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Alibaba's global shopping fair engages consumers in virtual reality
Alibaba Group's one-day global online sale has gone beyond an e-commerce event to engaging consumers in the form of augmented reality, social media and entertainment to shop.
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Alibaba Group co-founder and vice chairman Joseph Tsai briefs the media about the one-day online sale event 11.11 Global Shopping Day, the world's largest e-commerce event, in Shenzhen, China, on Nov. 10. (JP/Esther Samboh/JP/Esther Samboh)
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libaba Group's one-day global online sale has gone beyond an e-commerce event to engaging consumers in the form of augmented reality, social media and entertainment to shop.
This year, the 11.11 Alibaba Group Global Shopping Day, which would run the whole of Friday, introduced the use of virtual reality (VR) by which shoppers could browse products of eight stores with a VR headset to assess the goods before buying them, the Chinese e-commerce giant announced. Stores participating in the VR program include Macy's, Target, Costco, P&G, Chemist Warehouse, Freedom Foods, Tokyo Otaku Mode and Matsumoto, part of the over 11,000 international brands that join in the fair.
The global online shopping event also rolled out interactive games and partnerships with over one million brick-and-mortar shops, including a Pokemon Go-like mobile application to catch the Tmall cat mascot in offline locations of Tmall merchants in shopping malls to persuade foot traffic to the merchants. In return, consumers can earn special prizes such as free subscriptions to Alibaba's Youku TV.
"[The use of all this] technology [is] to improve [the] consumer retail experience, I would say you're looking at the future of retail. The future of retail is in China, not anywhere else," Alibaba Group's co-founder and vice chairman Joseph Tsai told a media briefing on Thursday in Shenzhen, China.
The 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, which expanded from China's Singles Day that previously targeted singles with deals and discounts for one day, is now the world's biggest e-commerce event with around US$14.3 billion worth of transactions set to be made in the one-day event, where last year it took place in 232 countries and regions around the world.
As of midday Friday, the value of transactions already almost matched last year's figure of more than $12 billion with 207 countries and regions involved in the transactions.
