Alibaba breaks '11.11' records, pilots AI search engine for businesses
Alibaba Group is reporting a successful Global Shopping Festival sales extravaganza and AI-enabling search for business-to-business buyers and sellers on its platform.
As usual, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. did not release specific sales figures for its 16th annual 11.11 Shopping Festival (also known colloquially as "11.11" or "Singles Day"), but its Taobao and Tmall Group China commerce retail business announced robust growth in gross merchandise volume (GMV) and a record number of active buyers.
Highlights from Taobao and Tmall's 2024 11.11 Shopping Festival include a record 589 brands surpassing roughly $13.8 million (or 100 million Chines yuan) in GMV, up from 402 brands that did so in 2023. Forty-five brands exceeded roughly $138 million (or 1 billion Chinese yuan) in GMV, including Apple and Nike.
In addition, the number of members of the 88VIP Taobao and Tmall loyalty program who placed orders increased by over 50% year-over-year. Sales cover the period from Oct. 14 – Nov. 11, 2024.
"Consumer participation in this year’s 11.11 reached a historic high, underscoring the impact of our ongoing efforts to enhance the consumer experience and setting the industry benchmark for business operating environment for merchants," said Bo Liu, VP of Alibaba Group and president of Tmall.
Alibaba releases proprietary AI search solution for global small businesses
In an email to Chain Store Age, an Alibaba Group spokesperson said the company’s Alibaba International division is introducing the beta of Accio, an AI-based business-to-business search engine for small and medium-sized buyers and sellers on its platform worldwide.
To help buyers gain access to a greater pool of global suppliers, Accio is intended to index all business-to-business sellers around the world and expand Alibaba's existing global seller ecosystem.
Accio is built to enable searches in natural languages, allowing users to interact with the search engine in a more intuitive and conversational manner. Currently, the solution supports searches in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and German.
In addition, the Accio Page feature offers a dynamic, Wikipedia-style interface that reconstructs product information that provides objective product details and comparisons with similar items in natural language.
Complementing this feature, Accio Agent simplifies the follow-up process for inquiries, payments, and after-sales support and is designed to effectively act as a professional sourcing agent through Alibaba's infrastructure.
Alibaba expands AI efforts
In November 2023, Alibaba International Digital Commerce Group introduced its "Aidge" generative AI toolkit, with features including a virtual try-on tool for apparel and a 24/7 AI customer service capability.
[READ MORE: Alibaba to sell AI technology aimed at small- to mid-sized businesses]
Since April 2023, Alibaba International says it has assembled an AI business team of 100 experts and continues to hire new members. A number of other major global retailers have also launched their own AI platforms intended for use by the wider retail and supply chain industries.
These include Chinese direct retailer JD Group, which utilized the Yanxi AI platform developed by its JD Cloud division to create an industrial version of the new AI-based open-source ChatGPT solution called JDChat, as well as the Amazon Bedrock managed generative AI solution from Amazon Web Services and the Route Optimization proprietary AI-based logistics solution from Walmart.
