Sixteen years of Double 11, new plays always sing old stories

From the initial price war to the current brand cooperation, Double 11 has evolved from a simple promotional event to an important milestone in China's e-commerce industry. In this article, let us explore how Double 11 has evolved from a simple shopping spree to a key force influencing the e-commerce landscape in China and even the world.

From 2014 to 2024, Double 11 has moved from disputes to competition and cooperation, with less gunpowder and more sugar.

01 Are you already tired of Double 11?

This question is being asked over and over again, but no one is willing to give a definitive answer. Back to the Double 11 event ten years ago, when Tsai was asked what the Double 11 event meant and where it would go in the future, his answer is now full of historical metaphors: "Every year it feels like it won't get any bigger, but every year there are surprises."

This was a humble expression at the time, but also an expectation.

That was in 2014. At that time, the outside world didn't know much about Joseph Tsai and always liked to describe him as "the man behind Jack Ma." So when he appeared at the Tmall Double 11 Shopping Carnival meeting, facing a group of media who were not familiar with him, he first talked about how he met Jack Ma.

The first time I met Jack Ma was in Hangzhou. When I met Jack Ma for the second time, Tsai’s wife was pregnant with their first child. They felt the warm atmosphere of the lakeside garden, and many people followed Jack Ma. Later, when they were boating in West Lake, Tsai said he wanted to join Alibaba to start a business. "Jack Ma was a little surprised to hear this and almost jumped into the lake."

This was the first time that Joseph Tsai was interviewed on Double 11. These detailed and exaggerated descriptions are a common way to break the ice in American speeches, and naturally won Joseph Tsai favor.

At the meeting, he also praised kindness as one of Jack Ma's most outstanding characteristics. "Jack Ma trusts me very much. He entrusts the really important things to others. This is why Alibaba has been able to grow continuously for 15 years. Because from its founding to today, the company's biggest bottleneck is still people."

That was Tmall's sixth Double 11, with transaction volume exceeding 57.1 billion. In the following seven years, the transaction volume of Double 11 has become an ever-expanding digital game, and the last time it was fixed at 540.3 billion in 2021, almost 10 times that of seven years ago. This number has never been announced in the following years.

What else can huge and specific numbers prove? They are the focus, the proof, and a way to dispel doubts.

At that time, Tsai Chongxin gave the judgment that "there are surprises every year" based on a series of consumption figures. He used the composition of GDP as a reference dimension. At that time, 60%-70% of the US GDP came from consumption, while China's proportion was about 36%, "so there is still huge room for growth in the future."

History repeats itself. Ten years later, Joseph Tsai has taken over the position of chairman of the group's board of directors from Zhang Yong. In an interview with the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund, he again talked about how he joined Alibaba and met Jack Ma. He did not avoid the issue that Alibaba's backwardness was due to its neglect of user experience, and also pointed out the reality that consumer confidence is currently quite low.

Tsai Chongxin has not changed. He looks at the world and compares it with developed countries. Consumption figures are still his way of showing future potential. "China's manufacturing output accounts for about 31% of the world, but consumption accounts for only 14% of the world. There is obviously an imbalance." "In China, consumption contributes slightly more than 50% to GDP, while consumption in developed markets accounts for more than 70% of the total economy."

However, this potential has a caveat. The current state of the real estate and employment markets are two key factors that Tsai believes affect confidence and consumption. More obviously, the comparison of the two sets of figures spanning ten years means that the surprise may be gone, and may no longer belong to oneself, but the potential is still there.

02 On Double 11 ten years ago, everything was still full of joy and optimism

The Xixi Park was brightly lit, and the LCD screen in the viewing hall was flashing maps and timers. Numbers were constantly jumping, and predicting the transaction volume after midnight became the greatest pleasure for the spectators at the time. Alibaba's market value in the U.S. stock market once surpassed Walmart.

That year, Joseph Tsai accepted media interviews on Double 11 for the first time; Jack Ma appeared at nearly midnight to answer three questions. He said he was not looking forward to the transaction volume, but was worried about the logistics behind it; the time when Wu Yongming first appeared on Tmall Double 11 is difficult to verify. At that time, he was still the special assistant to the chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group.

It was also that year that Alibaba and JD.com publicly fell out for the first time over Double 11.

