After mining millions of data points, we found out what consumers really think about Double 11

As the Double 11 Shopping Festival enters its 16th year, consumer behavior, brand strategies and platform dynamics in China's e-commerce sector have undergone significant evolution. This article uses in-depth analysis of big data on social media to reveal consumers' true attitudes and behavioral changes towards Double 11, showing their complex emotions towards this annual shopping event.

As Double 11 enters its 16th year, the people, goods and venues of China's e-commerce promotion have undergone tremendous changes.

• People: Chinese people used to stock up on Singles’ Day to buy what they need for the next few months or even the year. Now, there are not only online promotions throughout the year such as 618 and Double 12, but also discount stores and special sale stores all over the streets and alleys of the country. Low-price consumption has long become their daily routine.
• Goods: New and old brands have been spending real money on sales just to climb a spot in the category rankings, but now they have stopped publishing Double 11 battle reports;
• Scene: As the GMV growth rate of Tmall Double 11 in 2021 fell below the growth rate of retail sales for the first time, Alibaba and JD.com simply stopped announcing the GMV data of Double 11 to the public in 2022. The scene of live broadcast of GMV on a large screen has become history.

However, despite this, e-commerce platforms still value Double 11. Whether it is the "catfish" Pinduoduo stirring up the industry to escalate the "price war", or the super-long promotion that lasted for more than a month this year, Double 11 is still an important driving force for the platform to sprint for annual GMV. Consumer brands are still on high alert, using Double 11 as an important position to promote sales, clear inventory, and launch new products.

The alternating hot and cold on the surface of the water makes us more eager to know: What is the real attitude of current consumers towards Double 11?

We dug into various data about Double 11 on social media platforms and summarized 5 new attitudes of consumers, from which we can get a glimpse into their true feelings about Double 11.

Attitude 1: Consumers’ attention and favorability towards Double 11 have both dropped to a low point

Since the shopping festival replaced Singles' Day and became the most important label of November 11, the consumption situation on Double 11 has become a high-frequency topic in Chinese social gatherings on this day. Later, as the consumption channels became more and more numerous and the activity rules became more complicated, the strategy of saving money on Double 11 became a popular subject.

However, we found that during the Double 11 period in 2024, the volume and interaction of Double 11 on social media platforms were lower than those in 2022 and 2023, reaching the lowest level in the past three years. Not only has the attention decreased, but consumers' favorability towards Double 11 has also dropped to the lowest level in three years. This is reflected in consumer behavior. In recent years, the growth rate of Double 11 GMV of mainstream e-commerce platforms and leading consumer brands has slowed down significantly.

Another set of data also reflects the same trend. Since 2018, the proportion of negative opinions among consumers about Double 11 has gradually increased.

There are many reasons for consumers' low interest and poor experience. After counting the high-frequency words mentioned in negative opinions, we found that negative opinions are most concentrated in aspects such as price power, group buying mechanism, coupon grabbing mechanism, activity rules, price guarantee commitment, after-sales issues, and payment experience.

Consumers’ dissatisfaction with price levels stems from their increasing price sensitivity, on the one hand, and from the fact that Double 11, which once locked in the “lowest price of the year,” no longer has an absolute price advantage. Big promotions are spread throughout the year, and even the pre-sale time of Double 11 itself is getting longer and longer. Platforms and brands need to balance the impact of high-frequency and ultra-long promotions on profits, and cannot easily offer the “bottom price.” Consumers’ perception of cost-effectiveness has also gradually weakened.

In addition, in recent years, e-commerce platforms have launched many promotional policies to attract consumers. However, in order to increase consumers' length of stay and related consumption, the use of discount coupons, shopping coupons, and red envelopes usually limit the types of goods and set discount thresholds, while matching activity mechanisms such as pre-sale deposits, waiting to receive coupons, and points redemption for coupons.

These complex activity mechanisms are confusing and exhausting consumers. Although the platform has realized this and simplified the gameplay as much as possible during this year's Double 11, consumers' favorability has not improved.

Attitude 2: Consumers are increasingly disgusted with the pre-sale deposit mechanism

The complex activity mechanism mentioned above includes the pre-sale system.

