Luckin Coffee gift boxes priced at 19.9 yuan sold out in 200,000 units. How can brands seize the new bonus of gift-giving?

Luckin Coffee created a sales volume of 200,000 yuan with a gift box of 19.9 yuan through the WeChat gift function, becoming an industry benchmark. This article will deeply analyze the success case of Luckin Coffee and explore how brands can adapt to the gift culture in the new era.

“Who would buy something worth $19.90 to give as a gift?”

In China, where gift-giving culture is so strong, gift-giving is slowly changing. In the past, gifts of considerable value showed that friendship was strong enough, but now, gift-giving has become a daily routine. A cup of milk tea or coffee, or a 9.9 yuan small ornament bought on Douyin, has gradually become a way for young people to get closer in social etiquette.

This change in mentality is also reflected in the recently popular WeChat gift-giving feature. Recently, WeChat launched the gift-giving feature. Although it is still in grayscale testing, the Luckin Coffee team has created the first industry benchmark case through this feature. In one day, the 19.9 yuan New Year gift box set sold 10,000 orders, creating a performance of over 200,000.

The successful test of the Luckin Coffee team has made many brands rethink how to combine social and e-commerce to seize this wave of dividends. At the same time, platforms are actively following up. After WeChat launched the gift-giving function, Taobao and Douyin followed suit, not wanting to miss out on the dividends of social and e-commerce. For brands, this means that the long-awaited dividend signal of e-commerce has appeared.

In addition, it is worth thinking about that the Luckin Coffee team was able to achieve such a high performance with only a small-cost attempt. What can other brands learn from this? As gift-giving scenarios become more and more diverse, what implications does this have for brand marketing?

1. Luckin Coffee’s 10,000 Orders: Small Cost Leads to Big Success

On the day when WeChat launched the gift-giving function, many brands were already thinking about how the gift-giving function could empower their business, and had already put New Year gift box products on the shelves in their brand WeChat stores, guiding consumers to use the gift-giving function to send out the first "little blue envelope" of the new year (WeChat gifts appear in the form of blue red envelopes, so it is called the little blue envelope function).

These operations are relatively conventional and cannot create a sales explosion in the short term. However, the Luckin Coffee team excels in terms of team response and organizational structure. Based on a sufficient understanding of users and combined with social gameplay, a relatively systematic product strategy and operation strategy have been formulated. This is the core reason why it can quickly enter the market and create a benchmark case in a short period of time.

Daofa reviewed the little blue bag case of the Luckin Coffee team and provided some thoughts on product strategy and operational strategy.

Product strategy: reduce consumers’ cost of trying new products

First of all, in terms of pricing, the Luckin Coffee team set up three price tiers of gift boxes, namely 19.9 yuan, 39.9 yuan and 199 yuan. Among these three tiers of gift boxes, the 19.9 yuan gift box sold 10,000 copies on December 30, which was a big difference from the other two tiers of gift boxes.

Obviously, the 19.9 yuan gift box is the main product in the test, which can also be called a traffic-generating product. The price is almost the same as a cup of milk tea, which is used to attract consumers. The 39.9 yuan and 199 yuan are used as foil products to highlight the cost-effectiveness of the traffic-generating product.

In the report of Jianshi, the internal team shared that the reason why 19.9 yuan can attract consumers is that when the gift-giving function of WeChat was just launched, consumers were more inclined to try it with a small cost. The same situation also occurred in other brands' WeChat stores. However, the Luckin Coffee team made the price difference between the foil and the main product relatively large, which made it easier to reduce consumers' decision-making costs.

Secondly, this product portfolio is also worth studying.

The purpose of the Jixiang team's test of the gifting function is not just to generate revenue, but to allow more consumers to start to get in touch with Luckin Coffee's retail business. More important than revenue is to make consumers interested in the brand's retail products.

Therefore, the 19.9 yuan gift box consists of a nice mug + coffee liquid, which can reduce the cost of trying new products for consumers. For consumers, the brand has prepared a new and exclusive container for brewing coffee liquid for them, which is also beneficial for subsequent consumers to continue to buy coffee liquid products. At the same time, the coffee liquid also uses the classic popular product of Luckin Coffee, the raw coconut latte flavor, to provide consumers with a sense of security.

