38 big promotion, undercurrent

After International Women’s Day, the first major promotion of spring has ended. What promotional strategies have the various e-commerce platforms and live-streaming anchors chosen this year, and what are the marketing results?

The first big promotion in spring 2024, the 38 Shopping Festival, has come to an end.

With the superposition of multiple consumer elements such as new spring products + feminine elements + the start of the school season, the anchors have also successively carried out fashion festivals, beauty festivals, snack festivals and other layout actions, and various e-commerce platforms have worked hard to play the hot song of consumption in the beginning of spring.

Judging from the activity cycles of various platforms, this year's 38 promotions will mostly start on February 28 and end on March 8 or two or three days later, lasting about 10 days overall.

Taobao and Tmall were a little low-key in this season's 38 promotion. Without the aggressive concept of Goddess Festival in the past, "Renewal Week" became the theme of this promotion. In addition to the constantly dropping red envelopes and the cross-store discount of "300-40", more attention was paid to the top anchors represented by Li Jiaqi. In the "Douyin Mall 38 Good Things Festival" promotion, Douyin set up a special flower project, shouted out a "Self-pleasing Guide", and reduced the price of the mall's preferred items by 15%. Douyin tried hard to win the favor of female users; Kuaishou took out the eye-catching point of sharing the 1 billion "big brand big supplement" good things subsidy, and released price reduction actions such as "10,000 people group" and "low price special sale"...

Under the influence of the normalization of big promotions, the influence of the 38 Festival is limited compared to the mid-year and year-end big promotions such as 618 and Double 11. After midnight on March 9, all major platforms did not announce the transaction data. What is more surprising is that Xiaohongshu, which mainly serves female consumers, has been low-key and "invisible" in this 38 big promotion after finally creating a little momentum for e-commerce. Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui did not live broadcast, but announced that they would carry out live broadcasts at the end of March and mid-April respectively.

The top anchors are even more low-key.

On the evening of March 5, Xiao Yangge said in a live broadcast that there will be more entertainment live broadcasts in 2024, and the number of live broadcasts with goods will be reduced. He also said that if there are special events, he will consider handing over his account with over 100 million fans directly to his apprentice. According to Feigua data, in February this year, Xiao Yangge fell out of the Douyin live broadcast with goods monthly list for the first time, and most of his live broadcasts were entertainment live broadcasts.

Another top anchor, Li Jiaqi, cooperated with Taobao's strategy of canceling pre-sales and launched the Beauty Festival on March 4. According to Qingyan Intelligence statistics, on March 4, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room launched a total of 327 beauty products, involving 132 brands, with a GMV of over 907 million yuan.

Although the overall volume of the 38 Shopping Festival has calmed down, there are still some brands and bloggers betting on this first show of the year, hoping to make a good start for 2024. Among them, who is the dark horse and who is the winner?

01 Platforms continue to offer low prices, beauty and apparel stand out

Low price has been the keyword for e-commerce platforms to stimulate consumption in recent years, and the 38 promotion is no exception.

Promotional methods such as "discounts for purchases over a certain amount", "instant discounts", and "direct discounts for one piece" are emerging in an endless stream, with the emphasis on clarity and conciseness. The sign-in and mini-games used to increase user time during the 618 and Double 11 shopping festivals have also been cancelled.

For example, Taobao offers cross-store discounts of 300-40 for every purchase, which is equivalent to 13% off, and will randomly drop 88VIP exclusive coupons worth 800-60, which users can claim directly after claiming. The other type is coupons for specific products. The specific discount amount and applicable products will be clearly marked on the product details page. This is also a "basic" discount available on multiple platforms.

Tmall screenshot

For high-priced goods such as 3C digital appliances, multiple platforms have launched 12/24 interest-free campaigns, which not only encourage users to consume but also attract new users for the platform's financial payment products.

At the same time, some platforms have also introduced the "search" function into the 38 promotion activities . For example, users enter specific keywords in the search box and receive random coupons or prizes. This not only improves user interactivity, but also lays the seeds for social fission.

As the 10 billion yuan subsidy gradually becomes normalized, the gap between e-commerce platforms has invisibly returned to the starting point.

This seemingly "hurt the enemy 1,000 and hurt yourself 8,000" internal competition strategy is actually to let brand merchants bear the subsidies, and let the brand merchants decide the extent of the profit to increase sales. Taking JD.com as an example, Citigroup once released a report saying that investors may overreact to JD.com's 10 billion subsidies. In fact, most of the subsidies paid are shared with brands, suppliers and merchants, and may not necessarily drag down the platform's revenue level.

JD screenshot

In this context, beauty brands chose to add fuel to the 38th promotion by increasing the average order value.

Taking the top domestic brand PROYA as an example, the number and average price of SKUs on the shelves during Li Jiaqi's Beauty Festival live broadcast on March 4th increased year-on-year. The number of SKUs increased from 10 last year to 16, and the average price of PROYA's main brand link increased from 356 yuan in the same period last year to 428 yuan, an increase of more than 20%, and the cumulative GMV exceeded 100 million yuan.

However, compared to the popularity of the 618 and Double 11 promotions where products were "hard to come by", the Cailianshe report mentioned that the above 16 product links all showed an "on sale" status.

On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, many netizens also said that the beauty products in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room during this year’s 38 Festival were very popular.

However, the method of increasing average order value through product combination has received mixed reviews in the industry, especially the multi-bottle bundle promotion of beauty products. Some netizens have complained that "one person cannot use up all the products, and it is troublesome to find others to split the order."

The 38th sale is also an important node for the launch of a large number of new spring clothing.

