There are three major shopping festivals in China: double eleven (Nov. 11), double twelve (Dec. 12) and 6.18. It’s somewhat akin to Black Friday yet still slightly different. All these three festivals emerged in the past decade, and are promoted mainly by E-commerce platforms. They are basically artificial festivals tailored for consumerism.
Naturally (though still interesting and enjoyable to observe and experience), when online platforms started to offer huge discounts, local retail stores simultaneously begin to offer discounts. And these discounts sometimes don’t match.
Take H&M for an example (cause I went shopping there, recently). One H&M local retail stores holds a sale campaign of buy 300 gets 50 off on the basis of all stores’ global discounts. Similar things happen for various intergrative fashion brands. Price differentiates across platforms and purchase methods, and even for different stores.
So what happened? Maybe it’s the company’s deliberate design of price differentiation so as to do revenue management? Or is it just because of management chaos that makes it hard to align sale campaigns?
Either way, it makes shopping even more enjoyable.
think retail therapy my new addiction
–– 7 rings, Ariana Grande