E-shopping goes over the top

Online challenges

Jack Ma, founder and now executive chairman of Alibaba, expressed his willingness to turn Singles Day into a chance to reward consumers with high-quality and low-cost products. Yet, problems remain to be solved.

"I was waiting at the starting moment to secure some hot commodities, but it was almost impossible, since store owners only put a few products to offer," said Shi.

The sales records of some online stores show that transactions are very dense on November 11. Cao Lei, director of the China e-Business Research Center, believed that the promotion only created a slice of the sales in real terms.

"The sales in future months have been overshadowed by the crazy spending on Singles Day. It may take several months for durable consumer goods to restore demand," Cao said.

Low prices spur impulsive consumption, which causes low brand loyalty. "Three days after purchases, refund requests flooded in. And some stores have seen their refund rates as high as 30 percent," said Shi Zhongbo, president of Guangdong E-Commerce Promotion Association.

Some customers placed orders only for the sake of low prices without clearly identifying the functions and quality of the products they purchased. In such cases, refunds are inevitable.

Growth through impulse buying is how e-commerce professionals see the economic benefits brought by the online shopping carnival. "Aside from basic consumer goods, people are sensitive to quality as well as price," said Mo Daiqing, an analyst from China E-business Research Center, who argued that consumers will become more and more rational toward promotions that fall under the pretext of price cutting.

"To achieve sustainable growth, domestic e-commerce players should not just count on low-price tactics, but also make efforts to improve user experience," said Mo.

Spurring growth

Online shopping has evolved into a lifestyle in large cities. In Beijing, online retail sales topped 63.73 billion yuan ($10.46 billion) from January to September, exceeding that of department stores. Online sales contributed 40.2 percent in 18 consumer industries, according to statistics from the Beijing Municipal Commission of Commerce.

In the past three decades, China's consumer market has been mainly dependent on the physical sales network. As the online transaction pattern takes shape, domestic demand has been substantially ignited. In 2012, online retail sales made up 6.2 percent of total retail sales of consumer goods, according to Shanghai-based iResearch Consulting Group, a leading organization focusing on in-depth research in China's Internet industry.

In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises will benefit from the e-commerce expansion. According to statistics from Alibaba, its C2C website Taobao boasts 9 million online stores, and 3 million of them conduct active e-commerce business.

In terms of employment, the 9 million online stores alone will create hundreds of millions of jobs.

The Singles Day shopping carnival is not an e-business war, but a signal of economic transformation, the birth of a new economy, said Ma.