Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is planning to create another online shopping event in the next two months, aimed at tapping rural consumers, the company said on Thursday, Nov 12.
According to China Daily, the e-commerce giant plans to hold the event to coincide with the upcoming Spring Festival in February.
Zhang Yong, chief executive officer of Alibaba, said that many rural consumers, like urban residents, have also become online shopping enthusiasts.
"The soon-to-be-launched shopping event will better serve rural consumers and bring more agricultural products to the dining tables of urban consumers," he said.
Alibaba's customer-to-customer site Taobao and its Rural Taobao business unit, which is dedicated to online shoppers in rural areas, will handle the planned Spring Festival event, the company said.
According to Sun Lijun, vice president of Alibaba in charge of Rural Taobao, the planned shopping gala aims to narrow the gap between urban and rural consumers.
"We want villagers to celebrate Lunar Chinese New Year with seafood from New Zealand and wine from France. That said, we also want urban residents to enjoy high-quality fresh produce delivered directly to their doorsteps," Sun said.
Globalization and going rural are top priorities for Alibaba, which is seeking further development. Last year, it announced plans to invest 10 billion yuan to provide e-commerce services in about 100,000 villages over the next three to five years.
In the first eight minutes of the Singles' Day online shopping festival on Nov. 11, rural shoppers poured more than 10 million yuan, which proved their buying power. The report said that people in 8,000 villages participated in the 24-hour sales on Wednesday. An order for a Porsche at about 500,000 yuan was the most expensive order of the day.
Alibaba, however, did not divulge details on the specific purchases made by rural shoppers, but said that orders for items such as TV sets, air conditioners, oil and shampoo were very popular.