This year’s festival will feature 14 million value-for-money products from more than 250,000 brands available on Tmall. — VNS Photo

Alibaba Group kicked off its 11.11 Global Shopping Festival on Tuesday with new innovations and features to meet rapidly changing consumer trends.

These include Alipay’s digital lifestyle platform, broader consumer reach and bigger promotions, and “double” the number of shopping windows that will spotlight more brands, products and special offers.

For many brands, 11.11 is their single biggest growth driver and this year will be no exception. This year’s festival will feature 14 million value-for-money products from more than 250,000 brands available on Tmall.

This year’s event will have the largest international presence since it was founded in 2009. AliExpress now sells to more than 200 countries and regions worldwide. Lazada was the first to bring the shopping festival concept to Southeast Asia across six markets – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam.

Shopping festivals such as 11.11 have also become key industry growth drivers as local small-and-medium businesses participate in this biggest event alongside LazMall, the region’s largest online mall with more than 18,000 local and international brands.

This year Lazada will continue its “shoppertainment” with features ranging from livestreaming to new consumer games and innovations such as voice search to find items. — VNS