E-commerce sites promise proper Singles' Day promotions

Regulator orders firms to ensure discounts are genuine

Several Chinese e-commerce companies said on Monday that they will strictly self-regulate their promotional activities on the expected peak shopping day on November 11, which is called "Singles' Day" in China, in response to a regulatory agency's recent talks with them to regulate their online sales.

Singles' Day was initially created by young Chinese people to celebrate their single life, but has become a day for shopping in the past few years.

"All retailers who will participate in promotions on tmall.com on Singles' Day should obey the rules strictly set up by our website," Zhang Lei, a public relations manager at Alibaba Group, China's largest e-commerce website, told the Global Times Monday.

To avoid unscrupulous practices by retailers, such as intentionally raising the price of goods before promotions, then dropping the price and claiming it is a huge discount during the promotion period to attract consumers, tmall.com requires sales price for items on Singles' Day to be the lowest offered by retailers in the past three months (starting from September 15 to the end of November), according to Zhang.

Also, the sales prices offered by the retailers should be more than 50 percent lower than their counter prices in physical stores, said Zhang.

To ease concerns about returning items bought on Singles' Day, jd.com, another leading Chinese e-commerce website, has initiated a guarantee fund of 10 million yuan ($1.63 million). If third-party retailers on jd.com do not review applications for returns of goods within 48 hours after being submitted by consumers, jd.com will fully refund consumers by using the guarantee fund, according to a company statement e-mailed to the Global Times on Monday.

The companies' declaration followed a recent "talk" between State Administration for Industry & Commerce (SAIC) and 10 Chinese leading e-commerce companies including Alibaba Group, parent company of tmall.com and taobao.com.

The SAIC met with 10 Chinese e-commerce companies Friday, demanding that the companies avoid doing anything illegal in their promotions, according to a report posted on the official website of SAIC on Sunday.

Any problems with promotions for Singles' Day such as false discounts, misleading offers and online buyer ratings about items should be resolved to protect consumers, Gan Lin, deputy head at SAIC, said during talks with the enterprises.

Mao Shaoqing, public relations manager at yhd.com, a Chinese online grocery store, told the Global Times on Monday that the "talks" initiated by the SAIC mainly focused on rules about price-fixing and misleading advertisements, and yhd.com has always obeyed the rules and laws on these two areas.

"The only challenge for yhd.com on Singles' Day is to deal with the sudden increased number of orders on that day," Mao noted.

The retail sales volume online boomed during last year's Singles' Day.

Alibaba Group, which owns China's largest online shopping platforms tmall.com and taobao.com, announced on November 12, 2013 that it had achieved record sales of 35 billion yuan on Singles' Day.

E-commerce retailers have already started preparations for their promotions for the upcoming Singles' Day this year. Their websites showed many items that were claimed to be 50 percent off, with some even supposedly 90 percent off, while retailers suggested consumers pay up front or add the items to their online shopping carts in advance.

Usually the most popular items sold on Singles' Day include underwear, diapers, baby milk formula, mobile phones and home appliances.

Chinese consumers have become more cautious about shopping on Singles' Day. Some said they have noticed that huge advertised discounts were based on marked-up prices according to their previous shopping experience.

"This year, I have looked at several items that I plan to buy at least two months in advance to make sure they are being sold at the cheapest price," Zhao Dan, a 27-year-old white-collar worker in Beijing, told the Global Times Monday.