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This week, Chinese consumers are hopping online to order rabbit-themed goods and pre-made meals for the Lunar New Year,

Lunar New Year, also known as Chinese New Year, is the most widely celebrated and important holiday in China and falls on Jan. 22 this year. Celebrations will continue until the Chinese Lantern Festival on Feb. 5.

As the country emerges from the pandemic, tens of millions of people are traveling to their hometowns for family reunions, creating a wave of spending in Nian Huo, or Lunar New Year specialties.

Scroll down to see what Chinese consumers are buying from Alibaba Group’s e-commerce platforms.

Chinese Consumers Shop Online for Lunar New Year Reunion Dinners

Chinese New Year feasting is celebrated with an e-twist this year as party goers turn to e-commerce platforms to order ready-made meals and gift boxes.

The reunion dinner, or Nian Ye Fan in Chinese, is the year’s most important meal. Families across several generations will sit around the same table on New Year’s Eve.

Alibaba’s high-tech grocery chain Freshippo rolled out pre-made family-sized meals this year, featuring seafood, Cantonese soup and eight treasure sweet rice. Over 80% of shoppers ordered meals for four to six people, according to the platform.

Searches for ready-made meals linked to Chinese food therapy more than quadrupled year-over-year from Jan. 1 to Jan. 16 on Alibaba’s online marketplace Taobao. Consumers like to order ready-made food such as Cantonese pork belly soup and Inner Mongolia’s on-the-bone leg of lamb that are believed to hold the power to overcome illness in Chinese culture.

Besides food, consumers across China are also buying gift boxes from e-commerce platforms. Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao said it expects to see delivery orders increase by 30% year-over-year during the holidays, with most being gift boxes and alcoholic drinks.

Consumers Pamper their Fur Babies for Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is a time for family, and for young people in China, that includes their fur babies.

Young people in China are pampering their pets with premium food and clothes to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Sales of imported pet food, pet snacks and canned pet food increased by more than half on Alibaba’s online grocery service Tmall Supermarket over the past fortnight, according to the platform.

Pet clothes also saw their sales grow by 60% during the same time period, with those that follow the style of traditional Chinese jackets and in red color garnering the most attention.

With people traveling back to their hometowns for the holidays, many turned to high-tech gadgets to keep their pets clean, fed, and amused. From Dec. 29 to Jan. 4, sales of digital pet devices grew more than 50-fold compared with a year earlier on Tmall supermarket, the latest data showed. 

French Perfumer Creed’s Year of the Rabbit Collaboration

Paris-based perfume house Creed celebrated the year of the rabbit with a crossover between scents and designer toys.

It teamed up with Chinese collectible toy brand RobbiART on a limited-edition scented toy collection. It features a ROBBi rabbit with a detachable backpack soaked in Creed’s signature scent Silver Mountain Water. Each ROBBi rabbit comes with a chip that shows a unique identification code when scanning the rabbit’s left foot.

The brand is riding a wave of interest in collectible toys among young consumers in China. The total gross merchandise value (GMV) of collectible toys on Alibaba’s B2C marketplace Tmall soared 694% year-over-year during last year’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.

Creed said the collection was available globally, both online and in-store, from Jan. 18. 

24-Carrot Luxury Released On Alibaba’s Tmall For The Year of The Rabbit

Luxury companies from Italy’s Armani to Coach in the US have released a slew of limited editions and collaborations to coincide with the Lunar New Year as China’s economy reopens for business.

Many of the collections featured this year’s zodiac animal, the rabbit, and splashes the red, representing celebration and happiness in Chinese culture.

On Alibaba’s digital marketplace Tmall Luxury Pavilion, Chinese consumers browsed over 1,000 Chinese New Year-themed products.

Click here to learn more about the New Year-themed products from top luxury brands

Express Yourself: How Coach Leverages Tmall Luxury Pavilion to Engage Chinese Consumers

American fashion house Coach sees growing demand from self-expressive young Chinese shoppers, and is tapping the digital know-how of Alibaba’s luxury platform to meet it.

Most of the brand’s consumers in China are young, female, and increasingly keen to express themselves through digital means, according to Renee Klein, Vice President, Global Digital Experience and Customer Marketing at Coach.

“There’s the start of an awakening in China,” Klein said during a panel at the annual National Retail Forum conference on Monday in New York.

Get the full story here

How Will Generative AI Transform Content Creation In Gaming to Advertising?

Human beings have used artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze existing data for a decade. Now scientists are taking it to a new level – training algorithms to create new content.

The technology is called generative AI, and it can create new and original content based on different types of data, whether text, image, video, or audio.

“In the next two to three years, we think the application and services of generative AI will be more inclusive,” said Luica Mak, Director of Corporate Affairs, Alibaba Cloud.

Click here to learn more about how generative AI can benefit content curators in the fields of advertising, graphic design and gaming.