Name : Arsalna Anggraini

NIM : 42203912
Class : D3Administrasi Publik

Singles Day Achieves Record $25 Billion

Singles Day is the biggest e-commerce day in the world. Organized by China’s Alibaba,
shopping sales on November 11 hit a record $25 billion, 40% more than on Singles Day 2016.
In contrast, Prime Day, organized by Amazon achieved only $1 billion in sales. During the
Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend of 2016 American online shoppers spent $5 billion.
Singles Day started out as an informal holiday in China, celebrating people who stayed single.
Similar to Valentine’s Day in the western world Singles Day took place on 11/11. In 2009,
Alibaba turned it into a shopping holiday and in the past 8 years, sales have steadily increased.
Although the event targets mostly Chinese customers, shoppers came from 220 countries. Over
80 brands took part in the event, with Nike and Xiaomi Corp. among the biggest winners.
Household goods and electrical appliances were the most bought products, but customers
sought bargains for almost everything, ranging from cheap toilet paper to rice.
At its peak Alibaba’s computers handled 250 000 transactions per second, most of them
coming in via mobile phones. In the weeks before the event was held, Alibaba had helped
600,000 companies upgrade their computer systems to make them fit for Singles Day. The
event was also turned into a gala in Shanghai where celebrities Nicole Kidman and tennis star
Maria Sharapova counted down the seconds until the world’ largest sales event started.
Many critics of the event say that Singles Day is environmentally controversial. It
creates an enormous amount of waste. According to Greenpeace, 1 billion packages were
delivered in the days that followed the event. Alibaba’s Singles Day is a display of Chinese
spending power. The company’s owner, Jack Ma, is one of China’s richest men. He has been
investing heavily in new technologies including automated stores which use facial recognition
systems