The longest Double 11 in history

On October 14, this year's Double 11 event kicked off. Not only did it start earlier, but it also lasted longer, earning it the title of "the longest Double 11 in history." This article takes an in-depth look at how e-commerce platforms use various strategies to attract merchants and consumers, especially for small and medium-sized merchants who face promotion fatigue and fierce market competition.

Double 11 in 2024 comes earlier than ever before.

At 8 p.m. on October 14, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Tmall, and JD.com launched this year's Double 11 events, about 10 days earlier than last year.

This year, the platforms are focusing more on merchants. Taotian Group said that this Double 11 will provide merchants with a more certain business environment while ensuring sufficient supply of low-priced goods and consumer experience; JD.com also said that it wants to make brand merchants sell well, grow, and make money. In addition to the "10 billion subsidies", Pinduoduo has also provided merchants with "10 billion reductions and exemptions".

Judging from the performance on the first day of the launch, the leading brands took the lead. Sales of home appliances and beauty brands such as Haier, Midea, Little Swan, L'Oreal, and SkinCeuticals soared, exceeding 100 million yuan one after another.

However, for some small and medium-sized businesses, the frequent promotions on major platforms this year have made them a little "aesthetically fatigued" by Double 11. Many small and medium-sized businesses told the IT Times reporter that judging from the data on the night of the event, there was not much increase compared to previous years, and the effect of this "longest" Double 11 in history remains to be tested.

1. This year’s Double 11 “belongs” to merchants

On October 14, the “longest” Double 11 in history was fully launched.

Compared with last year, the "gunpowder smell" of the Double 11 low-price war this year has faded a bit. Common promotional words such as "cheapest" and "lowest price on the entire network" have disappeared. Interconnection has become a hot word this year: Taobao can place orders directly on WeChat, and JD Logistics can be used for delivery and return. Meituan Takeaway and Meituan Hotel have officially settled in the Alipay mini program; merchants have become "hot cakes and biscuits" again, especially Taobao, which has launched a series of measures to "reduce the burden" on merchants.

The first thing to be optimized is "refund only". At the end of last year, Taobao launched "refund only", but it was constantly adjusted due to the craze of the wool party. Eight months after its implementation, Taobao modified the "refund only" rule. Merchants with experience scores greater than or equal to 4.8 points can negotiate on their own, and the platform will not interfere with the refund of goods that have been received. At the same time, Taobao launched a large model for "refund only" recognition. So far, an average of more than 400,000 unreasonable "refund only" orders are intercepted every day.

At the same time, Taobao launched an upgraded version of freight insurance, "Return Treasure", which aims to reduce the return costs for merchants. According to Taobao's calculations, during the Double 11 period, "Return Treasure" can bring up to 58% cost reduction for some merchants. In addition, Taobao will also waive one year's live broadcast technology service fee for all Taobao live broadcast merchants.

These measures have made Lin Yun (pseudonym) feel relieved. Lin Yun (pseudonym) is an e-commerce owner who sells body shaping sportswear on Tmall International and participates in the Double 11 shopping festival every year. "We belong to Tmall International, and the freight insurance rate for returns is generally 1% to 3% of the product price. The overall freight insurance cost generally accounts for 3% to 5% of sales."

This year, the platform no longer requires freight insurance. For Lin Yun, whose return rate and accident rate are not high, this part of the cost reduction is a solid profit.

However, Lin Yun has not yet felt the dividends of interconnection. The target customers of the sportswear he runs are basically young people and the middle class. The groups that Taobao is "missing" in WeChat are mostly elderly people and lower-class people who only use WeChat and WeChat Pay, which is more beneficial to the merchants covered by Pinduoduo.

Perhaps for this reason, Pinduoduo, which has always "favored" consumers, also increased its discounts for merchants during Double Eleven this year. The "10 billion reduction" plan launched by Pinduoduo will reduce the promotion service fees, technical service fees, and security deposits of high-quality merchants in the next year. In addition, Pinduoduo also exempted merchants from the transit fees for logistics in remote areas, reduced the technical fees for all use-before-attachment orders from 1% to 0.6%, and reduced the store security deposit from 1,000 yuan to 500 yuan.

2. Some businesses cannot afford the “longest in history”

In addition to interconnection, "the longest in history" is also one of the most important labels of this year's Double 11.

To summarize briefly, at 10 a.m. on October 14, Vipshop was the first to start selling at a "peak time", and that evening, Taobao and JD.com simultaneously launched the Double 11 promotion. As early as October 8, Pinduoduo took the lead in announcing the launch of the Double 11 event; Douyin also announced the entry into pre-sale promotions (pre-sales) on the same day, and Kuaishou e-commerce launched the pre-sale rush on October 10.

Changing the promotion season from weeks to months and then to longer means that platform merchants have to participate in activities for longer and longer periods of time, and prices have to remain low for a long time, which makes it a bit difficult for some small and medium-sized merchants.

