The Shandong Chinese New Year shopping festival, which lasted for nearly two months for the Spring Festival, generated net sales of 80.43 billion yuan ($12.72 billion), an increase of 22.6 percent compared with last year's event.

The shopping extravaganza also gave Shandong's online retail a boost. Official statistics showed that Shandong's net online sales reached 45.5 billion yuan in January, up 9.4 percent year-on-year, 12.9 percentage points higher than the national average.

The Spring Festival, the most important festival in China, is not only an important occasion for family reunions but also a peak season for consumption.

Shandong has launched a slew of promotional activities to stimulate consumer spending during the Spring Festival holiday. The shopping festival, which was held both online and offline, highlighted the province's commodity supplies like time-honored brands and precooked cuisines. 

Qingdao, a coastal city in Shandong, hosted an online shopping festival featuring 1,500 categories of goods from Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members, generating nearly 100 million yuan in sales.

The online sales event of featured commodities from SCO member countries kicks off on Jan 10 in Qingdao, Shandong province. [Photo/Qingdao News]

During the shopping festival, Weifang city, which is known as the World Kite Capital, promoted local famous dishes, time-honored brands, and e-commerce firms. Tanboer, a local clothing firm, surpassed 54 million yuan in online sales.

Caoxian county in Heze city hosted an online shopping festival that received over 230,000 orders and a total trade volume of 28 million yuan.

During the run-up to the Spring Festival vacation, local governments and online retailers offered shopping coupons worth approximately 3.58 million yuan in an attempt to increase consumption.