Workers sort parcels at an express delivery company in Yangzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province, on November 11, 2025. China's Double 11 shopping festival is hitting its peak, with major domestic e-commerce platforms and courier firms seeing a surge in cross-border parcel shipments. Photo: VCG

China's longest-ever Double 11 shopping festival concluded on Friday, with multiple e-commerce platforms announcing record-breaking transaction volumes.

The once single-day shopping carnival has evolved into an extended promotional period, reflecting shifts in consumer behavior and intensified competition among platforms, noted Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences.

In the early hours of Saturday, Tmall of China's e-commerce giant Taobao released its Double 11 performance report, stating that it achieved the strongest growth in four years.

Tmall reported that nearly 600 brands surpassed 100 million yuan ($14.04 million) in sales during the Double 11 period, as 34,091 brands doubled their year-on-year sales. Over 18,000 brands grew by over 300 percent, and more than 13,000 brands grew over 500 percent. Major brands such as Apple, Haier, Midea, Xiaomi, FILA, Camel, Huawei, and Nike each exceeded 1 billion yuan, according to a report from thepaper.cn on Saturday.

Other major e-commerce platforms also reported strong results. JD.com said it set a new record for sales during the Double 11 Grand Promotion. As of 11:59 pm on November 11, the number of shoppers during the grand promotion increased by 40 percent year-on-year and order volume nearly 60 percent, according to the information the platform shared with the Global Times. 

Short-video platform Douyin saw explosive growth with 67,000 brands doubling their sales year-on-year during the period from October 9 to November 11, and over 100,000 merchants achieved doubled live-streaming sales. 

Data released by Xiaohongshu showed that during this year's Double 11, the number of merchants with sales volume exceeding 10 million yuan rose by 140 percent year-on-year, and the number of products with sales over 1 million yuan rose by 145 percent year-on-year.

A notable change this year was the festival's longer duration, which has significantly reduced the "impulse purchase effect" of the traditional Double 11. Statistics show that Douyin launched its promotion on October 9 and ran until November 11, spanning 34 days. JD's Double 11 started 5 days earlier than last year, running from October 9 to November 14, a 37-day cycle. Tmall's promotion lasted 31 days, from October 15 to November 14.

Wang Peng said that the extended Double 11 period, to a certain extent, reflects a shift in consumer preference from price to quality, as platform price wars no longer resonate with consumers the way they once did.

"A longer promotion period gives consumers more time to make rational choices and allow merchants and platforms to spread promotions over a longer timeframe," Wang told the Global Times . "However, as competition grows, stretching the window raises the burden on merchants and platforms to commit more resources to sustain the event."

Global Times