JD.com issued an open letter, accusing Alibaba of banning JD.com's advertisements on the grounds that it had registered the Double 11 trademark. In fact, JD.com's Double 11-themed advertisements implicitly satirized Alibaba. For example, the advertisements reminded consumers not to "blindly shop" and "buy the real one at the same price." They also mentioned various embarrassing scenarios that consumers might encounter after buying counterfeit goods.

This naturally aroused Alibaba's dissatisfaction, and the Double 11 trademark became the reason for counterattack after the tit-for-tat confrontation.

Jack Ma clarified in CCTV's "Dialogue" at the time that "anyone is welcome to use the Double 11 trademark." The core idea of ​​Double 11 is to turn it into a day for all consumers to share happiness. However, if it becomes a day for businesses to promote their own brands and hurt others in order to determine their own interests, it becomes a time of vicious competition. At this time, trademark protection and protection of the Double 11 Festival become important.

Provocation, criticism, bombardment and even falling out have since become the public rhythm of e-commerce platforms during Double 11.

The most obvious example is the confrontation between Wang Shuai, then chairman of Alibaba's public relations committee, and Xu Lei, CMO of JD.com, three years later. JD.com announced at noon on November 11 that its sales on Double 11 had exceeded 100 billion yuan. Wang Shuai said on Taobao Live, "As long as JD.com is willing, it can count the total amount of orders for the year as the total amount of orders for the Double 11 New Year's Eve event. It's not a bad thing to make yourself happy. In this way, Tmall's daily transaction volume will definitely not exceed JD.com's annual transaction volume."

A few hours later, Xu Lei responded in his circle of friends, "This is not a math problem, this is a logic problem. You have the ability to make businesses open for more than 20 days without doing business, but I only have the ability to do business well for 11 days."

That was the era when competition among merchants was the most intense on Double 11. Han Du Yishe, which grew up relying on Taobao, was the focus of the women's clothing category on Double 11 every year. It was also in this year that Han Du Yishe and many well-known domestic clothing brands such as Jiangnan Buyi, Peacebird, Jeanswest, GXG, etc. disappeared from the JD platform, and JD began to sue Tmall for its "choose one of two" policy.

Clashes between high-level officials have rarely occurred since then, and now all the grudges have been settled and become a thing of the past.

Shaking hands and making peace seems to be the main theme. During this year's Double 11, Taobao and Tmall first connected to WeChat Pay, and Taobao links could be opened directly in WeChat; later, JD Logistics also fully connected to Taobao and Tmall. So, will the day of using Alipay for shopping on JD.com be far away?

The ten-year feud between Taobao and JD.com has ended, and they are now working together to fight against their enemy.

03 Only hearing the voice but not seeing the person, this may be the common portrayal of the current Double 11

JD Group CEO Xu Ran appeared at this year's "JD 11.11 Cheap and Good" press conference in the form of an AI digital avatar; at the Tmall Double 11 Global Carnival Season Media Communication Conference, the people who came out to explain were all younger business line leaders, and there was no trace of Taobao CEO Wu Yongming.

The only scene that was a bit tense was the singing and dancing of the purchasing and sales employees at JD.com's press conference, but its lethality was limited, after all, it was just a show.

"The real stuff and fake stuff are mixed together, there's no way to discuss this properly." The target of this song's satire is more of the chaos in live e-commerce, such as the Meicheng mooncake incident of Xiao Yangge, the sweet potato vermicelli mixed with cassava by Dongbei Yujie, Li Jiaqi's question to netizens whether their wages have increased, and the use of trough meat in pre-prepared dishes. In contrast, JD.com emphasized that it will recruit 10,000 procurement and sales employees in the future, with the aim of letting users feel this year's theme of "cheap and good".

Alibaba is also like this, with its guns pointed outward. At the Double 11 communication meeting, it also pointed out the recent frequent scandals of live e-commerce anchors, emphasizing that live e-commerce should enter the era of "quality live broadcast", intending to show that it has more advantages in the complete e-commerce process experience such as quality control and after-sales service.

This year, Taobao and JD.com have similar strategies. Unlike last year's "lowest price on the entire network", Wu Jia, president of Taobao's user platform division, said that the core of this year's Double 11 is still centered around "good quality and good price"; JD.com has also changed its theme to "cheap and good", while last year's theme was still "really cheap, buy with your eyes closed".

