In the last quarter its total number of annual active customers ticked up by 19 million to a total of 693 million. The growth in active customers marked a considerable slowdown from the previous quarter.

The company’s shares rose more than 1 percent ahead of the market opening in New York, where the companys shares are traded.

The next test of the Chinese consumer will come on Singles Day, the Nov. 11 sales event in China that Alibaba invented. For years the company has made use of the holiday as a way to generate headlines, and this year is expected to be no different. Taylor Swift and a bevy of Chinese pop stars have been hired to perform at a gala kicking off the holiday.

Singles Day this year may serve as something of a checkup on the state of the Chinese consumer, though the diagnosis may not be easy to parse. Unlike Alibaba’s financial results, the company does not need to report Singles Day figures in ways that confirm with international accounting standards.

Alibaba, which makes its money by selling ads and taking commissions from the enormous number of businesses that sell on its websites and apps, has also worked to improve algorithms that help those businesses sell to consumers. It has also expanded its footprint, taking over companies like Ele.me, which handles food delivery orders, and pushing to expand into less developed parts of China to find new consumers.

“We also have noticed spending of new users from less developed areas reached about 2000 renminbi in their first year on our platform. This is a result of our diversified and comprehensive product supplies,” said Mr. Zhang.

The internet company also has other ways to offset Chinese economic weakness. The company continued to see big growth in its business sector offering cloud computing services to businesses. Mr. Zhang said Alibaba estimated that internet companies spend 80 billion renminbi on information technology, while the public sector and other industries spend an additional 300 billion renminbi. Alibaba would work to gain a larger portion of that through its cloud business, he said. Revenue for cloud services grew 64 percent to 1.3 billion in the quarter.