The Double-Eleven Shopping Festival and Online Sales: Evidence from China’s E-Commerce Platforms

Abstract

Big promotional events are a driving force in online retail because they have influenced consumer behavior and altered the definition of platform competition. China’s “Double Eleven” shopping festival is one of the world’s largest e-commerce campaigns. It provides a unique environment for studying how concentrated promotional events affect online marketplaces. Using Double Eleven as a case study, this study investigates the impact of the company on online sales performance, paying close attention to platform competition, transaction scale, and customer purchasing patterns. The study’s combination of case study and data analysis methods yields three important conclusions. First off, Double Eleven significantly boosts sales volume, and both consumer engagement and Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) rise sharply. Second, by concentrating demand into specific categories and establishing cyclical buying patterns, it is redefining consumption patterns. Thirdly, it is linked to certain problems like merchant dependence, consumer fatigue, and waning brand loyalty, even though it supports the top-down position of dominant platforms. The research contributes to the comprehensive examination of the influence of extensive advertising campaigns in creating an online marketplace and offers significant insights for platforms, businesses, and policymakers seeking to strike a balance between immediate and long-term financial gain.