In the past three months, a shoppinng festival was once again held in Shanghai. The first Double Five Shopping Festival in 2020 was a special event held to stimulate consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic, and wonderfully interpreted the concept of a people’s city. During the second Double Five Shopping Festival held under the regular prevention and control of the pandemic, online and offline sales reached 789.6 billion yuan, reflecting the comprehensive soft power of Shanghai. The improvement of Shanghai’s soft power is in the same line with the important concept of building a people’s city.

The consumption data of the Double Five Shopping Festival is quite amazing. In two months, offline consumption in Shanghai has been great, with sales reaching 499.1 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12%; online consumption has continued to improve, with online retail sales reaching 290.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 14%. In May, the total retail sales of consumer goods in Shanghai increased by 15.7% year-on-year, 3.3% higher than that of the whole country, and increased by 16.4% year-on-year in 2019. The total online and offline sales of the first Double Five Shopping Festival were 539.7 billion, which has grown to 789.6 billion this year, demonstrating Shanghai’s strength. It is also a mission that Shanghai must complete.

But unlike the first Double Five Shopping Festival, while pursuing high sales, the second Festival is a “training ground” to enhance the city’s soft power–

The soft power of the new product launch economy brings new impetus to business development. Unlike the first Double Five Shopping Festival, the second edition focuses on “newness.” The “2021 Global New Products Debut Season” has attracted more than 150 internationally renowned brands and more than 450 leading local brands to release and showcase nearly 3,000 new products of the season through a series of brand theme day activities such as international beauty, trendy lifestyle, and fashion customization. At the same time, nearly 100 first stores and flagship stores of various types have been introduced, among which 22 are the first stores in the world or Asia, ranking first in China in terms of quantity and quality. These figures indicate that the second Double Five Shopping Festival has greatly stimulated the improvement of consumption ability through the launch, debut, and exhibition of new products of many well-known international and domestic brands, which in turn promotes the development of hard power, forming a positive cycle.

The soft power of multi-party cooperation makes the influence of business development even greater. Different from the first edition, the second Double Five Shopping Festival focuses on “synergy” and it can be said that it is no longer a “shopping festival that only limited to Shanghai.”

First of all, the launch ceremony of the 2021 “National Consumption Promotion Month” and “Double Five Shopping Festival” were held together.

Second, the “four major brands,” Shanghai Manufacturing, Shanghai Culture, Shanghai Service and Shanghai Shopping, take the Double Five Shopping Festival as the stage to jointly promote consumption.

Third, the cooperation in the Yangtze River Delta. For example, the China Time-honored Brands Expo set up a special area for the Yangtze River Delta to attract 194 well-known time-honored companies in the Yangtze River Delta to participate. At the same time, the five new cities and sister cities in the Yangtze River Delta jointly organized consumption promotion activities.

Fourth, the synergy between domestic and foreign trade to amplify the spillover effect of the China International Import Expo. In the past few years, centered on the high-level reform and opening up of Pudong, the integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, the China International Import Expo, China (Shanghai) Pilot Free Trade Zone, Hongqiao International Hub for Opening Up and other major national strategies, Shanghai has been working hard to build a large platform, unblock the circulation, broaden the scope of development and influence, and enhance the radiation capabilities of services. The second Double Five Shopping Festival has set up a big stage for this kind of multi-party cooperation, bringing a greater radiation for business development to go out of Shanghai, face the Yangtze River Delta, and even the whole country.

The soft power of digital transformation has injected new vitality into business development. The most prominent feature of the first Double Five Shopping Festival is that the online and offline economies are no longer isolated from each other. Through “online economy as a marketing channel for the offline economy, and the offline economy bringing customers to the online economy,” the online and offline economies began to merge and embraced each other.

The improvement of soft power in this aspect of the digital transformation of business benefits from the optimization of institutional supply. In the first half of this year, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce reviewed the Promotion Plan for Digital Transformation of Business, and Shanghai issued the Three-Year Action Plan for Promoting the High-Quality Development of Live E-commerce, proposing to build a livestreaming e-commerce highland with global influence. During the second Double Five Shopping Festival, a series of digital technology empowered more and more new business scenes: the first live e-commerce festival rolled out 68 activities centered on 4 sectors including livestreaming, brand livestreaming, life consumption livestreaming, and livestreaming competitions. During the second Double Five Shopping Festival, digital RMB payment became available I Shanghai’s “two streets and four commercial districts” as well as the core commercial district of Hongqiao International Hub for Opening Up. The key experimental block of digital RMB payment on Nanjing Road has achieved full coverage of the payment acceptance environment of key merchants...It can be said that with the Double Five Shopping Festival as the “testing ground,” the soft power of the digital transformation of business in Shanghai has been fully demonstrated.

Carrying forward the spiritual character and enhancing the soft power of a city is a complex system project that will have a long-term impact on the future. Based on the summary of the experience of the two Double Five Shopping Festivals, it is hoped that Shanghai will have more aspects of soft power extracted, improved and promoted. This will help the next Double Five Shopping Festival to be held better, and help Shanghai build into an international consumption center city in a faster and more stable manner.