Amazon's Black Friday begins with fanfare

Tech behemoth Amazon.com Inc kicked off its Black Friday shopping spree on Friday by gathering deals from four overseas sites including the US, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany, as well as speeding up logistics and delivery operations.

Chinese consumers will enjoy discounts on more than 30 million authentic commodities covering over 480,000 international brands from Amazon Global Store, which covered the top destinations of China customers' cross-border shopping during the shopping carnival.

Black Friday, the start of the Christmas shopping season, is a major event. It features the highest discounts all year round and serves as a bonanza for brick-and-mortar retailers, e-commerce players and consumers from around the world.

An increasing number of Chinese consumers have participated in the global shopping festival, since Amazon China brought Black Friday to the country in 2014.

According to the report released by Amazon and DT Caijing under news outlet Yicai, the young generation aged from 25 to 34 made up 49 percent of all consumers who buy overseas products, and the percentage coming from residents of lower-tier cities is continuously increasing.

The report said cosmetics and personal care products are gaining traction among middle-class consumers, with horticultural products, furniture and electronic and digital goods seeing the most rapid growth during last year's Black Friday sales gala.

Makeup, personal care, small home appliances and watches were among the top 10 products in term of sales, and niche and high-end brands such as DeLonghi and Marshall are also favored by consumers from lower-tier cities and townships.