WeChat Stores “Advance” into the Heart of E-commerce

WeChat Stores have made strong inroads into the e-commerce market with their "gifting" function, which has not only triggered Taobao and JD.com to quickly follow suit, but has also opened up a new battlefield for social consumption. From red envelopes to blue envelopes, WeChat has taken another important step in the integration of social networking and e-commerce.

WeChat, Taobao and JD.com have successively launched the "gift giving" function. How much room for imagination is there in the industry?

From exchanging business cards to adding WeChat, from giving gifts in person to giving gifts via WeChat, WeChat, which knows well that "he who wins the social circle wins the world", opened up the payment scenario with red envelopes, and once again broadened the e-commerce path with blue envelopes (gift-giving function).

Even though Ma Huateng hopes that the outside world will not over-hype this feature (WeChat gifting), Taobao's quick launch of the new "gifting" feature and JD's quick follow-up have both conveyed to the outside world that social consumption based on gift giving is a super gold mine that needs to be mined.

1. Social consumption “brand” is “face”

In recent years, the normalized and frequent gift-giving scenarios have made the "gift economy" with a scale of over one trillion yuan continue to heat up.

The "2023-2024 China Gift Economy Industry Research and User Consumption Behavior Analysis Report" previously released by iiMedia Research shows that the market size of China's gift economy increased from 800 billion yuan to 122.62 billion yuan in 2018-2022, showing an increasing trend year by year, and is expected to reach 137.77 billion yuan in 2024.

However, consumers’ demands for “gifts” are changing rapidly. Many people are troubled by gift-giving anxieties such as “What should I give?” “Is the other party willing to tell me the delivery address?” and “Will I receive the gift if someone else signs for it?” Moreover, the trial and error cost of gift-giving is too high. For example, you may not give it away after buying it, or others may not like it after giving it away, or even be deceived into buying fakes.

So how can we make gift-giving innovative, thoughtful, and sincere?

The biggest highlight of WeChat's "gift giving" function is that it makes social gift giving no longer limited to simple fund transfers. It also eliminates the tedious process of asking friends about their preferences and delivery information during daily gift giving, while taking into account the ritual sense and convenience of gift giving, making consumers' cloud gift giving experience even smoother.

Image source: WeChat screenshot

Not only that, under the gift-giving function, the order information provides two-way privacy protection for the giver and the recipient. The delivery address is only visible to the recipient, while the order price of the product is hidden from the recipient.

Since 2024, WeChat e-commerce has been making frequent efforts to build the e-commerce ecological infrastructure around WeChat stores. From the establishment of WeChat stores to their links with mini programs, video accounts, official accounts, and search, a decentralized WeChat e-commerce ecosystem has been gradually built under the joint construction of merchants and platforms.

WeChat stores, which have "advanced" into the heart of e-commerce, have undoubtedly built a deeper communication field for brands and users. Gift recipients can clearly know the source of the gift and can also refer to and compare the price of the gift. In the future, WeChat stores will become an important business position for brands to efficiently build traffic pools.

Image source: WeChat screenshot

Take Three Squirrels as an example. After only one day of internal testing of the WeChat gifting function, the single-day transaction and new customers of its WeChat store official account increased by more than 500% month-on-month, and the average increase in the matrix account dimension exceeded 10%. In the eyes of Three Squirrels, the greater value of the WeChat gifting function is that it is a positive signal, and "I believe that WeChat e-commerce will undergo major changes in the future."

"The upper limit of the amount of a single WeChat red envelope is 200 yuan (except for specific occasions). In recent years, the public's aesthetic fatigue has directly affected the opening rate of WeChat red envelopes, but the limit of a single blue envelope is 10,000 yuan, which means that the vast inventory of goods in the price range of 200-10,000 yuan will be activated." Wang Tuo, founder of Retail Business Finance, believes that the purpose of consumption is nothing more than "pleasing oneself" and "benefiting others", but "benefiting others" ultimately points to "pleasing oneself". Branded products can effectively enhance the "dignity" of gift-giving and are the best supply of WeChat blue envelopes.

Image source: WeChat screenshot

From this perspective, branded companies will become the first choice for gifts because of their "brand" attributes. What was once called "IQ tax" by young people with "intelligent brains" has become "face" when giving gifts. To a certain extent, it will widen the competitive dimension with white-label products that pursue "high cost performance".

2. The Interweaving of Circulation Revolution and Commercial Civilization

Behind the word "li" lies the deep interweaving of social morality and commercial civilization.

Looking through the texts of the ancient world, we can find many descriptions that compare commodity trading to gift exchange, and even the official caravans sent by the ancient Egyptian government to trade abroad were called "gift expeditions." It can be said that gift giving is a universal cultural phenomenon in human social life, both in the field of public relations and in private relations, and is also an important carrier of interpersonal communication.

Today, the gift consumption market presents two major characteristics: first, the consumer group is getting younger and the frequency of consumption is becoming daily; second, the capacity of the "gift pool" in all retail channels has reached an unprecedented level.

However, an objective reality is that even if the “gift pool” has sufficient goods, the channels for “giving gifts” are quite complicated. Furthermore, every link in the gift circulation process has the possibility of undermining the intentions of the gift giver.

"WeChat Gifts", which uses WeChat stores as a carrier, not only shortens the user journey for online gift giving, but more importantly, it is built on the entire WeChat e-commerce ecosystem, integrating global traffic from video accounts, official accounts, and WeChat payments, and opening up a one-stop "select - buy - send" link.

We have seen that after the WeChat "gift giving" function, Taobao quickly followed up. On the evening of January 7, 2025, some users found that the "gift giving" function was launched on a small scale on the Taobao client. On January 8, Taobao Tian confirmed that the new "gift giving" function has been launched for all users, and the products that can be used for "gift giving" basically cover the entire Taobao product pool. On January 17, JD.com's "gift giving" function was launched. JD.com stated that the "gift giving" function is not currently supported by all products. The products displayed in the "JD.com gift giving" area are already supported, and the scale of related products will be gradually expanded in the future.

Image source: screenshots from Taobao and JD.com

Although the platform acts as an intermediate circulation link, the introduction of the gift-giving function can effectively reduce circulation costs (from multiple logistics to one logistics), and has promoted the circulation revolution in the retail industry, but in terms of the actual experience of the WeChat gift-giving function, the recipient will bear part of the after-sales sunk cost.

"I received a New Year gift box from a friend, which contained branded daily cleaning products. However, when the courier delivered it to my door, the collar inside had leaked out. The courier asked me if I would refuse to accept it, but refusing would make my friend feel embarrassed, so I had to give up on it."

"Retail Business Finance" survey found that consumer feedback like this is not an isolated case. The loss of gifts caused by logistics and transportation cannot be handled roughly like "only refund" when it comes to personal consumption. Most people still choose to "remain silent". After all, the information flow will become infinitely long after rejection.

As a connector, the platform still has a long way to go in terms of refined operations, whether it is social or shopping. Whether the "gifting" function can become a new option to connect users, brands, and merchants will face market tests.

Author: Yu Boya This article is written by the author of Operation School [Retail Business Finance], WeChat public account: [Retail Business Finance], originally created/authorized to be published on Operation School, and any reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.