Early this summer, data analysts found an interesting trend in the analysis of Alibaba's bra sales: women who bought bigger sizes spend more money. Alibaba's analysts divided bra consumers into four categories according to their online spending power. They found that 65% of women who bought B cup belong to "low online spending power" category, while most of women who bought C cup or bigger sizes have "medium" online spending power or above.

夏初，数据分析师在分析阿里巴巴[微博]内衣销量的时候发现一个有趣的趋势：购买内衣罩杯越大的女性花的钱越多。阿里巴巴分析师将内衣消费者按其购买能力分成了四类，他们发现65%的B罩杯女性都属于“购买能力低”这一类，而C及以上罩杯的女性大部分购买能力都是“中等”或以上。

The reason might be that those who bought B cup are young women with low purchasing power. And this is just one piece of information sorted out from millions of orders each day on Alibaba's e-commerce payment platform.

原因可能是买B罩杯的都是购买能力较弱的年轻女性。而这仅仅是阿里巴巴从其电子商务支付平台每日上千万订单里面梳理出来的一条信息而已。

In the "double eleven" shopping spree, Alibaba's sales volume reached the peak of 2.85 million per minute, and the transaction volume of Nov. 11 reached 9.3 billion dollars. This day tested the Alibaba's data mining capabilities. Its Vice Chairman Cai Chongxin told the reporter in Hangzhou – where Alibaba's headquarters is based in, "We only saw the tip of the iceberg. These data can make the operation more efficient, our customers more satisfied, but the utilization of these data is less than five percent. "

双十一阿里巴巴高峰期的交易量达到每分钟两百八十五万，一天下来的成交量达到了九十三亿美元。这一天检验了阿里巴巴的数据挖掘能力。阿里巴巴副董事长蔡崇信在杭州——阿里巴巴的大本营——对本报记者说：“我们现在看到的只是冰山一角。利用这些数据可以让运营更高效，让我们的顾客更满意，但我们现在的利用率还不到5%。”

On the whole day of November 11, Alibaba's data analysis team and operational managers were paying close attention to and analyzing in real time the transaction data to ensure communication and coordination between customers and their logistics partners and normal supply and delivery. And data collected on that day is also of great use in the long run. Managers were also concerned about customers’ choice of payment methods, to see if they were using smart phones for ordering. Alibaba is accused of losing ground to its rival Tencent in the mobile platform. So it has been in hot pursuit, and plans to make Alipay listing.

双十一一整天下来，阿里巴巴的数据分析团队和运营经理都密切关注和实时分析网站上的交易数据，以保证与客户和物流合作伙伴沟通协调好，确保供应和交货正常进行。而且双十一收集的数据长远来看也大有用处。管理者也关注顾客选择的支付方式，看他们是否使用智能手机下单。阿里巴巴被指在移动平台方面不及对手腾讯，所以一直在猛追，并计划要让支付宝上市。

According to a report of industry research firm Gartner in 2013, Alibaba, like Japan's Rakuten and Amazon, are using predictive data analysis, and only less than 5% of e-commerce companies are engaged in this work. China's middle class is growing, but the study of this group is far from enough, so China is expected to be one of the most important data markets.

根据高德纳咨询公司一份2013年的报告显示，阿里巴巴和亚马逊及日本乐天市场一样，都使用预测性数据分析，而电子商务公司里从事这项工作的不及5%。中国的中产阶级正在不断壮大，但对这个群体的研究还相对不够，所以中国有望成为世界最重要的数据市场之一。

But sometimes the data make people confused. Jingdong found that sales of IPHONE5 were nine to ten times higher than usual on "double eleven". Gartner did not know why. In 2012, Alibaba was surprised to find that the day's top-selling product in the western inland Xinjiang turned out to be bikini (boyfriends and husbands buy bikini drop hints that they will take their partners out on vacation).

但是数据有时候也让人想不明白。京东发现双十一那天IPHONE5的销量比往常高了九到十倍。高德纳也不知道是什么缘故。2012年，阿里巴巴惊奇地发现，双十一在西部内陆新疆销量最高的竟然是比基尼(男朋友和老公购买比基尼暗示对象会带他们出去度假)。