Hejia Zhang

The reporting draws on ShopBack's internal merchant pricing data across thousands of retailers in the three markets, paired with primary sources: retailers' own sale histories, official promotional pages, and government statistics from the ABS, SingStat, and the BLS.

Areas of focus

Sale-cycle timing. Tracking when sales genuinely cut into margin versus when the markdown is theatre. The recurring annual cycle includes EOFY (June, AU), the Great Singapore Sale (June through August, SG), Singles' Day on November 11 (SG and increasingly AU), Black Friday and Cyber Monday (US, with growing AU and SG participation), Boxing Day (December 26, AU), and the major US weekends around Memorial Day, July 4th, and Labor Day.

Cross-retailer pricing. Same SKU compared across the field. In Australia that means Amazon AU, JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Officeworks, Big W, Kmart, plus Coles and Woolworths for groceries. In Singapore: Lazada, Shopee, Courts, Best Denki, FairPrice, Cold Storage. In the United States: Amazon, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Costco.

Category playbooks. Running coverage on sneakers, beauty and skincare, consumer electronics, baby gear, travel, and groceries. Each playbook covers what to pay, when to pay it, and where the resale or open-box market sits twelve months on.

Cashback as a layer. How stacked cashback compares against credit-card rewards, store loyalty programs, and coupon stacking. The rules differ meaningfully across the three markets, so the coverage is written region by region rather than one size fits all.

Editorial standards

Every price reference in a Hejia Zhang article traces back to a primary source. That means the retailer's own site, the official sale page, government statistics from the ABS, SingStat, or the BLS, or ShopBack's internal merchant pricing data. It does not mean coupon aggregators, deal-listing sites, or third-party scrapers, none of which are cited.

For category playbooks (sneakers, beauty, electronics, baby gear), observed prices are checked against the actual in-cart price at the retailer during the article's coverage window, not the advertised banner. Travel and grocery pieces are verified against the booking flow or the basket total. Every number gets a date attached. The date_modified field at the top of each article reflects when those numbers were last re-verified, which happens at minimum every quarter.

Recommendations are conditional. "Best buy" is always stated for a particular reader under particular conditions, with the trade-offs at the top of the piece so readers can self-select. Errors get corrected in-article, with the date and the nature of the change noted at the top.

ShopBack receives a commission when readers complete a purchase through a cashback link. This commission does not vary by editorial coverage, and merchants cannot pay for inclusion, ranking, or favourable language. Where a merchant pays a notably higher commission than its peers on a comparable product, the conflict is disclosed inline. Editorial picks are not sold.

Get in touch

Tips, corrections, or merchant pricing data I should look at: hejia.zhang@shopback.com

Corrections are logged in-article with the date and what changed.

Editorial team

Hejia Zhang leads ShopBack's shopping editorial team and writes cross-vertical pieces on sale-cycle timing, cross-retailer pricing and the cashback layer. The other byline on the team:

• Garry Shi, Cashback Expert — ShopBack product expertise covering cashback, the wallet, ShopBack PayLater, stacking, and member features

Hejia Zhang and Garry cover complementary surfaces. Hejia Zhang is the outside-in editor (what to buy, when, where the cashback layer sits in a wider purchase decision); Garry is the inside-out editor (how the ShopBack product itself works once a shopper is using it).

Brands, work with us: garry@shopback.com.

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