The pre-sale system was first introduced to ease the system pressure on Double 11, and to facilitate merchants to better mobilize the supply chain. However, as the pre-sale period has been extended year by year, it seems to have gradually changed, and consumers' attention to the pre-sale stage has also declined.

On Double 11 in 2022, the buzz about "Double 11" on social media platforms reached a climax in the early stage of pre-sales, and the buzz was even higher than on Double 11 itself. On Double 11 in 2023, the buzz was mediocre in the early stage of pre-sales. On the contrary, it started to explode before the end of pre-sales on October 31 and close to Double 11 itself.

By this year's Double 11, the pre-sale period was moved forward a lot, but the overall popularity dropped significantly. There was a small peak in the early stage of the pre-sale, but it was never as popular as Double 11.

More importantly, in the past three years, consumers' satisfaction with the pre-sale deposit mechanism has shown a significant downward trend, and the ratio of positive and negative opinions of consumers on the Double 11 deposit mechanism has dropped from 72:28 in 2022 to 59:41 in 2024.

The deposit mechanism initially attracted a group of consumers who wanted to lock in low-priced hot goods in advance, but these consumers soon discovered that the deposit mechanism had many bugs. The deposit would not be refunded if the final payment was forgotten, the deposit pre-sale price was not the lowest price, and was even worse than buying directly. Some consumers also found that the final payment price increased after paying the deposit, or found that the price was higher than other platforms.

Image source: Internet

Affected by these factors, consumers are no longer interested in pre-sales and deposits, and instead choose to pay in full on October 31, the final payment date, or directly buy on Double 11. A consumer on Xiaohongshu vividly summarized: "Double 11 is really cheap on three days: October 31, November 10, and November 11."

Negative feedback from consumers on the pre-sale system led Tmall, Taobao, and JD.com to cancel official pre-sales during this year’s 618 shopping festival and sell directly from stock. But just four months later, Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin, and Kuaishou all announced early pre-sales and launched the “longest Double 11 in history”—Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo extended Double 11 to 29 days, and Douyin even reached a record 35 days.

This is due to GMV concerns and "merchant-friendly" considerations. The pre-sale system can not only stagger sales and lock in consumer demand in advance, but also help merchants arrange production capacity and logistics distribution in advance. It is an important mechanism to ensure that merchants have orderly production, sufficient goods, and smooth logistics during Double 11.

During this year's Double 11, the keyword for the platform is "merchant-friendly": Taobao launched the "Return Treasure" to reduce merchants' return costs, and introduced the "10 billion reduction and exemption" plan to reduce the burden on merchants; JD.com upgraded the "Spring Dawn Plan" and increased support for third-party sellers; Pinduoduo also launched the "10 billion reduction and exemption" plan, which is expected to reduce 10 billion merchants' transaction fees in the next year.

In other words, as we enter the 16th Double 11, the platform also needs to find a balance between consumers and merchants, and no longer simply try to please either consumers or merchants.

Attitude 3: Satisfaction with logistics experience has significantly improved, but after-sales service still needs to be improved

After analyzing consumers’ satisfaction with various dimensions during Double 11 over the past three years, we found that consumers’ satisfaction with logistics experience has been rising year by year, and it is one of the few areas that is experiencing sustained growth.

Growth Black Box believes that the improvement in satisfaction with logistics experience is the result of continuous competition among major platforms in logistics timeliness and logistics coverage, and is also the common achievement of breaking down and integrating logistics services among platforms.

This year, JD Logistics fully integrated into Taobao and Tmall, and Cainiao Express and Cainiao Post Station also joined the JD system. JD Logistics has more advantages in packaging quality and delivery time, which is more in line with the needs of high-order categories such as 3C and home appliances, while Cainiao's cost advantage is more suitable for clothing and daily necessities with high return rates and low order value, as well as household products with large weight and space but relatively low order value.

Through this cooperation, merchants on both sides can benefit and further optimize operating costs.

