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第二篇阅读理解
Alibaba sparks China’s consumer revolution
This Saturday is Singles Day, which Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce giant, has made into the world’s biggest fashion and gift-buying extravaganza. It is the climax of a “shopping and entertainment festival” that easily exceeds the sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US.
Chinese shoppers spent $18bn online on November 11 last year, 82 per cent using mobile devices. This year, 140,000 brands, including 60,000 international names, are offering 15m items for sale. Singles Day is an expression of the power of Chinese ecommerce.
The numbers, although huge, understate the significance of the phenomenon. China is experiencing a consumer revolution, comparable to the one that happened in Europe in the 18th century, culminating in the 19th-century invention of the department store. Alibaba and competitors such as JD.com are making ecommerce not merely efficient but entertaining.
Singles Day, which Alibaba calls 11.11, started as a celebration by students in Nanjing and has become an online parade stimulating a frenzy of buying. David Hill, the producer of its countdown show on Friday evening, talks of mounting “a lavish experience that is emotionally satisfying and delivers a psychic reward activating people to go online at midnight”.
Note the contrast with online shopping in the US and Europe, which draws its appeal from scale and price, rather than entertainment. If you desire fun, visit a shopping mall or a fashion boutique; if you want something cheaply and conveniently, go to Amazon to get it delivered. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, has done everything he can to eliminate the frictions of shopping.
The difference reflects the gulf between the US and China in the development of physical retailing. Americans have many choices of places to shop, so Mr Bezos first focused on the efficiency that only a digital platform can deliver. China is a less mature market outside the big cities and Alibaba’s Tmall and JD.com sell global brands online that shoppers cannot otherwise buy.
These companies have to offer the entire experience of shopping, including the fun of browsing and discovering things. Alibaba calls this “new retail” — the integration of ecommerce with stores with apps and augmented reality. “I truly believe shopping is fun,” says Chris Tung, Alibaba’s chief marketing officer. “When you open the box, your heartbeat speeds up a little bit.”
The growth of shopping in China mirrors the past. “Novelty, fashion, adaptation and innovation — the fuel of consumer societies — were the product of east-west exchange,” Frank Trentmann writes in Empire of Things, his history of global consumerism. The 18th-century revolution started with the import of spices, coffee and tea to Europe, along with porcelain from China.
Europe’s consumerism grew out of urbanisation: the growth of cities where people could both make and spend money. A similar phenomenon is occurring in China. Morgan Stanley estimates that private consumption could reach 47 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product by 2030, with most consumption growth in lower-tier cities to which people are flowing from rural areas.
Consumerism blurred social classes in Europe after the lifting of the sumptuary laws of the late Middle Ages, originally imposed to curb luxury and prevent the masses from dressing like aristocrats. The twist in post-revolutionary China was that everyone had to dress like a peasant; on Singles Day, the new middle class can please itself.
This raises a question for a society that still counts itself as being under Communist rule. The 18th-century upsurge in consumerism predated the industrial revolution, and some historians argue that one led to the other — the heavy demand for imported goods provoked technological advances in British manufacturing.
But you never know where a revolution will lead, as 18th-century England discovered. There may yet come a clash between Chinese consumer power and party discipline. One era’s retail entertainment is another’s sin.
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楼主
发表于 2017-12-26 22:44
楼主: LinSucc
