With Black Friday and Cyber Monday offering customers in the US some pretty huge discounts, it is not surprising that many would hold back from a purchase and wait for those days to place their orders, thus resulting in an influx of sales. Over in China, they have something similar called the 11.11 Shopping Festival where back in 2012, Chinese shoppers managed to rack up a shopping bill that put the combined expenses of online shopping during Black Friday and Cyber Monday to shame. However it looks like 2013’s 11.11 Shopping Festival might have broken some records with a recorded 1 billion yuan (about $160 million) spent in the first 6 minutes alone.
About half a day in, the company managed to break its last year’s record for the entire day, so we can only imagine how much money would have been spent by the end of the day. According to Alibaba, the Chinese company that runs Taobao and Tmall online marketplaces where consumers do their shopping online, this record was hit at 1:04PM and showed no signs of slowing down. China’s 11.11 Shopping Festival began back in 2009 where multiple merchants of Tmall started to offer discounts as a means to increase sales and has been continued as a tradition ever since. Yikes!
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