China's Singles Day sales rise 4.8% to $1.78 trillion; AI takes larger role

BEIJING, Nov 12 (Reuters) - Sales during China's Singles' Day shopping festival rose 4.8% from a year earlier to 1.78 trillion yuan ($267 billion), data provider Syntun said on Thursday, as e-commerce platforms used chatbots to drive sales of AI-related products and other discounted goods.v

The estimate, covering sales across major e-commerce platforms during the October 7 to November 11 promotion period, is one of the few gauges of overall spending during the annual retail event.

The Singles' Day campaign unfolded against a backdrop of subdued consumer confidence, as a prolonged property downturn, weak income expectations and job insecurity weighed on spending.

This year's sales growth compared with a rise of 14.2% for last year's festival.

The festival, once concentrated on a single day, has become a weeks-long promotional season, with platforms competing through subsidies, low prices, livestreaming and AI-enabled shopping tools.

It was not immediately clear how much of an impact those chatbots - which recommend, direct and complete purchases - had in driving sales.

Alibaba's 9988.HK Taobao and Tmall and JD.com 9618.HK no longer release headline gross merchandise value figures, instead highlighting performance in selected categories, brands and user metrics.

AI emerged as a more prominent theme in this year's campaign. JD.com said it sold more than 50 million AI-related products and generated more than 300 million service orders during the promotional period.

Transaction value for AI PCs, AI workstations, AI cameras, AI glasses and AI recording devices more than doubled from a year earlier, it said, while searches for "token" rose more than 13-fold from the preceding period. And sales of large-language-model token packages increased more than tenfold. Tokens are units of computing that people buy to use AI models.

Alibaba highlighted the performance of newer brands, including those tied to emerging technological and consumer trends. From October 15 to October 27, 333 brands that had been launched for no more than three years ranked first in specialised categories, including AI companion robot maker Fuzozo and Silicon Valley-based smart-sleep company Eight Sleep.

Liu Xingliang, a Beijing-based independent technology analyst, said Singles' Day is not as lively as it used to be as there are many more promotions throughout the year.

"And when a sales event is spread over several weeks, the sense that 'I have to grab deals tonight' fades," he said.

($1 = 6.6703 Chinese yuan renminbi)