Alibaba debuts 11.11 Global Shopping Festival in Malaysia

Alibaba’s B2C platform for brands, Tmall, has brought its 24-hour 11.11 Global Shopping Festival event to the Malaysia market. According to Bernama, Alibaba Group Tmall World Southeast Asia business development manager Cici Cai said Malaysia is a key market for the group. She added that Chinese consumers also have a preference for Malaysian products.“Buy Globally, Sell Globally” will also be a key focus of this year’s festival. As part of this initiative, Tmall will bring 100 Chinese brands overseas during 11.11. It will also offer special promotions targeting more than 100 million overseas Chinese consumers in Southeast Asia and around the world.The event has also been launched in Singapore this week, which is also considered one of the active buyer markets for 11.11 in the past few years, according to a statement. According to Charlene Zhang, business development manager of Tmall World, this year’s shopper experience will be enhanced for Singaporean shoppers with more localised services and discounts.Alibaba Group partnered with media network Publicis Media to prepare for the shopping event. In a statement, Alibaba's spokesperson added that Tmall aims to help brands grow with more consumers and their consumption lifecycle. Moving forward, Alibaba said it will continue to offer more valuable services to consumers, Tmall shop owners and the brands themselves.“In keeping with Alibaba’s new retail strategy, this year’s 11.11 will further demonstrate the value of combining the online and offline shopping experiences, infusing physical retail elements in social media, interactive content and entertainment,” a Tmall spokesperson said in a statement to A+M.This is not the first time Alibaba has made strides to bolster its presence in Malaysia and neighbouring Southeast Asia countries. In March this year, rumours emerged that it was tipped to be setting up a regional distribution hub in Malaysia. It also established an e-fulfillment center in Malaysia which forms part of Alibaba’s Electronic World Trading Platform (eWTP) strategy and advanced “Thailand 4.0″ to help Thai SMEs succeed in e-commerce.In June this year, Alibaba Group Holdings invested another US$1 billion in Southeast Asian e-commerce company Lazada Group, increasing its stake in the company from 51% to approximately 83%. It also rolled out Tmall World in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan to allow the 100 million Chinese citizens residing overseas, to purchase items from its retail site Tmall.In Singapore, it most recently unveiled plans to open a research lab in Singapore which focuses on foundational and disruptive technology research. It also invested an additional SG$$279.1 million into Singapore Post two years ago to to launch three new initiatives for collaboration and growth.