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Suzhou to raise profile of its Double 12 shopping festival

Suzhou Bureau of Commerce | Updated:2021-09-22 16:48


The launch ceremony of Suzhou's Double 12 shopping festival. [Photo/Suzhou Bureau of Commerce]

The city of Suzhou - located in East China's Jiangsu province - plans to make its Double 12 shopping festival an annual event due to its effectiveness in spurring consumer spending and in increasing domestic demand, according to Xu Kunlin, the city's Party secretary.

The event was widely viewed as an innovative move to develop the digital economy and build a better retailing platform for Suzhou's products.

Compared with existing marketing and shopping promotions, it was regarded as a new concept that broke geographical restrictions and made it possible for people outside Suzhou to shop through the services of online retail giant JD.com.

Another significant breakthrough was reportedly the introduction of the digital renminbi to the event.

Some 20 million yuan ($3.06 million) worth of digital currency was distributed to residents in the form of 100,000 virtual red packets worth 200 yuan each, via a random draw.

Customers who won in the random draw were able to spend their red packets through the official digital renminbi app in designated physical shops and online via JD.com. The payments could even be done when the mobile network was unavailable.

Thanks to the stimulus created by the festival, the city's total retail sales of consumer goods reportedly reached 770.2 billion yuan in 2020, down 1.4 percent year-on-year, but 0.2 percentage points higher than the province's average and 2.5 percentage points higher than the country's average.

Of that, the total retail sales in November and December surged to 76.97 billion yuan and 76.66 billion yuan, up 9.7 percent and 11.75 percent year-on-year respectively, pointing the way to the resumption of a good momentum in the retail market.

In December, the city's online retail sales for Alibaba platforms like Tmall, Taobao and Juhuasuan reportedly increased 23 percent year-on-year. The retail sales of companies above a designated size - those with annual sales of 20 million or more - also responded positively during the month.

These included sales of manufacturers which rose 8.1 percent year-on-year, petroleum and related products up 3.1 percent, as well as consumer goods like grain, oil, food and clothes – all up more than 10 percent.

It is understood that due to the event, both online and offline spending has been stimulated in the city and local bricks-and-mortar businesses have received a positive charge from the digital economy.

The city's retail sales transacted on public networks hit 72.56 billion yuan, up 26.4 percent year-on-year.