On Double 11, Alibaba and JD.com sprinted ahead of schedule, while TikTok and Kuaishou were hot on their heels

This article introduces the current situation and changes of the Double 11 e-commerce promotion in 2024, analyzes the investment strategies, traffic support, mutual cooperation and competitive situation of major platforms, and explores how to attract consumers and merchants and achieve sales growth in the context of consumption recovery.

The "troubled times" for e-commerce have added a layer of gloom to Double 11.

Zhang Dayi, the first generation of Taobao internet celebrity who once landed on Nasdaq, recently announced on Weibo that her store would be closed; Douyin's top anchor Xiao Yangge was caught up in public opinion, Simba's live broadcast was banned, and Dongfang Zhen was plagued by internal conflicts...

The popularity of these events has surpassed that of Double 11. This e-commerce carnival, which has been held for 15 years, has seen its novelty and attention decline year by year, leaving major e-commerce platforms racking their brains to figure out how to "recreate glory."

Now, Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin, Kuaishou and other platforms have released their Double 11 gameplay. For merchants, the platform has launched many preferential policies and traffic support to compete for high-quality small and medium-sized merchants and encourage merchants to continue to invest in the platform. For consumers, the platform has launched various shopping promotions and full-reduction activities.

In addition, JD Logistics has entered Taobao, Alipay has entered JD, and WeChat and Taobao have also been connected. The open interconnection of major manufacturers at this moment seems to be accumulating strength for the Double 11 promotion, but consumers are too indifferent.

In the vicious competition of low prices and low quality in the past two years, the costs of merchants have increased dramatically. In the price war, it is inevitable that "bad money drives out good money", which greatly reduces the consumer experience. Although the Double 11 discounts will be increased, in the current macroeconomic environment, major e-commerce platforms are still trying their best to compete for the "ultimate quality-price ratio", and the core is to grab consumers and merchants.

01 Volume "Business Recruitment" to Grab "Pallets"

The common feature of this year's Double 11 is that all platforms have started it earlier and are all reducing the burden on merchants at the investment promotion level.

Let's look at Tmall first. Its pre-sale mechanism has returned again, giving merchants sufficient time to prepare goods. At the same time, Tmall plans to start the first wave of pre-sales on October 14, with a three-wave outbreak in the entire cycle. It is one week earlier than last year, which means an extra week of suffering for merchants. Because in the past, after the battle line of Double 11 was extended, the traffic distribution was very uneven and unstable. The sudden burst of traffic requires merchants to readjust the operation rhythm and prepare the quantity of goods.

To ease merchants' anxiety, Tmall this year cancelled the 10% discount requirement for coupons to increase merchants' flexibility on the platform. This can save a lot of money for many merchants.

In response to the high after-sales costs of Taobao merchants, Taobao Tmall recently launched the Return Bao service. In the past, free shipping and shipping insurance were often mandatory, which made many merchants miserable. Now Tmall claims that the "Return Bao" generally reduces the return costs of merchants by 20%, and can even achieve a direct cost reduction of 30%.

In order to solve the problem of high capital costs for merchants, Tmall Double 11 provides merchants with a 0-fee and extremely fast payment service. In other words, as long as the merchant ships the goods, they can get the payment immediately. For merchants who participate in the "10 billion subsidy" program, the platform will return 100% of the Tmall commission for participating in the "10 billion subsidy" program. Merchants can participate in various promotional activities at a lower cost and obtain more orders.

For Taobao merchants, Tmall Double 11 will fully implement commission-free promotions and store broadcasts, and will also unbind shipping insurance for Taobao merchants. It should be noted here that Tmall stores may not be able to unbind shipping insurance.

In the specific operation, a merchant told Jingshang that "Tmall pre-sales are forced to turn on automatic price tracking, so if we want to do pre-sales, we need to add a new link and sign up for pre-sales. Many stores have two links for the same product, one for pre-sales and one for normal sales. I have a hunch that there will be a wave of traffic decline during the National Day, so if we want to add a new link, we have to do it before the National Day."

The same investment problem also troubled JD.com. This year, JD.com's Double 11 was divided into five stages, including pre-sale, opening, special period, climax period and return period.

In terms of business attraction, this year's JD.com Double 11 promotion event completely cancelled the registration process. Merchants only need to comply with the established rules to pass the system's automatic screening and labeling, and easily obtain promotion and search traffic support in the venue. In the past, the registration process would exclude some merchants, but now a large number of merchants can enter the JD.com mall.

JD.com also plans to help the number of small and micro businesses with daily sales exceeding 10,000 yuan to more than double year-on-year during the Double Eleven period, and to increase the number of businesses with sales exceeding 5 million by more than 50% year-on-year.

In terms of operations and services, JD.com has comprehensively upgraded merchant tools, covering multiple dimensions such as store management, marketing promotion, and service capabilities, to simplify operational processes and improve operational efficiency.

On the other hand, we have optimized service rules such as consultation, delivery, timeliness, and after-sales, and launched eight core service tools, such as category-specific service products and official intelligent customer service robots, to comprehensively improve user experience and sales conversion rates.

However, many merchants still complain every year: "Every year, the sales are fierce, but we lose money every year. There is not enough cake to share." Some consumers also complain that even with the discounts, it is not as cheap as Pinduoduo. Therefore, there are many ways to attract investment for big promotions, but in the end, it depends on whether merchants and consumers can really benefit.

