618 sales start, Alibaba cancels e-commerce "pre-sale" for the first time

This year's 618 promotion has kicked off. This year, all major e-commerce platforms have cancelled the pre-sale mechanism and directly started selling products in stock. This change reveals a message, that is, e-commerce platforms are also beginning to gradually move closer to user needs.

The annual 618 promotion has begun again.

Not long ago, Taobao, JD.com and other platforms announced the cancellation of the "official pre-sale" model that had been in use for 12 years. This year, on June 18, the "shopping addicts" who stayed up late to pay the final payment can finally sleep well.

"Please remember to make a note when placing an order. The sample will be mailed together with the full-size product. If you don't like it after trying it, you can get a refund." The day before the promotion officially started, many top anchors took the lead. Li Jiaqi held the "618 Pre-sale Super Hot Product Festival" in the live broadcast room. "All the girls, you can place your order now." On the day of the promotion, the atmosphere in the live broadcast room began to heat up.

Different users expressed different opinions on the cancellation of "pre-sale". "It's better to keep it simple, so you don't have to calculate all the time", "It doesn't matter whether you cancel or not, as long as the price is low", "I'm not used to it without pre-sale"... There is no doubt that canceling pre-sale makes the big promotion more "minimalist".

In terms of time, this year's Tmall 618 will start selling spot goods from 8 pm on May 20, and consumers can buy in two waves: the first wave is from 8 pm on May 20 to May 28, and the second wave is from 8 pm on May 31 to June 20. In terms of gameplay, the long-lost "50% discount" has returned to the platform homepage. At the same time, coupons for beauty, 3C, clothing and other categories have all been added. Users can also add the official platform discount of 15%, or participate in the cross-store discount of 50 yuan for every 300 yuan, and use 88VIP large coupons.

The dramatic changes in the economic cycle have made users calm down when placing orders, and e-commerce platforms have also begun to gradually move closer to user needs.

1. E-commerce "pre-sale" becomes history

This year, in addition to e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com, Kuaishou, which started out as a content company, also cancelled its pre-sale model. Canceling pre-sales not only brings convenience to users, but also means that it can extend the time period for merchants to experience short-term consumption.

Taobao officially proposed the concept of pre-sale in 2012, which is 12 years ago. According to rumors, the concept of "pre-sale" originated from the Hong Kong property market, commonly known as "selling flowers". The purpose of pre-sale was to relieve the pressure of buyers to pay a large amount of cash at one time, and to facilitate the capital circulation of developers.

As a marketing product in the rapid development stage of the e-commerce industry, the core purpose of "pre-sale" is to attract consumers to place orders. Like "selling flowers", when users face some high-priced products, the psychological burden of paying "pre-sale deposits" will be much smaller than paying "full price". For sellers, they can predict the warehouse stocking situation in advance based on the deposits paid by users during the pre-sale period.

To some extent, the "pre-sale" model has prolonged the marketing time of the big promotion and also increased the user's desire to buy. With the changes in the market economy, consumers have become more and more calm when placing orders.

Different categories have different feelings about the cancellation of pre-sales. "It doesn't have much impact on clothing," said Shang Yuxin, founder of Kezhi Culture. As a clothing store owner on Taobao, the store's daily operations include pre-sale mode and spot mode. According to him, in previous years' big promotions, in order to gain traffic in fixed venues, he would also submit some pre-sale products according to official requirements. "But in general, products such as beauty products that are more closely linked to influencers pay more attention to pre-sales." On the JD platform, even home appliance stores with higher customer unit prices also have pre-sale products and spot products.

If we ignore the "pre-sale" data that reaches a new peak almost every year, we can find that "pre-sale" has already affected every link in the e-commerce chain. First of all, the long pre-sale period of merchants is the most criticized point by users. Some users joked that the clothes they bought on 618 can only be worn on Double 11. Pre-sale also means that merchants have a certain amount of room for price adjustment during the big promotion stage, which will further promote the price involution of merchants and is not conducive to the growth of merchants. In addition, the pre-sale model lengthens the user's decision-making cycle and places higher demands on the merchant's customer service and after-sales capabilities.

