Yuki, an e-commerce streamer in Macau, has been busy preparing for the "Double Eleven" shopping carnival for over 20 days.
"As I speak Cantonese, I mainly serve residents living in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area [GBA] by sharing products for new mothers, infants, children, as well as home decoration and household electrical appliances," she told Xinhua in a recent interview.
The annualshopping festival, also known as "Double Eleven" for taking place on November 11, is now one of the largest online shopping sprees worldwide that can serve as a barometer for the nation’s consumer confidence.
With the number "1" to resemble a single man, it was initiated as a shopping festival by Alibaba in 2009 for bachelors. Later other e-commerce platforms followed suit.
The growing influence of the "Double Eleven" has not only enriched shopping experiences for Macau residents, but also offered mainland consumers the chance to buy made-in-Macau products and travel to the Macau Special Administrative Region (MSAR) at a lower cost
As a city highly dependent on tourism, some hotels in Macau offered promotional deals on accommodation while Air Macau put on sale discounted tickets. Aomi, a major online platform for food delivery in Macau, offered 11,111 blind boxes for food at the price of just one pataca each.
Acen Jiang Haitao, founder of Aomi, said the platform witnessed transactions topping 31 million patacas in the run-up to this year's "Double Eleven," an increase of over 30 percent from the same period last year.
The country's e-commerce platform giants Taobao and Tmall have joined hands with businesses both in the mainland and Macau to bring about new shopping experiences online and offline for Macau consumers with all-round discounts including for logistics. Residents in Macau usually have to pay extra delivery charges when purchasing goods from the mainland due to customs clearance.
Vincent Chow, founder of a cross-border e-commerce company in Hengqin, said traditional delicacies from Macau such as egg tarts and dried meat usually sell the best during the annual "Double Eleven" shopping festivals.
Imported electronic devices and cosmetics are also popular among mainland consumers, Chow added.
Besides joining the national shopping bonanza, Macau is also creating its own e-commerce festival. Starting yesterday until the end of the year, Macau is hosting its fourth e-commerce festival spanning across the "Double Eleven" and "Double Twelve”(December 12), two nationwide shopping sprees, as well as Christmas, a traditional shopping season, in an effort to promote e-commerce platforms in Macau and across its border with the mainland.
Rainbow Lei, president of the Macau International Industrial Technology Development Association, said the application and development of science and technology have fully demonstrated their importance during the epidemic, adding that this year's e-commerce festival is aimed at pushing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to adopt electronic services.
For Macau, businesses operated in Hengqin were an innovative phenomenon for this year's "Double Eleven." In September this year, the central authorities issued a general plan for setting up the Guangdong-Macau In-depth Cooperation Zone in Hengqin as a major arrangement to enrich the practice of "One Country, Two Systems" in Macau and boost the Macau Special Administrative Region's appropriate economic diversification.
Silver Secret, a company specializing in materials technology, sells fabric containing up to 18 percent of pure silver, which, as the brand's e-commerce streamer said, can help fight bacteria, deodorize and remove mites.
The company said its sales for three days leading up to the "Double Eleven" had more than doubled the overall revenue during last year's shopping festival.
Chow said thanks to more and more e-commerce talents, Macau can take advantage of it close ties with Portuguese-speaking countries, as well as innovate service trade models in Hengqin to develop its cross-border e-commerce industry, so as to help products from those countries enter the mainland market more conveniently.
The cross-border e-commerce platform in Hengqin can serve SMEs in Macau as well as the international market, he added. – Xinhua