02 Consumption recovery, platform interconnection

From a macroeconomic perspective, the consumption recovery trend continues, especially online consumption. According to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to August, online retail sales of physical goods increased by 8.1%, 4.7 percentage points faster than the total retail sales of consumer goods. Alibaba's latest financial report shows that the number of 88VIP members has increased from 35 million in the previous quarter to 42 million this quarter, a surge of 7 million members.

Moreover, according to a report by Huxiu, a related white paper shows that during the 618 period this year, the efficiency of returning Taobao users (consumers who have not made any purchases in the past 365 days as of May 1) increased by 15% year-on-year. Lost consumers are returning to Taobao faster, and the scale of consumers is expanding.

In order to accelerate the rebuilding of consumer confidence, Taobao and Tmall will provide consumer vouchers and red envelope subsidies of 30 billion yuan this year, which is the same as the subsidy amount for the 2020 "Double 11", which was previously known as the "largest investment in the platform's history."

But what is more noteworthy is that on social platforms, many consumers are ready to carefully select their favorite products during the National Day holiday, while some consumers say they will hardly participate in Double 11. The latter do not participate because they think the mechanism is too complicated and there is no real bargain. In reality, Double 11 has been a Waterloo for three consecutive years, and it seems difficult to play in a new way. Many consumers are tired of the gameplay.

Under pressure, Taobao and JD.com recently announced that they have achieved interoperability on multiple levels, which not only lays the foundation for the Double 11 promotion, but is also a microcosm of the "interconnection" of the entire Internet.

For example, WeChat payment can finally be used again on this year's "Double 11". According to Taobao's official response on September 26, the WeChat payment function is in the trial stage and is gradually advancing the grayscale test. It is expected to be fully open in the short term. Users are requested to wait patiently.

Taobao's integration with WeChat Pay can directly reduce the operational difficulties in the payment process. Users who once bought things on other platforms because of the convenience of WeChat Pay may return to Taobao.

JD.com will also be connected to Cainiao Express and Cainiao Post, which will further enrich its logistics system. Cainiao Express, as Alibaba's self-operated express brand, can provide high-quality logistics services like JD Logistics. Cainiao Post provides convenient package collection services for consumers. This cooperation will bring a more convenient collection experience to JD.com users.

In fact, the open and covert competition of "choose one from the other" on the Internet has existed for a long time. Alibaba and Tencent have been "shielding" each other for more than ten years. Both parties have long built an "invisible" high wall to isolate each other's business. It was not until the storm of anti-monopoly in China's Internet that both parties gradually began to explore opening up related businesses to each other.

The turning point came in 2021, when Tencent apps could directly jump to Taobao. Later, Alibaba and Tencent deepened their cooperation, and merchants could place ads in the WeChat ecosystem such as video accounts, Moments, and mini-programs through Alimama, and the ads would jump to the stores, product details, and Taobao live broadcast rooms of Taobao and Tmall merchants. It can be said that the two parties gradually improved their business links in the cooperation.

In fact, since the anti-monopoly, major platforms have begun to adjust, and interconnection is the general trend. The market share of the former e-commerce leader and second place has been shrinking, and there are too many threats from Douyin, Pinduoduo, and Hongshu. Instead of competing, it is better to cooperate for mutual benefit and jointly promote the Double 11 promotion to "go further."

03 Double 11 rush, fierce competition

While Taobao and JD.com are interconnected, Pinduoduo and Douyin are also actively planning for Double 11.

Many people in the industry believe that this year’s Double 11 will be even more brutal, because Pinduoduo, like Taobao and JD.com, has moved Double 11 forward by a week.

Pinduoduo's strategy remains the same: price cuts, quick withdrawals, and weighting. Although many platforms no longer emphasize price wars, the algorithm is inseparable from price, and price wars are still a powerful weapon. Especially for white-label products and daily promotional products, as long as the price is reduced or reaches the lowest price on the entire network, a certain amount of traffic will be obtained. Only brand-oriented products do not need to compare prices across the entire network. Therefore, the price war is still continuing.

Kuaishou announced that this year on Double 11, Kuaishou e-commerce will provide 20 billion in traffic subsidies, 2 billion in user red envelopes, and 1 billion in product subsidies, and work with merchants and expert partners to bring users cost-effective and low-priced products.

Douyin, based on the characteristics of the platform's interest e-commerce, has made it clear that "good content" is the key driving force for business growth and upgraded its traffic mechanism. During this Double 11, the content field gameplay will also guide merchants and influencers to pay attention to the content quality of live broadcast rooms and short videos.

In terms of breakdown, Douyin has launched two platform-level gameplays, "Official Instant Discount" and "One-Piece Direct Discount", and provided corresponding traffic incentives. Among them, "Official Instant Discount" is the main gameplay, which implements a 15% instant discount on the basis of the product registration price filled in by the merchant; "One-Piece Direct Discount" takes effect according to the product registration price filled in by the merchant. The two methods are adapted to different business needs, and merchants can choose to participate in one of them.

In short, under the general background of consumption recovery, consumers tend to make rational decisions. As the core IP of e-commerce every year, if platforms want to seize this wave of dividends, consolidate their position and win more market share, they need to make more adequate preparations.

In addition, now that the walls between JD.com and Alibaba have been removed, the competition will naturally focus on the price, quality and service of products on major platforms. Openness has brought about fairer and more intense competition. Major platforms need to stand from the perspective of users and merchants, provide more choices for each other, and attract users with more practical service capabilities to achieve growth.