When you live in a country, you often think that the normal holidays or gatherings that happen in your country are the same as every other country. For example, everyone celebrates New Years because the calendar everyone uses changes. National holiday for the country’s founding is a celebration although that can be throughout the year, but we all celebrate a country’s birthday. Then there are the made-up days which tend to apply to various countries.

In an article by Zen Soo of the Associated Press, in November 11,2009 on-line service provider and e-commerce platform Alibaba started a sales event aimed a singles by offering attractive discounts to use Alibaba and spend money. The extravaganza is known as Double 11 and other on-line service providers such as JD.com and Pinduoduo also matched the sales promotions.

In China, the Double 11 event has a sales promotion attached to it as well as the normal promotional banners and posters and social media ads.

The event used to bring in double digit sales growth and that is why it has continued but China’s economy is not what it used to be and now sales are in the low single digits. Alibaba tried to expand the pie by offering free global shipping and allowing merchants to sell worldwide with ease. On one of Alibaba’s companies called Alizila a post said 70,000 merchants saw sales double with free shipping. In new markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong, new customers also doubled.

Even though the sales growth is single digits, expect the event to continue next year.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, every company loves to have customers all over the globe but when you do, it is important to ensure that globally your company accents the holidays and shopping habits of the country outside where the headquarters is.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.