Singles Day tests AI shopping tools in China
China's Singles Day shopping festival shows rising use of AI for purchases, with chatbots driving 5% of Douyin sales in October. E-commerce platforms like Alibaba and JD.com report surging use of AI assistants, tokens and devices, though overall spending growth remains modest at 2.4%.
China's month-long Singles Day shopping festival is providing a test of how enthusiastically consumers are adopting artificial intelligence, with chatbots, AI-enabled devices and bundles of AI tokens all seeing increased use, according to data and analysts cited by Reuters.
E-commerce firms including Alibaba, JD.com and PDD Holdings are using AI to keep cautious consumers engaged. Alibaba's Tmall and Taobao platforms offer AI-driven product research, virtual clothing try-ons and discount-finding tools. On short-video platform Douyin, AI drove roughly 5 per cent of purchases through chatbot links in October, according to WPIC Marketing + Technologies. For considered purchases such as supplements, that share exceeded 20 per cent.
Jacob Cooke, chief executive of WPIC, described AI as a "very new gateway and discovery channel" and said he expected it to account for a growing share of direct purchases, comparable to livestreaming or social commerce. However, Ben Cavender of China Market Research Group cautioned that some brands could be hurt "if they are no longer showing up in product searches because the consumer is defaulting to letting an AI assistant do the 'shopping'".
Sales for Singles Day between October 7 and October 31 climbed 2.4 per cent, according to data platform Syntun, compared with a 1.1 per cent rise in China's retail sales for the year through end-September. AI has become more embedded in the shopping experience in China than in Western markets, analysts said, due to the dominance of super apps whose AI agents can research, transact, apply coupons and schedule deliveries without switching apps.
JD.com reported its AI shopping assistant, Dongdong, drew nearly 80 million users seeking advice for this year's festival, more than triple last year's figure. AI toys surpassed 100 million yuan (US$15 million) in sales on Alibaba's platforms within one year of launching. Sales of AI companion robots rose nearly fivefold year-on-year in the second half of October, Alibaba said. Tmall said sales of AI tokens rose more than 700 per cent between October 15 and November 5 compared with the prior period.
Beijing office worker Amanda Gao, 40, said she uses Taobao's AI virtual try-on feature whenever she shops for clothes. "I find the function useful and fun," she said.