Since Black Friday last year, I have been receiving daily promotional emails from Temu, a global e-commerce platform owned by PDD Holdings, which also operates Pinduoduo, a similar e-commerce platform that is popular in China.
The emails have irresistible subject lines: there are announcements of unrealistic deals such as "Enjoy 90% off on everything" and "All $4.98?? No joke". Gradually, you begin to feel severe FOMO because "Our CLEARANCE is only for today" and "It's Almost Gone!". With the new year sales, these so-called deals are not stopping anytime soon.
Apparently, I am not alone in being targeted by Temu's powerful campaigns. According to the research firm Apptopia, shoppers were spending about twice as long on Temu than on the apps of retail majors Amazon and Target, and the gap kept widening. The company was so popular that its market value once surpassed that of Alibaba a few days after Temu launched its Black Friday campaign.
