For those who have not been in China very long, and who do not yet know. 11/11 is officially single persons day
Nearly all retail outlets have discounts on goods, so that single people can feel better about their status by splashing out. So can anyone else. Some items are price cut dramatically. Some are even buy one get one free.
Some retailers are already advertising, so keep an eye out when you go shopping, if you can hold back some purchases until Nov 11 you can save some money.
The discounts are also on Taobao, JD.com, and TMall. You sometimes need to pre-order and orders are processed on 11/11. Perhaps a good time if you have a big purchase planned.
Although an impressive new global sales record of USD30B, which is a 27% increase from last year. A steep drop compared to the 40% growth rate from '16 to '17.
The RMB devaluation, trade war, sagging stock & housing market probably played a part on aggregate consumer spending.
Nevertheless, from an individual splurging standpoint, I reaped great deals on household necessities such as Listerine, Move Free supplements, milk, tissue papers, appliances, furniture, what not.
Getting ready for 12/12! lol
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Btw, Alibaba's futuristic supermarket is coming to Kunming soon, rumored to be built just south of city-center's pedestrian street.
Here's an in-depth look at the AI-driven Hema Supermarket:
www.cnbc.com/[...]
I've been to Hema in Shenzhen earlier this year. It's a nice supermarket; the one I went to even had a small bar inside with beer on tap. Will be a welcome addition to grocery shopping and eating options in Kunming. But don't know if I'd call it futuristic...yet.
No robot bartender like the one in Passengers? lol
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As we wait for our packages, here's a look at the logistical feat of Cainiao's (acquired by Alibaba last year) automated warehouse (similar to Amazon's):
www.alizila.com/cainiao-gears-up-for-2018-11-11/
(alizila.com is the official news liaison of Alibaba Group)
Alas, no robot bartender. And, actually, because the whole chain and concept is very home delivery-centric, almost all of the fresh produce is packed on plastic trays and shrink-wrapped — or otherwise packaged in wasteful ways. This is necessary for being able to provide unit pricing, automate inventory control so that delivery customers don't end up ordering stuff the store does not have, and speeding the preparation of deliver orders. So, pretty alarming from an environmental standpoint when one considers this is the way the whole supermarket industry seems to be leaning in China.
The implementation of machine learning in automated supermarket inventory management seeks to reduce wastes by maximizing asset turnover ratio and minimizing spoilage. To say nothing of tempering overhead costs and shrinkage compared to traditional supermarkets for a more evolved business model.
More than a decade ago, high-end supermarket chains in Japan, Singapore, S. Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan have already adopted the strategy of prolonging expiration of perishable produce items by shrink-wrapping them per individual basis.
China's accumulation of global plastic waste is nothing new, granted the dawn of food delivery services such as Meituan and Ele.me is adding to plastic containers' recycling & disposal collective action dilemma.
Perhaps packaging in biodegradable plastic alternatives would be a sustainable game-changer for Hema.
Shrink wrapping on an individual bases also increases the added value for the supermarket. In layman's terms, 20-40% price increase.
When I sometimes go to relative extremes to sort our household waste (within our apartment), I try to justify it to the other half with following argument:
If you see a single coin on the street, you maybe won't bother to pick it up and use.
But if you see a pile of coins totalling to something like 100 RMB, you might.
And that's how I justify to her filling bags with bottles, plastics, glass, and metal rather than taking them out to trashbins individually with mixed waste.
Now I would lke to argue, that same applies in industrial scale.
I'd consider, whether arrival of these home delivery systems (and the volumes of plastic waste that they produce), helps to increase the volume so significanty that it becomes economically viable to recycle not only that, but also other plastic waste that previously would have gone to incinerators.
That said, I don't have comparison of energy efficiency between recycling existing plastic waste to new products, or creating biodegradeable products that, well, biodegrade away and must be produced again from scratch.
If we could achieve 100% recycling for our plastics (which is an utopy of course), it sounds better than cutting down forests.
@tiger
Sanitary benefits would be another. They may justify the markup for some. Shrink-wrapping would protect individual fruit or vegetable from the sneeze of an under the weather shopping patron. Furthermore, who knows where those unwashed cucumber or cherry fondling hands have been. The first time I witnessed shrink-wrapping produce was in Tokyo and Osaka over 15 years ago. Japanese societies are obsessed with hygiene.
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@JanJal
Like your wife, I too hoard recyclable containers into a manageable pile before taking them out to the communal waste bins. Not just for my own convenience, but to make life easier for the janitress. They recycle the building's collective plastics & cardboard boxes as revenue on the side. Otherwise, these 保洁阿姨 will have to unpleasantly sift through the trash to fish them out individually. Acts of compassion on our part. Food for thought as we dispense our O2O (online to offline) 11/11 boxes.
Regarding plastic alternatives, it's not so much energy economics as public health. Studies have shown the incineration of plastic release unhealthy byproducts into the air we breathe. Lung cancer is already major problem for the Chinese. The most common type of cancer in China in fact.
Well the Chinese do smoke a lot so it doesn't surprise me that lung cancer is on the top of the list.