Similar cooperation is also reflected in the payment process: this year Taobao added WeChat payment, and JD.com also launched Alipay payment. Consumers no longer have to worry about payment methods, and e-commerce platforms will not lose customers and orders due to restricted payment methods.

The reason why "platform integration" will appear in 2024 is that, on the one hand, traditional e-commerce is facing the impact of emerging e-commerce and needs to work together to keep warm; on the other hand, as consumers become more rational, consumption fatigue, and regain control of consumption, it is no longer appropriate to compete and consume internally within the industry. Only by breaking through barriers and cooperating can we have more profit margins in the buyer's market era.

However, while logistics satisfaction has increased, consumers' satisfaction with after-sales service has declined.

The satisfaction with after-sales service is low, and there are many inherent limitations of online consumption. Compared with offline shopping, online after-sales service is often more difficult to handle because it is impossible to verify the authenticity of the problem, the condition of the product, and to communicate directly and effectively.

In addition, the rules of Double 11 have become increasingly complicated in recent years, which has increased the probability of after-sales problems. Consumers' questions about price insurance, deposit and final payment, returns and exchanges, coupons, customer service attitude, etc. may all lead to after-sales dissatisfaction.

Attitude 4: Mainstream consumers’ negative emotions are more obvious

In addition to the satisfaction differentiation in different dimensions, different groups of people also have different levels of satisfaction with Double 11.

We have selected a group of consumers that all e-commerce platforms are trying hard to please and attract: those aged 20-40, living in high-tier cities, who love online shopping, have sufficient purchasing power, and like to share.

But it is precisely this group of mainstream consumers who have lower satisfaction with Double 11 and more obvious negative emotions.

• In terms of gender, female consumers who shop online more frequently, spend more, and love shopping more are less satisfied with Double 11 than male consumers.
• In terms of age, consumers aged 20-30 and 30-40, who have stronger purchasing power and more frequent online shopping habits, are less satisfied with Double 11.
• From a regional perspective, consumers in high-tier cities who have more offline consumption options and are more discerning about shopping experience are less satisfied with Double 11 than consumers in third-tier and lower cities.

As the most active group of people in online shopping, they participate in online shopping frequently, and are often more involved in and have a deeper understanding of the rules and processes. Therefore, various measures taken by platforms and merchants are likely to cause their feedback. In recent years, the complexity of rules and price differences have caused their shopping experience to decline, thus dragging down the overall satisfaction.

At the same time, consumers in high-tier cities are not sensitive to prices. As Double 11 gradually loses its amazing "lowest price", it is difficult for this group of people to perceive its price advantage, so their satisfaction with discounts is low. Moreover, they have many offline consumption options. At present, the cost-effectiveness of many offline channels has exceeded that of online channels, which has lowered the satisfaction of consumers in high-tier cities to a certain extent.

In contrast, people in third-tier and lower cities are the most price-sensitive group, and are also the core audience of Pinduoduo's low-price strategy of "surrounding the cities from the countryside." Because of their extreme pursuit of low prices, they can keenly perceive price differences and are keen to place orders by comparing prices. Therefore, Double 11's promotional activities can better elicit feedback from this group of people.

It is worth noting that consumers in third-tier and lower-tier cities are significantly less satisfied with logistics services than those in first-tier and second-tier cities. The logistics services in "Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai" and "free shipping areas" are still far ahead, which also suggests that there is still a lot of room for improvement in logistics services in the sinking market during future promotions.

According to data from the Ministry of Commerce, the year-on-year growth rate of online retail sales in the central and western regions in 2023 will be much higher than that in the northeastern region, and even higher than that in the more economically developed eastern region. In the future, compared with the eastern region with a high concentration of high-tier cities, the central and western regions will be able to contribute a higher scale growth rate.

For the platform, choosing which group of people to focus on may be a question that needs to be thought out in advance. Whether it is the high-end urban customer group with more added value, or the sinking market with greater potential for scale growth in the future as the e-commerce penetration rate and GMV growth rate slow down, there are more possibilities worth exploring.

Attitude 5: E-commerce platform Double 11 satisfaction stratification, JD.com and Xiaohongshu lead the industry

Platform preference is an indispensable topic during Double 11.

