Chapter 371: The three-month target
By now, Double Eleven was no longer merely a tongue-in-cheek holiday used to promote sales. It had become a shopping carnival.
Its influence was no longer confined to Huaguo, either. It was showing signs of becoming a worldwide online shopping festival.
Although it was hardly all that innocent-merchants routinely falsified discounts and inflated original prices-there was no denying that even "off the charts" fell short of describing the volume of online orders during this period.
Many online retailers began preparing months in advance, arranging promotions, stocking goods, and even coordinating with delivery companies.
This year, however, the discounts offered for Double Eleven had split into two extremes.
Food, daily necessities, medicine, and similar products remained relatively affordable, but discounts were generally small.
Merchants pursued profits, and they could hardly be blamed for that. Over the past year or two, the cost of all sorts of raw materials had risen rapidly. In some cases, product prices could no longer keep pace with material costs.
Businesses wanted to raise prices but feared being squeezed out by competitors. Without raising them, they could not sustain the strain on their own finances. By now, some perceptive people had already recognized the crisis. Even if it was not the end of the world, it would still be a major economic and supply disaster. The fact that prices had not immediately surged was already proof that pressure from the platforms was working.
The shopping platforms had told merchants plainly: they could offer no discounts, or even raise prices slightly, but if they went too far, the platforms would no longer welcome them.
The apocalypse was still somewhat speculative, after all, while the platforms' threats were very real. If the world did not end, would they still want to do business?
Some