Singles Day 2020, China’s answer to Black Friday, is increasingly using online gaming to incentivize shoppers for this year's event.
Reports from inside China reveal that many e-commerce platforms are offering deals if individuals complete tasks within in-app mini games.
“In general, e-commerce in China has become more than just filling your cart and clicking ‘checkout’. It is becoming even more engaging and social,” Allison Malmsten, China market analyst at Daxue Consulting, told the South China Morning Post. “Many mobile users shop as a form of entertainment, and brands are getting more competitive to keep and maintain user attention. Selling products alone just doesn’t cut it anymore.”
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Alibaba and JD.com, two of the country’s largest online shopping platforms, have confirmed that they will each distribute 2 billion yuan ($302.5 million) through virtual games to shoppers this year. While many of the discounts offered are small, for lower-income households they can make a significant difference to their purchasing power.
Back in the game
Singles Day was originally created by Alibaba as a way of giving individuals without a romantic partner a reason to splash the cash. Since its establishment, however, it has more broadly come to represent a huge shopping extravaganza for those with partners or without.
Evidently, however, the frenzy has roped in the world of gaming too. During last year’s Singles Day, it was reported that a skyscraper building game that offered shopping coupons and was produced by Taoboa, an Alibaba subsidiary, was played by more than 400 million people – nearly half of all China’s internet users.
Not everyone is a fan of the mini games, however. Some Chinese shoppers have complained that the time required to earn deals means that they simply aren’t worth it and others have argued that they are intrusive, particularly when family and friends pester them to play together to gain more rewards.
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