New Year Goods Festival Observation: Can’t give gifts during the New Year anymore?

As the 2025 Spring Festival approaches, major e-commerce platforms have launched New Year's Goods Festival promotions, but the sales growth of merchants during the New Year's Goods Festival is limited, the consumption of Spring Festival gift boxes has been cold, and consumers have increased their attention to prices. This article will observe the market dynamics during the New Year's Goods Festival, analyze the promotion strategies of e-commerce platforms, the operational challenges of merchants, and changes in consumer behavior

There are less than two weeks until the 2025 Spring Festival.

What is the most important thing during the Spring Festival? Writer Feng Jicai described how he and his family celebrated the Spring Festival in "Eight Things to Do During the Spring Festival". He mentioned things like worshipping ancestors, cleaning the house, and preparing New Year's goods. He said, "The mentality of celebrating the Spring Festival is that the more complete the New Year's goods are, the better, to symbolize abundance in the coming year."

It can be said that from ancient times to today, in addition to holding various ceremonies during the Spring Festival, there is one very important thing: buying New Year's goods.

The 2025 Spring Festival is approaching, and major e-commerce platforms are fighting fiercely around the New Year’s Goods Festival.

Not only have major e-commerce platforms launched various ways to play, in addition to gift giving, they have also promoted various "New Year-themed" products. For example, various Spring Festival couplets, New Year's festive pendants and aromatherapy represent people's beautiful expectations for a new year and a new look.

Data from multiple e-commerce platforms show that seasonal products such as hand warmers, heating insoles, and tire chains have ushered in a sales boom at home and abroad. In the current fierce consumer competition, products are paying more and more attention to appearance and function, and are expected to open up new tracks, such as self-heating insoles and self-heating underwear.

During the Tmall New Year Festival, sales of magic performance toys and props increased by 174% month-on-month and 116% year-on-year.

But the other side of the booming e-commerce platforms is that merchants' New Year sales growth is limited, Spring Festival gift box consumption is sluggish, and consumers' attention to prices has increased.

1. In the live broadcast room of the New Year Goods Festival, merchants have no new gameplay

On December 24, 2024, JD.com launched the New Year Goods Festival, stimulating New Year goods consumption by launching the "60 yuan extra subsidy every day" activity. Moreover, on the evening of January 6, 2025, JD.com launched a 10 billion yuan subsidy for a limited time.

In addition, JD.com also revised its shopping page. As an important first-level traffic entrance, the revised JD.com did not push all the "special offers". Compared with the swing of the "special offer" strategy, "new products" have become the focus of JD.com's layout. JD.com's emphasis on new products is essentially because new products from brands can often stimulate users' desire to place orders and buy. The "2024 New Product Consumption Trend Report" released by Nielsen IQ China shows that 90% of consumers are accustomed to buying new products.

Image source: JD.com

On January 6, Tmall also launched the New Year Goods Festival. Not only are there official instant discounts and cross-store discounts, but also coupons and official subsidy category coupons can be stacked. It is worth mentioning that this year's Tmall New Year Goods Festival also has a lot of foreign New Year goods: Jellycat dolls, Sisi snakes and imported fresh food, which firmly occupy the Tmall New Year Goods Hot Sales List.

Pinduoduo once again took out a 10 billion yuan subsidy. During the "New Year Goods Festival", it continued to subsidize merchants such as new quality agricultural products and new quality New Year goods, and through methods such as "direct shipment from the origin" and "direct supply from the factory", it promoted major agricultural production areas and industrial belts to directly connect with the national New Year goods market.

Source: Based on public information

From the perspective of gameplay, on the one hand, in order to seize the policy dividends brought by the "Notice on Stepping Up and Expanding the Implementation of Large-Scale Equipment Updates and Consumer Goods Trade-in Policies in 2025", which proposes to expand support for consumer goods trade-in services, major e-commerce platforms, in addition to raising the entrance level of the New Year Festival activities, have also launched subsidized entrances.

Image sources: Pinduoduo, JD.com, Taobao, Douyin

On the other hand, in order to broaden the consumer base, e-commerce platforms have expanded the scope of "free shipping areas". JD.com, relying on its own logistics advantages, launched a free shipping venue in Xinjiang, with official subsidies for postage. After Hong Kong, Pinduoduo announced that its cross-border free shipping service also covers Macau, China, Taiwan, and overseas countries such as Singapore, Japan, and South Korea, and will open other countries and regions in the future.

