Singles Day shows new consumption trends

The "health economy" has grown sharply during this year's Singles Day shopping spree which started Sunday, the National Business Daily reported.

A presale campaign running since Oct 21 saw a 132 percent rise in sales for vaccine services in the first hour of the campaign from a year earlier in AliHealth, Alipay and Tmall. Masks, thermometers, sphygmomanometers and more medical products have gone viral, so to speak, becoming "necessities" for daily life.

In the first 30 minutes of the Singles Day shopping spree starting Nov 1, the sales volume of medical products surged 220 percent on the JD Health platform year-on-year. Among this surge, traditional Chinese medical products increased over six times and thermometers over 10 times. Mask sales surpassed that of the whole year of 2019 in five minutes.

In addition, data from multiple e-commerce platforms showed health products for vision, vitamins, probiotics and cubilose were bestsellers on the first day of the shopping spree.

This year, livestreaming has become a new driving force for sales. JD recorded sales volume of 100 million yuan ($14.96 million) in 10 seconds via livestream on the evening of Oct 31. The Huawei Mate 40 Porsche version was sold out in nine seconds during the Suning livestream hosted by actor Jia Nailiang on the shopping spree's eve.

Douyin and Kuaishou also attracted more followers by livestreaming during this year's Singles Day.