for all e-commerce merchants to boost not only their sales, but to also gain a deeper understanding on shoppers’ interests.
Compared to last year, in-app games are being featured by more merchants this year. Such games mainly allow users to grab vouchers, virtual coins and other benefits which help users to save more on purchases.
For example, Lazada introduced Wonderland, which allows users to grab the vouchers from their favourite brands. Shopee Shake allows users to earn coins that can be used to save more on their purchases.
Merchants Introduce Various Types of Promotion
The 11.11 Singles’ Day shopping festivals saw more e-commerce merchants participate compared to the previous year. To attract the consumers, they can be seen offering different types of promotion from interaction on the app, flash deals, delivery and more.
Credit card “the most popular payment method” among Singaporeans on 11.11
All merchants can also be seen partnering with various banks to offer more promotions for the consumers.
According to State of E-commerce 2017, credit card is the most popular payment method offered by all merchants in Singapore. Therefore, it’s not surprising to see credit card is also included as part of 11.11 promotion to encourage users to buy during the festival.
Qoo10 can be seen to be the merchants partnering with the highest number of banks at 8 as stated on their 11.11 page. Some of the banks included are Standard Chartered, American Express, HSBC, UOB and more.
New initiatives and measures to meet the high demand on 11.11
As one of the most anticipated shopping festivals, e-commerce merchants are introducing new initiatives to grab the interest of users. Lazada Singapore CEO Alexis Lanternier said that social selling is becoming an important decision-maker for shoppers. As a result, Lazada has introduced a new element named “in-app live-streaming,” which will allow customers to shop directly from the stream and engage with the brands and personalities in real time.
Meanwhile, Qoo10 introduced QX Quick, which allows shoppers to enjoy scheduled or same day delivery. Manager of Qoo10 Singapore Mr Cho Hyunwook said that it has made “significant upgrades” to its backend systems, which have helped the platform create two time slots for dispatching deliveries compared to only once per day previously.
More information on the methodology used in iPrice Group’s study on 11.11 can be found here.