The team customized different functions for gift boxes of different price ranges. The 39.9 yuan and 19.9 yuan boxes have the same functions and are used as trial boxes. The 179 yuan box is for users who are more loyal to the brand.

The product strategy aims to reduce the cost of trying out the gift-giving feature on WeChat, while the operational strategy aims to encourage users to try the gift-giving feature and expand the influence of the retail business.

Operational strategy: stimulate emotional needs and make users want to give gifts

On December 30, Luckin Coffee’s WeChat official account posted a tweet using “Send your first gift of the New Year” as a psychological anchor to stimulate users. At the same time, the 19.9 yuan product page also used “The first gift of the New Year” as the beginning of the product name. At the same time, the slogan also emphasizes that “Gifts don’t need to be too expensive, 19.9 yuan can last a long time” to poke users’ consumption psychology.

Just like the consumer psychology described in this article, "After drinking the first cup of milk tea in autumn, eating the first dumplings in winter, grabbing the first red envelope for the New Year, and sending the first "WeChat gift" of the New Year." With just one simple sentence, it evokes the user's yearning for a sense of ritual. To put it more directly, it is a kind of showing off mentality. No one doesn't want to be the "number one" in someone's heart.

In contrast, when other brands promote and guide users to use the WeChat gift-giving function, it is rare to see them starting from the user's psychology and giving users a reason why they should buy the product to send WeChat gifts.

In addition, in order to expand the influence of this test, in addition to the public social media platform, the Jixiang team also prepared a private pool of millions for diffusion. At present, this private traffic pool is the first batch of seed users of Jixiang coffee business. The private traffic pool is used to guide the conversation and let the core users be the center for fission.

Compared to other brands that have simply put gift box products on the shelves and provided functional guidelines, it is clear that the Luckin Coffee team has a deeper understanding of the gift-giving function.

However, after purchasing a 19.9 yuan product for testing, it was found that the platform and the Luckin Coffee team had not prepared any private domain traffic diversion actions to divert gift givers and gift recipients to the brand's corporate WeChat or official WeChat group.

2. Seize the small happiness and turn the selling point into the buying point

As mentioned earlier, Luckin Coffee can leverage tens of thousands of orders with a gift box costing 19.9 yuan. What is worth pondering behind this is not just the gift-giving function of WeChat, but why in China, where there is a strong gift-giving culture, these consumers are willing to spend 19.9 yuan to show their appreciation?

Facts tell us that for young people, gift-giving is completely different from traditional concepts.

According to Nielsen IQ survey data, compared with those born in the 1990s and 1980s, those born in the 2000s are more inclined to think that gift giving is a form of daily sharing, with a significantly higher proportion than options such as socializing and important festivals. Gift giving is more like a daily sharing and emotional exchange with people around you. The true meaning of the saying "a small gift but a big thought" is truly reflected in young consumers.

The platform has the most obvious perception of user consumption psychology.

For example, the changes that Douyin made during the golden autumn marketing season last year and this year cater to the consumption psychology of current users.

Douyin: From rational sales logic to emotional user psychology

Last year, Douyin set the theme of the Mid-Autumn Festival as "Golden Autumn Harvest Season". From a macro social perspective, it used the autumn harvest of crops to imply that both brands and consumers have reaped satisfactory results this autumn, thereby arousing emotional resonance.

In fact, this type of description is not really from the user's perspective, but from the logic of selling goods, giving the brand a reasonable reason.

This year, Douyin's style suddenly changed, and it began to learn to think about the new connotation of Mid-Autumn Festival from the perspective of users. This year, the platform set the theme of Mid-Autumn Festival as "Golden Autumn Reunion Gift" and Mid-Autumn Festival as the "small perfection" of young people. From the traditional big reunion to the new small perfection, it uses a more healing marketing method to impress consumers.