Therefore, we studied the current mainstream e-commerce platforms and found that the consumer satisfaction rankings for Double 11 in 2024 are: JD.com, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Douyin, Tmall/Taobao, and Pinduoduo.

Pinduoduo, which has always won by low prices, lost out in this competition on satisfaction. However, platforms such as JD.com and Xiaohongshu, which have higher average order values ​​and quality consumption as an important label, have relatively high satisfaction.

JD.com is easy to understand. After all, it started out as a 3C home appliance company. Its platform ARPU (average revenue per user) has always been at the forefront of e-commerce platforms, and it is also relatively leading in product after-sales service, logistics support and other aspects.

Xiaohongshu is more interesting. As a cutting-edge e-commerce platform, it has always been famous for its community attributes. User interactions are direct, transparent, frequent and flexible, and therefore consumer satisfaction is relatively high.

It is worth mentioning that Xiaohongshu did not hold big promotions like traditional e-commerce companies. Instead, it combined its own community attributes to launch online theme blocks that meet different interests and lifestyles, presenting merchant stores and buyer live broadcast rooms to consumers in a more interesting and targeted way.

Thanks to this, consumers are no longer attracted by simple price, but by merchant content, buyer style, etc., which is conducive to fan retention and long-tail transactions after the end of Double 11.

This unique approach also stems from the fact that Xiaohongshu’s business logic is different from that of traditional e-commerce. As an important position in brand marketing, Xiaohongshu has many advantages that traditional e-commerce cannot reach, such as a grass-planting atmosphere, a buyer model, and a highly sticky and interactive fan base.

For merchants, doing Double 11 on Xiaohongshu can not only boost sales, but more importantly, it can make up for the lack of product promotion and brand building in traditional e-commerce promotions, and open up a self-closed loop of "integration of planting and harvesting". Under this mechanism, Double 11 is also integrated into brand marketing, which can bring long-term brand value increment in addition to short-term sales.

Xiaohongshu's innovative promotion method also brings some new inspiration to the e-commerce industry, which is currently mired in a "price war". In the past, platforms and brands kept a close eye on GMV, and Double 11 became the main battlefield of the "price war", but the mindless sales approach has been disproven. The frequent changes in consumer brands on the sales list are an example. Sales that cannot be tied to brand value will be lost quickly even if they are gained in the short term. Only by getting rid of the quagmire of "price war" can China's e-commerce industry really rejuvenate.

As consumers' attitudes towards Double 11 change, we can clearly see that the essence of Double 11 is just a marketing tool. It was born and praised to a high position because it met the needs of the three parties: platforms, merchants, and consumers. However, it has gradually become dull because it can no longer do these things.

Conclusion

Going back to the changes in people, goods, and venues during China’s e-commerce promotions mentioned at the beginning of the article, Growth Black Box believes that:

• In the past, the influence of Double 11 was so great that the platforms and merchants were on high alert and could not afford to make any mistakes, regarding Double 11 as a goal or even an honor. But now, Double 11 has to return to its role as a marketing tool, becoming an existence not much different from 618 and the New Year's Goods Festival, and being treated more objectively, rationally and balancedly.
• For consumers, after more than a decade of Double 11 promotions, it is inevitable that consumers' consumption concepts will become more mature and rational. Impulsive consumption and follow-up consumption stimulated by low prices and rhetoric will eventually become history. It is inevitable for consumers to awaken their sense of sovereignty and make shopping decisions based on their real needs.
• For China's consumer market, under the equalization of consumer rights, the relationship between platforms, brands and consumers has changed. The consumer market has entered a buyer's market. Platforms and brands need to better understand what consumers think. Brands should not blindly give consumers discounts on unsold products, and platforms should not simply offer low prices. They will jointly disenchant pure low prices and promotions. In the new consumer era, the industry will be more integrated and open, which will be the new background.

The consumer market will eventually return to its essence. Platforms and merchants need to put themselves in the right position and rethink the logic of brand management, because Double 11 should be a means, not an end.

Note: The data acquisition channel of Jiuqian Middle Platform in this article is Xiaohongshu;