week5 - 全球購物狂歡節(光棍節)

More than $1 billion worth of goods were sold over Alibaba Group’s e-commerce platforms within the first 20 minutes of this year’s 11.11 Shopping Festival, with nearly half of all transactions taking place via mobile devices.

The milestone—$1 billion in total GMV (gross merchandise volume)—was reached on Nov. 11 at 12:17 a.m. During the 24-hour sale last year, it took about an hour to reach the $1 billion mark for all transactions on Alibaba Group’s retail platforms.

Nearly 48 percent of the sale's first $1 billion in GMV were transactions placed by smartphones and other mobile devices. Mobile GMV surpassed RMB 1 billion ($163 million) less than five minutes after the sale began.

The start of the annual e-shopathon was witnessed by more than 500 journalists who were on hand at an auditorium at Alibaba Group’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China. There, they watched  the sales totals climb on a large monitor, which displayed other near-real-time statistics and geographical data such as regions in China where online purchasing was hottest.

Alibaba Group is rolling out the sale worldwide this year. The strongest overseas traffic was coming from Hong Kong, the U.S. and Taiwan.

“Behind the scenes and behind the numbers are millions of merchants and millions of partners who worked together with us to create this festival for consumers,” Alibaba Group COO Daniel Zhang told reporters prior to the start of the sale. The largest 24-hour online sale in the world, the 11.11 Shopping Festival this year involves some 27,000 merchants and brands selling over Alibaba shopping websites Tmall.com, Taobao Marketplace, AliExpress and Tmall Global.

Last year’s 24-hour sale saw $5.8 billion worth of goods transacted over Alibaba Group’s Tmall.com and Taobao Marketplace platforms, making it the biggest shopping day in the world, topping the sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

The sale this year will be another test of Alibaba’s expanding e-commerce ecosystem, which includes not only its online shopping platforms but also affiliate companies such as e-payments provider Alipay and China Smart Logistics, a consortium of shipping and delivery companies. “This is a very unique phenomenon for the ecosystem,” Zhang said of the 11.11 Shopping Festival. “This cannot be done by just one company but it can be done by an ecosystem.”

With more and more Chinese consumers shopping on mobile phones this year, Zhang said prior to the sale, Tmall.com and Taobao Marketplace used so-called “big data” technology to optimize the 11.11 shopping experience, using software algorithms to predict and display items they may like on their mobile phones. “What we are doing this year is to give people a more data-driven and personalized (mobile) pages so people can access the content they are interested in,” Zhang said.

Previous 11.11 Shopping Festivals have been limited largely to the mainland. But for the first time this year, AliExpress, Alibaba Group’s English-language consumer shopping platform will be participating, offering 50 percent off on one million products to customers overseas. The AliExpress sale will start at midnight PST. Chinese consumers will also be able to buy discounted imports through Tmall Global.

http://www2.alizila.com/online-shopping-binge-gets-strong-start

Structure of Lead:
WHO- Alibaba Group
WHAT- over 1 billian worth of good were sold by Alibaba group
WHEN- November 11st
WHERE- not mentioned
WHY-  not mentioned
HOW- through mobile devices

Keywords:
1. transaction  交易
2. gross merchandise volume 商品交易總額
3. surpass 超過
4. roll out 推出
5. affiliate 子公司
6. optimize 優化
7. algorithm 算法
8. retail platform 零售平台
9. headquarter 總部
10. geographical 地域