The platform believes that compared to grand narratives, young consumers are more inclined to find comfort in the little things in life, and have a deep yearning for relaxation and healing power. "Whether it can satisfy emotional values" has gradually become a core factor in young people's purchasing decisions.

In the past, the Mid-Autumn Festival was about letting young people who worked hard outside to bring valuable gifts back home to reunite with their families. But now that young people have more choices for small happiness, going home for a big reunion is no longer the first choice. You can also spend a comfortable Mid-Autumn Festival with your friends, partner or yourself. Therefore, Douyin created a hot topic on the site: #Who can refuse this moon-watching companionship, tapping into the emotional needs of young people for companionship.

In addition to paying attention to the changes in consumers' gift-giving psychology, the Luckin Coffee team also gave us another thought: Why is Luckin's 19.9 yuan gift box selling better for the same low price?

This is because the Luckin Coffee team did another thing. It did not promote the gift box products as cost-effective, but started from the user's psychology and turned the selling point into a buying point: send your first gift of the New Year. This buying point can really impress users and choose to buy Luckin gift boxes and use the gift sending function to send their thoughts.

Xiaohongshu, which understands the current consumer psychology better, has achieved the ultimate in turning selling points into buying points.

Xiaohongshu: Gift marketing needs to turn selling points into buying points

In the past, brands were more concerned about how to make consumers feel the value of gift boxes. Now, we need to pay more attention to how to convert selling points into buying points.

The first point is, in what kind of scene and for what reason does the gift-giver give the gift? The second point is that we should not only consider the feelings of the gift-giver, but also meet the emotional needs of the gift-giver. At the moment he buys the gift, he can imagine what kind of emotional value he will gain at the moment of giving the gift.

As an online community that is closest to real user needs, Xiaohongshu has always been proud of its insights into user consumption psychology. How to turn selling points into buying points is Xiaohongshu's strength. Therefore, every holiday marketing node, Xiaohongshu will launch marketing insights for beauty, cosmetics, luxury jewelry and other industries based on crowd mentality, content, user needs and other dimensions.

Take this year’s 520 as an example:

• From the perspective of the crowd, Xiaohongshu has discovered that more new demands have been born under the new gift-giving culture. For the 520 festival, ritual scenes, high consumption demands and male gift-giving are new growth points for the platform.
• From the perspective of demand, Xiaohongshu has found the top keywords that users love to search for. For female users on the platform, 520 is no longer limited to gifts for the opposite sex. The gift recipients are more diverse and the gifts are more segmented. At the same time, for them, the emotional needs behind gift giving include self-worth/couple interaction/dating experience.
• From the content point of view, Xiaohongshu has found out what content points users are more likely to be attracted to based on past data. While the gift box packaging should be prominent, the brand attitude, story and interaction should not be ignored. During the 520 festival, users are very concerned about lip makeup. Xiaohongshu recommends that brands should emphasize the atmosphere of makeup when placing ads and describe it from different scenes.

In summary, the gift marketing brought to us by Luckin Coffee's 10,000 orders includes two points.

More and more users believe that gift giving can be more of a daily routine and a form of emotional communication. Meeting consumers’ emotional values ​​will be the focus of future gift marketing. At the same time, to do gift marketing well, brands should learn to shift from selling points to buying points, rather than just outputting how high-quality their products are.

3. Analyst Comments

After WeChat launched the gift-giving function, Taobao and Douyin followed suit. Social media + e-commerce is a bone that major platforms have long wanted to chew, but there are no successful cases yet.

At present, WeChat's gift-giving function is still in its infancy, and there is still a lot of room for imagination and gameplay to be satisfied. This is also the reason why many brands cannot make full use of it. Not only because there are no replicable success cases, but also because the internal organizational and operational capabilities of enterprises cannot keep up, so they can only limit themselves to the listing and delisting of products.

On the one hand, the platform's functions are limited. On the other hand, the incident of Luckin Coffee's 10,000 orders has made brands realize that in order to re-understand users, they need to re-understand gift marketing and re-understand the gift culture in the new era.

Author | Lao Xie