30% of China’s Singles Day deals weren’t actually deals at all

Image credit: Mike Senese

Every year in mid-November, China goes gaga for deals in the 24-hour shopping bonanza that is Singles Day on ecommerce platforms like JD.com and Alibaba’s Tmall. And every year, as people shell out billions of dollars, they walk away feeling like they’ve saved money. That’s a marketing trick, of course, and China’s Consumer Association has just released a report saying just that. According to the organization, 30 percent of Singles Day discount deals aren’t actually discounts at all.

Specifically, the Association looked at Singles Days sales with significant discounts (discounts of 50 percent off or more) on relatively popular products. It chose 94 such products across 12 different ecommerce platforms in 12 different product categories. It then checked the prices of those products again at two additional points: November 18th (one week after Singles Day) and December 5th (three and a half weeks after Singles Day).

On November 18th, 21 of the 94 products were sold out, and 45 had since raised their prices. That means that just a week after the sale, 28 products (or approximately 30 percent) were still being offered at the same price that had been labeled a massive discount on Singles Day. By December 5th, three of those 28 products had raised their prices, but amazingly seven of them had lowered prices to below the “discounted” Singles Day levels. In other words, a significant number of China’s Singles Day deals weren’t deals at all, and a few of them actually got cheaper after the sale ended.

The Association’s report also found cases of etailers posting artificially inflated list prices to make discounts look bigger than they actually were.

These are old sales tricks, of course, and they’re certainly not limited to China or Singles Day. But it’s interesting that such a significant percentage of the deals the China Consumer Association looked at were totally fake, with prices not rising at all after the sale and in a few cases even dropping further.

Given that 70 percent of Singles Day offerings were still solid discounts, it’s probably still a good idea for bargain-hunters to shop on the holiday. However, discerning shoppers may want to track the prices of the items they want for a little while leading up to Singles Day to be sure they’re not being taken for a ride with a “75 percent off” discount that’s actually just the item’s normal sales price.