Alibaba banks on AI to boost Singles’ Day sales on Taobao, Tmall

Alibaba Group Holding is taking advantage of artificial intelligence to turn its online marketplace into a “comprehensive consumption platform”, as the e-commerce giant regains momentum in an extremely competitive market.

Taobao and Tmall, Alibaba’s two domestic e-commerce platforms, are offering 50 billion yuan (US$7 billion) worth of coupons to members of its 88VIP programme – which targets high-income consumers – on top of 15 per cent direct discounts on certain products for all consumers, according to Liu Bo, a vice-president at Alibaba and president at Tmall.

Meanwhile, to help shoppers navigate more than 2 billion product listings, Alibaba is carrying out the first large-scale deployment of generative AI on Taobao and Tmall, integrating large language models into the platforms’ core search and recommendation engines. Alibaba, based in Hangzhou, capital of China’s eastern Zhejiang province, owns the South China Morning Post.

The festival, also known as Double 11 or 11.11, is closely watched by investors and analysts as a barometer of the company’s e-commerce business. Still Alibaba’s bread and butter, the business faces sluggish consumer spending and fierce competition from rivals such as PDD Holdings, Meituan and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and Douyin.

“This 11.11 is set to further demonstrate the opportunities of the new comprehensive consumption platform on an even greater scale,” Alibaba said.