In other words, JD.com is eyeing the Xinjiang market, while Pinduoduo is eyeing the Spring Festival consumer market in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and overseas Chinese. Although Pinduoduo's "free shipping area" is not as wide as JD.com and Taobao, its free shipping threshold is the lowest among the three platforms.

Source: Based on public information

Live streaming e-commerce has also begun to fully embrace the New Year Goods Festival this year. The Douyin New Year Goods Festival will be held from January 2 to January 22, 2025. In addition to official instant discounts, direct price cuts, and "big brand discounts", the live streaming room has also added new content such as hometown New Year goods.

The official period of Kuaishou New Year Goods Festival is from December 21 to January 5, 2025, and the welfare return period is from January 6 to 12. According to the relevant person in charge of Kuaishou e-commerce, the 2025 Kuaishou New Year Goods Festival will set up more New Year-themed marketing methods, introduce and create more authentic New Year goods, and enhance the user's purchasing experience.

However, as the users of major e-commerce platforms have reached the population growth ceiling and their own business diversification has diluted traffic, free traffic on e-commerce platforms is becoming increasingly scarce. Even brand merchants still need to rely on paid traffic to promote sales growth.

This has also caused e-commerce practitioners like Zhang Shuai (pseudonym), the e-commerce manager of a food company in Henan Province, to fall into unprecedented confusion.

Zhang Shuai said that merchants operating on mainstream e-commerce platforms are facing difficulties brought about by refunds, freight insurance, consumer price comparisons, surging traffic costs, and declining profits. A large number of domestic e-commerce merchants feel tremendous pressure.

2. The “gifting” function of “old wine in new bottles”

Faced with pressure from e-commerce platforms, some people have set their sights on the WeChat platform.

Unlike JD.com, WeChat, based on its powerful social functions, launched the gift-giving function in large quantities during the Lunar New Year Shopping Festival, based on the grayscale test of the "gift-giving" function in December last year. Not only WeChat, Douyin upgraded the "group purchase and free gift-giving" function to a permanent function; Taobao launched the "gift-giving" function to all users; and Dongfang Zhenxuan launched new functions such as "multi-person gift package" and "lottery gift package".

Image source: WeChat

It is undeniable that there is a great demand for "giving gifts" before the Spring Festival and during the Spring Festival, which is also the basis for e-commerce platforms to compete on "giving gifts". Especially in the society of favors in the sinking market, there is also a demand for "giving gifts" in the blind date market.

Hu Yang (pseudonym), a consumer from Shenqiu County, Henan Province, said that the less developed the county is, the more rules there are for blind dates. During the Chinese New Year last year, an old man from the village next door introduced him to a girl for a blind date. Before the blind date, his parents specifically told him to buy two cartons of milk in advance, one for the matchmaker and one for the girl's home. Otherwise, if he went to the blind date empty-handed during the Chinese New Year, people would think he was too stingy and didn't know the proper manners.

Although the "send gift" function sounds new, it is actually "old wine in a new bottle". WeChat launched "WeChat Send Thoughts", Taobao launched "Send a Gift to Loved Ones", Douyin launched the function of shopping for family and friends, and Meituan launched the "Gift Mall", all of which have the "send gift" function.

However, the "gift" function on e-commerce platforms has been tepid for many years. On the surface, it is because consumers are worried about the quality of e-commerce products, especially fresh products, which have a high after-sales rate. If the fruit received by important customers or relatives and friends is rotten in large areas, it is better not to send this "gift".

The deeper reason is that in China, with its complicated social relationships, the "gift giving" function on e-commerce platforms can hardly meet real needs. Wang Chuan (pseudonym), head of a domestic company, told us why Moutai's handbags were designed to hold only two bottles of Moutai during the upswing of the real estate industry? Anyone who has worked on a project knows the reason behind this.

Similarly, why do many companies choose tea as a gift to customers? The reason is that tea is a market with brands but no prices. The prices of the same Huangshan Maofeng tea range from a few hundred to a few thousand to tens of thousands. In other words, even if the customer wants to check the price on the e-commerce platform after receiving the goods, they cannot judge, which makes it difficult to measure the "friendship" between the company and the customer through specific prices.

On the contrary, if you directly use the "send gifts" function of the e-commerce platform to send gifts to customers, the gifts will be very expensive, which will increase the operating costs of the enterprise. If the gifts are cheap, the customers will think that I bring millions or tens of millions of business to your company every year, and I only send such worthless things during the Chinese New Year, like sending away beggars? This will more or less affect the subsequent cooperation.

