11:11 by Daraz: A Case Study in Redefining Online Shopping Trends Without Cultural Ties

The concept and tradition of holiday shopping run back centuries into history to mark its establishments over the cultural and traditional developments of each market. Holiday shopping converges the availability of ample discounts/ offers and joyful experiences collected by shoppers. However, the advent of internet technologies made the concept emerge in online shopping days, which allows customers to shop for their favourites just by sitting at their home or workplace.

Black Friday and Cyber Monday in US have been the biggest and most popular shopping days in the world history in order to provide both physical and online combination of sales. However, both Black Friday and Cyber Monday are heavily related to a major holiday in United States: Thanksgiving day, and gradually expanded into other countries like UK, Canada, Australia. However, surprisingly, Daraz 11:11 fails to connect with any of the holiday celebrations in Sri Lanka and materializes as a sole online shopping day. Conversely, the original 11:11 campaign emerged and was popularized in China with respect to their unofficial national holiday of Singles Day, a day that celebrates unmarried people in the country. However, the strategic approach by Daraz to convert a mere day into a national online shopping day, even without the day being a holiday in Sri Lanka, is truly remarkable.

Although Black Friday was given its name because of the traffic and congestion that took place on physical stores during Thanksgiving Day, sellers leveraged the concept and largely focused on boosting sales through promotions, discounts, and offers. Later, adjoined by Cyber Monday, sellers as a whole focused on transforming holidays into online shopping days that escalated into international markets strongly. Opposingly, 11:11 by Daraz in Sri Lanka blooms out of nowhere in terms of holidays and is operated by a single seller in the market. It’s neither supported nor involved with any other online platform to strengthen sales. Despite the fact that Daraz is backed by the e-commerce giant in China (Alibaba) and Alibaba holds the orientation for 11:11 through Chinese holidays, the response from Sri Lankan consumers is highly significant amid a non-holiday time. On a different note, it should bear in mind that Sri Lanka’s biggest holiday seasons occur in the months of April (because of Sinhala & Hindu New Year) and December.

While it draws a thin line between the consumer motives and thought process behind holiday shopping and online shopping days, most of the insights from Black Friday and Cyber Monday support in line with holiday shopping. Accordingly, researchers argue that consumers’ intention to participate in online shopping days is determined by both the utilitarian value of shopping (i.e., monetary savings, selection, convenience) and the hedonic value of shopping (i.e., social interaction and entertainment). Furthermore, it’s portrayed through other types of value such as a sense of belonging, excitement, self-respect, friends join together, gifts and premiums, low prices, joint sales promotion, and diversity of advertising. However, what draws the surprise with respect to Daraz 11:11 is that these consumer motives can hardly be linked except for the sales promotion or the discounted pricing of the products. Hence, it can be concluded that significant online shopping days can be elevated even by offering discounts and sales promotions despite having minimal support from the culture or society.

The classic example of Daraz 11:11 manifests that any brand can replicate the online shopping day concept within its marketing strategy. In particular, the Sri Lankan business landscape claims several national and international brands with sufficient resources to host such a marketing strategy. Unlike Daraz 11:11, another brand can opt for a national holiday or a special day to establish a festive shopping day and leverage other attributes (customer motives mentioned above in the article) that Daraz does not have at the moment. However, this phenomenon of forming an artificial online shopping day is yet to be discovered theoretically and practically and requires further investigations to carry out.