Chinese online eCommerce giant, Alibaba recorded phenomenal sales numbers for their annual Singles day online sales event that happens on 11.11 (11th November). This year Jack Ma, Ceo of the company will be smiling all the way to the bank seeing an increase of 32% to $18 billion in just one day.

eCommerce sites are experiencing increase in traffic to their webstores as more and more of the younger generation find purchasing items online has their preferred choice of shopping avenue. Alibaba also reported that more than 80% of sales on the day occurred over the mobile phone, signs consumers now choose handheld devices as their go to utility for almost all their online activity.

Over in Malaysia, Lazada had rode on the wave with their own Singles day sales event with partners like Flash, Microsoft, Intel, Samsung all joining the event with sales item going up to 80% discount. Malaysian Digital Economic Corporation, MdeC also held its online sales MyCyberSale end of September 2016 targeting RM200 million in sales. Brick and mortar retailers can look at partnering or joining these online sales events to push their stocks and contend with the fact in order to reach the digital generation, they will have to go where the customers are most comfortable at, and the moment its in the virtual space.