Not only companies, but also individuals have concerns about using e-commerce platforms to "send gifts" directly. Hu Yang said that he originally planned to give a mechanical keyboard to his childhood friend during the Chinese New Year, but his childhood friend said he didn't need it. The childhood friend said, "We haven't seen each other for a few years, and I don't need a mechanical keyboard from you. I just want to get together during the Chinese New Year and talk about our experiences over the years, right?"

After all, this world is a huge grass-roots team. The art of gift-giving not only requires a large number of ordinary people to learn slowly, but also requires major e-commerce platforms to slowly comprehend it.

3. Unsaleable Spring Festival gift boxes and unprofitable businesses

Although e-commerce platforms are confident in promoting the New Year Goods Festival through multiple measures, Zhang Shuai admits that the GMV of her company on major e-commerce platforms did not increase significantly during the New Year Goods Festival. Even the sales of gift boxes prepared for the Spring Festival fell by 30% compared with the same period last year.

This situation was more or less within my expectations - the consumer market is becoming more rational, and consumers cannot accept the high premium of gift boxes; some consumers are paying more and more attention to their health, and will repeatedly compare the food ingredient lists of different manufacturers.

After all, with food safety issues becoming more frequent, consumers are forced to use this method to satisfy their concerns about the health of themselves and their families. Although express delivery companies are still using the same strategy as in previous years, the decline in orders forced Zhang Shuai's boss to choose to take a holiday early on the 20th day of the twelfth lunar month.

Not only online, but also offline Spring Festival gift boxes are facing slow sales. Li Feng (pseudonym), a large fruit wholesaler in a certain region, told us that around the Spring Festival every year is the peak season for the sale of citrus, strawberries, and cherries. During the peak period of Spring Festival gift boxes related to these fruits, three trucks are basically sold every day. However, before the Spring Festival in 2025, consumers did not buy any fruit gift boxes. Now it is good to sell a truck every three days.

Li Feng's words can be further confirmed by Lu Tianqi (pseudonym), the owner of a supermarket in northern Anhui. In the past 2024, Lu Tianqi's supermarket had poor sales of gift boxes. After the Spring Festival that year, many dealers faced gift boxes returned by the terminals. In order to reduce losses, they could only find "smugglers" to deal with the inventory. "Smugglers" tore up the packaging of the Spring Festival gift boxes received from major dealers and gave the goods in the gift boxes to their e-commerce customers. This is why many consumers found that after the Spring Festival in 2024, a large number of low-priced branded goods appeared on e-commerce platforms.

The consumption of gift boxes during the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2024 was even bleaker. In the past, dealers did not care about the manufacturers’ price inversion and credit sales, and even did not let go of all kinds of terminal channels in order to increase shipments. But during the Mid-Autumn Festival that year, the gift boxes were not only unwilling to accept the increased payment tasks from the manufacturers, but also selected key terminal channels when distributing the products, and only distributed the products that the manufacturers had a little bit of sales.

The sales of Spring Festival gift boxes in 2025 are expected to be even bleaker. The turmoil in the top management of Guangzhou Pharmaceutical Wanglaoji and the "layoffs" of Mengniu may affect the interests of dealers, resulting in a decrease in their willingness to distribute goods. After all, which dealer of an old businessman does not know the principle of "one move for the emperor, one move for the minister"?

The consumer market before the Spring Festival in 2025 is that consumers pay more attention to prices, and other unnecessary consumption gives way to just-needed consumption. For example, both northern Anhui and Henan belong to the Central Plains region, and various consumption habits are very similar. We also have a gift of two boxes of milk in our local area. But this year, consumers may give one box instead, or a box of Telunsu Fantasy Cap at 60-70 yuan per box. At the same price, consumers will give other two boxes of milk.

Lu Tianqi, who is aware of the changes in the consumer market, directly cooperates with "smugglers" to purchase a large number of low-priced goods from them, or asks his parents to set up stalls on the streets of towns and villages to sell them. Or when customers need to purchase in large quantities for weddings, he directly delivers the goods to the customers' homes. After all, some products involve parallel imports, and it is easy to fall out with local dealers.

As the consumer market becomes more rational and people pay more attention to prices, we can understand why the revised JD.com is wavering on its low-price strategy. When consumption becomes more rational in 2025, the test for not only e-commerce platforms but also major consumer brands may really begin.

Author | Return to the Past Editor | Ji Ran