The cancellation of pre-sales means that the platform has gradually shifted its focus to "user logic". In a recent Alibaba earnings call, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming mentioned Taobao's mission this year, one of which is user consumption experience. Since December last year, Taobao has also launched a series of policies to upgrade user experience, including a refund-only policy, free shipping in Xinjiang, and pay-later services.

The same is true for the content platform Kuaishou. A few days before the 618 promotion, Wang Jianwei, senior vice president of Kuaishou and head of the e-commerce and commercialization divisions, proposed a "user-first" strategy at the Kuaishou Gravity Conference. In Kuaishou's 618 venue, the platform also set up a Kuaishou Preferred section to select good products for users. In order to further promote users' enthusiasm for the promotion, the platform also provided 10 billion traffic exposures and 1 billion red envelope subsidies.

2. 618 promotion welcomes "new" players

The 618 promotion not only brings new ways to play, but also new players.

Although the pre-sale was cancelled, Taobao readjusted the PC webpage before the big sale. According to "LastPos", Taobao has set up a small but complete team to be responsible for the optimization and upgrade of the PC side, adding live broadcasting, product supply and APP synchronization, and the shopping cart can also display the price after coupons like on mobile phones.

Xiaohongshu and Video Account both officially launched the 618 promotion in 2023. Although both are content platforms, they are different from short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. In e-commerce, Xiaohongshu focuses on public domain seeding conversion, while Video Account focuses more on private domain transactions.

The same thing is that "live streaming e-commerce" is the top priority for their layout of this year's 618. Click on Xiaohongshu, and in the header, the two labels "No need to compare prices for 618, buy more and lose 3 times", and "Live streaming selection" are very conspicuous. Previously, Xiaohongshu's live streaming content was mostly supported by celebrity live streaming and KOL. In August last year, Xiaohongshu had already clearly defined the platform positioning of "buyer e-commerce". This year's 618, "store streaming" has become the focus of Xiaohongshu's release. Clicking on the "Live Streaming Selection" content, you can feel that the proportion of store streaming has accounted for nearly half.

In terms of store broadcasting, Xiaohongshu has launched four methods, namely the store broadcasting emerging plan, store broadcasting ranking competition, super store broadcasting day and promotion incentive competition. From May 19 to May 30, Xiaohongshu also selected a number of treasure live broadcasting rooms, including Zhang Xiaohui, Dong Jie, Wu Xin and other celebrity anchors.

Last year, video accounts were mainly used for store broadcasts on the e-commerce side. In order to attract merchants to join, Tencent proactively lowered the technical service fee rate to 1% during the 618 period last year. This year, video accounts, which have always focused on the private domain, have also begun to attract more public attention through cooperation with influencers. According to an official announcement by Tencent Advertising, celebrity Christy Chung will make her first live broadcast on video accounts during this year's 618.

In addition to live broadcasts and short videos, short dramas are also a highlight of the brand's content during the 618 period. On the eve of 618, Taobao and L'Oreal launched "Daddy Alliance", and Jiang Shiqi and Hansu launched "Let Love Surrender". Open the JD APP and search for the keyword "short drama" on the "Browse" page. On the day when the 618 pre-sale officially started, 225 accounts with the "short drama" label had already settled on the platform, such as Bai Tian Short Drama, Lizhi Short Drama, Jia Jia Short Drama, Mei Di Short Drama, etc. However, so far, the JD platform has not made many moves on short dramas.

Even so, JD.com still has certain ambitions for content. A few days before the official launch of the 618 promotion, JD.com released its first quarter performance report, which clearly stated that it would invest 1 billion yuan in cash and 1 billion traffic to increase the content ecosystem construction, with no upper limit on incentives. In addition, JD.com also filled the gap in the talent side through technological transformation. The report shows that JD.com Cloud Yanxi Digital People have fully settled in JD.com's procurement and sales live broadcast room, serving more than 4,000 brands in total.

Regardless of changes in platform gameplay, channels, media, or technology, the key to the 618 promotion is still to return to the real needs of users.