A singularly successful sales ploy

If you do not live in China, you can be forgiven for not having heard of Singles Day.

Falling on Nov 11, the holiday began as a joke among Chinese college students in the 1990s as a version of Valentine's Day for people without romantic partners, because the date can also be written "11/11".

On that day people had dinners with their single friends and paid the bill separately to show their independence. There were also blind date parties aimed bringing couples together.

Seven years ago, Jack Ma, the chief executive of Alibaba Group, created Singles Day discount sales. Twenty-nine brands, all domestic of course, gave promotions and special sales on Nov 11 on the e-commerce platform and as the day ended, Alibaba announced it had sales worth 50 million yuan in 24 hours.

From then more e-commerce sites jumped on board, including Jingdong, Alibaba's biggest rival, China's second-largest business-to-consumer e-commerce site.

It has grown into China's biggest shopping extravaganza, and Chinese e-commerce sites are striving to transform it into a global shopping carnival.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 11/13/2015 page7)