Black Friday taps into Chinese consumers

Alibaba and Amazon tried to lure Chinese customers into buying more American goods during the Black Friday shopping frenzy.

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S., is a traditionally big retail event.

Amazon China announced Black Friday discounts that equaled those enjoyed by American buyers on its website. Alibaba teamed up with American retailing giants Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, among others, to promote cross-border online sales.

Both firms launched special webpages for Black Friday. Alipay, Alibaba's online payment system, also launched a service that allowed Chinese buyers to use Renminbi (RMB) more easily.

However, the response from Chinese shoppers was under whelming.

Some shoppers found the offers "too narrow" and were put off by the product descriptions only being in English.

Miss Huang who works in Beijing told Xinhua that she had spent two months salary on Singles' Day (Nov. 11) , so she had no money -- or time -- for Black Friday.

In fact, many buyers are still waiting for their Singles' Day purchases due to the high demand for Singles' Day express delivery.

Platforms like JD and Taobao have already begun preparations for another manufactured spending day on Dec. 12.

A report from tech.qq.com said Metao.com, a website dedicated to foreign goods, registered more than 20 million yuan (3.25 million U.S. dollars) of sales on Friday, with several others notching up more sales than normal days.

But Black Friday is no match for Singles Day, as Alibaba alone rang up sales of 57 billion yuan on the day.