Low prices cannot save the situation, this is a return to rationality.

Ten years ago, Jack Ma said on Double 11, "Any festival that relies on discounts and low prices cannot last long." This year, Alibaba Group Vice President and Taobao Platform Division President Chu Duan also told the media, "We believe that blindly low prices will cause China's business environment, consumption and manufacturing industries to regress."

Taobao and JD.com both chose to return to rationality on Double 11, using their own strengths to attack the opponent's weaknesses. It also represents the collective correction of shelf e-commerce to live streaming e-commerce.

Ten years ago, Double 11 was seen as a collective declaration of war by Internet e-commerce against offline traditional businesses. No one wanted to get a piece of the pie in this rising opportunity. At that time, Alibaba and JD.com were the protagonists on the Double 11 stage. Who were their opponents?

Perhaps they have long been forgotten, but they are Amazon China, No.1 Store, Gome, Suning, and the smaller Meilishuo and Mogujie, and even the third-party service providers Koudaitong and Weidian on WeChat. At that time, Suning’s provocation to Alibaba was no less than that of JD.com. In its overwhelming advertisements, Suning wrote: This TM Double Eleven, you should have one more choice.

Today, Double 11 has already completed its historical mission of enlightening Chinese consumers about e-commerce. Even Wu Jia said that this year’s Tmall Double 11 is expected to have the largest number of purchasing users in history.

In the stable e-commerce landscape, the five most obvious players are Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin and Kuaishou. The latter three have posed a more obvious impact on Alibaba and JD.com. Pinduoduo's low-price mentality is unbreakable. The live streaming e-commerce ecosystem built by Douyin and Kuaishou based on their traffic advantages is a growth channel for merchants to capture users' daily needs.

This year's 618 sales data has already provided a reference for Double 11. According to Star Chart data, the sales of comprehensive e-commerce platforms fell by 6.9% year-on-year, while the sales of live broadcast e-commerce platforms increased by 12.1%.

04 From 2014 to 2024, Double 11 has moved from disputes to competition and cooperation, with less gunpowder and more sugar

In addition to interconnection, the most obvious change of JD.com and Alibaba during this year's Double 11 is that they have invested more energy and resources in supporting the development of merchants. It is no longer effective to lower prices to attract users. It is more important to attract merchants again and give them a chance to be certain.

The data revealed by JD.com is that as of the first quarter of this year, the number of JD.com's third-party merchants has exceeded one million, and in the second quarter, the number of new merchants increased by more than 40% compared with the first quarter.

The quality merchant representatives invited by JD.com include Da Meng, a new farmer who grows avocados in Menglian, Yunnan, and Lu Zhu, the founder of the Return to Han and Tang flagship store who opened a Hanfu shop in Chengdu. They demonstrated the process of opening their own products on JD.com and described the sense of security that JD.com provided them. The most highlight was that JD.com has the lowest return rate on all platforms.

This undoubtedly hits the pain points of live streaming e-commerce merchants.

Participating in Double 11 may result in losses, while not participating will affect traffic, which is why merchants complain bitterly every year on Double 11. In fact, merchants face the same challenges every year on Double 11. In order to obtain sufficient traffic, they have to pay higher operating costs, so as to achieve sales growth.

Providing merchants with certain opportunities is also one of the focuses of this year's Taobao Double 11. According to official data, "Since the beginning of this year, the number of new Taobao stores has reached 6 million throughout the year, which is the largest number of Taobao stores in the past few years."

To make merchants worry-free, it is not just about driving them to price-compete. Tmall’s “compensation for overpriced purchases” policy is also beneficial to merchants in essence. It is to prevent price-compete. It does not emphasize that the price is the lowest, but to let merchants align the prices of various platforms to achieve price stability during the Double 11 period, and then pursue the optimization of consumer experience and processes.

Double 11 has evolved to the point where it is no longer just a transaction of goods, but also a comprehensive competition of content, services and experience.

Back to the night of Double 11 in 2014, Jack Ma did not comment on the then-high stock price, nor was he looking forward to the transaction volume that would be announced. He was only looking forward to what the future of Double 11 would be like, "because we are all still very young, and some things will always be beyond our imagination."