Zhu Ling (pseudonym), a Shanghai e-commerce boss who sells high-priced clothing, gave up this year's Double 11. She told the IT Times reporter that although the platform has released many preferential policies this year, the beneficiaries are still large merchants, "For us who sell clothing, September to November is the peak season. If we don't participate in Double 11, we won't be anxious about traffic. On the contrary, it won't cause sales pressure because of the event."

She was a little tired because the effect of the "longest 618 in history" in the first half of the year was not ideal. This year's 618 promotion was also called "the longest in history". It started on May 20 and lasted for nearly a month. Although Zhu Ling's store traffic increased after participating in the event, the return rate also increased. The overall sales volume was less than that of a normal month. In addition, the endless returns and after-sales service put more pressure on her already tight store.

Lin Yun still participated in this year's Double 11, with a promotion strategy of offering discounts on all products and pre-sale of some products. However, Tmall's booming first-day data had "nothing to do" with him.

Data from the Tmall platform shows that in the first 30 minutes after the sale started at 8pm on October 14, 20 Tmall beauty brands had sales of over 100 million yuan, 8 single products had sales of over 100 million yuan, and 42 brands including Xiaomi, vivo, DJI, and Fuji had sales doubled compared to the first day of pre-sale last year. Although Lin Yun's store traffic has increased a lot, the difference between pre-sale and usual is not big, and most buyers just look at it.

“Tmall International has promotional activities almost every month. Daily sales and activities have already consumed a lot of users’ purchasing power. Moreover, the previous strategy of raising prices by SKUs and then lowering prices to participate in activities is no longer feasible. If we don’t lower prices, there will be no traffic, and if we lower prices, there will be no profit,” Lin Yun said with some annoyance.

"The Double 11 cycle should be shortened to 7 to 10 days." A month-long promotion means that Lin Yun's store has to keep prices low for a whole month. If there are not enough sales, Lin Yun is worried that the store's overall profit will decline.

3. Although the “lowest price” is not seen, it has become a secret war

Although the "lowest price" has disappeared across the entire Internet this year, and all e-commerce platforms have tried their best to attract merchants and consumers, price is still the most effective weapon anyway.

Taobao and JD.com are competing openly and secretly in their respective non-advantageous projects.

This year, the number of products participating in JD.com's 10 billion yuan subsidy has increased fourfold, especially for "non-advantage" products such as clothing and beauty products. Many international brands such as Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, and MONCLER have entered JD.com. In terms of clothing, JD.com offers a 50% discount coupon for clothing, and a 50 yuan discount for purchases over 300 yuan across stores.

Taotian offers multiple discounts on JD.com's advantageous projects such as 3C and home appliance categories, including "3C Digital Coupons" with a 100 yuan discount on purchases over 980 yuan, "Home Appliances Value Coupons" with a 300 yuan discount on purchases over 2,980 yuan, and a 600 yuan discount on purchases over 5,980 yuan.

In terms of factory direct sales, the most important channel for low-priced goods, both sides also compete for "good quality and low price". A week before the start of Double 11, Taobao launched the "Taobao Selection" column, which was built into the App in the form of a self-operated flagship store. Its positioning is to provide an exclusive traffic window for high-cost-effective sources of goods. The page presentation and target users are similar to Taobao Factory.

JD.com launched a "10 billion yuan subsidy for factory goods", which not only provides traffic support and price subsidies for merchants, but also doubles the number of goods in the 9.9 free shipping channel compared to last year's Double 11. In addition, JD.com announced that it will recruit at least 10,000 buyers and sales personnel in the next three years to bring back more high-quality and low-priced products.

Live streaming is also an important channel for e-commerce platforms to compete on price. Taobao's strategy is still to rely on top anchors such as Li Jiaqi and Luo Yonghao. When you open Taobao Live, you can find that the words "red envelope rain" will appear in the upper right corner of many live broadcast rooms, ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions of yuan. Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room distributed 500 million yuan in red envelopes on the first day of Double 11 from the 14th to the 15th.

JD.com, which does not have any major live broadcasts, seems to be "infatuated" with the digital human live broadcast track. During the Double 11 Shopping Festival, the digital humans created by JD.com will be open to brand merchants for free trial. The most explosive thing is that the "JD.com Procurement and Sales Personnel" who once publicly competed with Li Jiaqi are fighting again. The JD.com Supermarket Procurement and Sales Live Broadcast Room announced that it will broadcast live simultaneously with Li Jiaqi, and will offer a 10% discount on the price of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room.

Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting, believes that the "price war" among e-commerce platforms is indeed still going on. However, in the long run, major e-commerce platforms will re-examine their category advantages, experience and service differences, and increase investment in a focused manner to form differentiated competitive advantages beyond price.

Author: Shen Yibin Editor: Hao Junhui Sun Yan