"New Trends - 2024 Douyin Apparel Industry Trend Report"

With the rise of outdoor and national fashion trends, Douyin e-commerce and CBNData jointly released eight major clothing trends, including urban fun, retro style, minimalist luxury, cyber functionality, and national fashion. From the category point of view, the new Chinese style craze such as horse-faced skirts and cheongsams also continues to extend. According to Vipshop data, since February this year, the sales of clothing with the theme of new Chinese style have doubled compared with last year, among which the sales of new Chinese women's clothing have increased nearly 2 times.

At the same time, with the prevalence of self-pleasing and rational consumption concepts, most female consumers tend to pursue both cost-effectiveness and quality, which also means that clothing consumption needs to lower its profile and aim at discount retail to gain growth. A clothing industry practitioner told Yiyuguancha that in previous years, brands would pay more attention to the proportion of full-price sales and use it as a key indicator to measure sales, but in order to adapt to changes in consumer concepts, many new clothing products were set at 20% or even 25% off when they were first launched to stimulate consumption.

02 Anchor changes: the game between low-key and high-profile ones

March 8th is a festival for all girls, but Li Jiaqi, the man for "all girls", did not make much noise during this promotion and disappeared from the hot search list. Opening Li Jiaqi's Taobao live broadcast room homepage, from February 29 to March 8, the full promotion schedule is no different from previous years, and the number of views for a single live broadcast exceeds 10 million. However, the first 2-3 hours of each live broadcast are first broadcast by the assistant broadcast team, and Li Jiaqi will not go live until the prime time around 7 pm.

From the perspective of gameplay, the biggest difference in this year's 38 promotion is that Taobao canceled pre-sales, which has a more obvious impact on beauty products. This means that consumers need to pay the full price of the purchased goods in the live broadcast room, which is more radical than the pre-sale deposit and final payment strategy. In addition, exclusive category days such as snack festivals, fashion festivals, and home specials were packaged into Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room during the 38 promotion period. The combination of punches is used to increase the discount volume of the 38 festival. At the same time, it is also a strategy to strengthen the "decentralization" of Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, from operating around the anchor's personal IP to category operations.

Even more low-key than Li Jiaqi is Brother Yang, who did not broadcast at all in the entire February.

During the 38 promotion, Brother Yang only conducted a special live broadcast on beauty and clothing on March 2, with nearly 40 million viewers. The estimated sales of the live broadcast were between 50 million and 75 million.

After that, Xiao Yangge announced that he would fade out of the live broadcast room, and mentioned many times the electronic music festival to be held this year, named "DXYG-VAC", with the prefix "Big Yangge and Small Yangge". The electronic music festival is jointly held with the brand VAC. The first concert has been confirmed to be held in Hefei in May, and will be held in many places across the country in the future. Xiao Yangge also said, "Unlike the last concert, this electronic music festival has public ticket sales and free tickets." In addition, Xiao Yangge also revealed that he had a trip to Hong Kong on March 18. Although he kept the person he saw confidential during the live broadcast, many fans speculated that this trip was most likely to meet with Stephen Chow, or to enter the film and television industry.

Compared with the low-key Li Jiaqi and Yang Ge, Dong Yuhui and his "Walking with Hui", who cleared their Weibo posts on the eve of the 38th promotion, have attracted more attention recently.

According to third-party data, during the Douyin 38 promotion from February 28 to March 8, the cumulative number of viewers of the "Walk with Hui" live broadcast room reached 90.63 million, and the cumulative live broadcast sales exceeded 100 million yuan. During the same period, the cumulative live broadcast sales of Dongfang Zhenxuan also exceeded 100 million yuan, but the cumulative number of viewers was 61.23 million, and there was a certain gap between the two. On the evening of March 10, Dong Yuhui appeared in the "Walk with Hui" live broadcast room to promote a variety of Huawei products. The total sales exceeded 100 million yuan.

After Dong Yuhui went solo, the independent "Walk with Hui" live broadcast room has apparently surpassed its "predecessor" Oriental Selection. Dong Yuhui, who frequently appears on hot searches, has also accumulated the same level of online discussion as Li Jiaqi and Xiao Yangge.

At a previous interim shareholders meeting of Dongfang Zhenxuan, the management of Dongfang Zhenxuan stated that "Yihui Xingxing" is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dongfang Zhenxuan, and it is guaranteed to be 100% controlled by Dongfang Zhenxuan. The difference from other matrix accounts is that Dong Yuhui has more autonomy in what products to sell.

From this perspective, Dong Yuhui and his "Traveling with Hui", who showed their prowess during this year's 38 promotion, are likely to become the top anchor during this year's 618 and Double 11.

03 The unrest beneath the calm surface

Although the 38 promotion has ended, the "her economy" behind it is undoubtedly a catfish that stirs up the consumer market, and the demand for instant satisfaction is more prominent. Overall, all platforms compete around the concept of "user-centricity", pursuing direct low prices, abandoning previous marketing routines, and attacking instant retail in categories such as flowers. Against the backdrop of slowing growth in various promotions, "the necessity of shopping festivals" has become one of the regular topics. At present, the competitive environment tends to be stock, but there are still undercurrents under the calm surface. Compared with sticking to the number of promotions, the functional attributes and specific roles of promotions are more important.

Taking brand merchants as an example, the demand is mostly distributed in new product promotion, inventory dumping, brand image building, etc. Once a differentiated layout is formed, the impact of different promotions will be more far-reaching.

Overall, although all e-commerce platforms are doing their best to attract users, according to comments from Wind and Baoyin Investment, judging from the overall market performance, consumers' willingness to buy during the 38 promotion is still not high.

However, new changes have emerged in terms of brands and market structure. Not only has the share of domestic products continued to increase, but Korean cosmetics have also shown a rapid upward trend on Douyin, with "Hou Tianqi Dan" being the highlight. It is reported that as of March 5, the GMV of "Hou" 38 Good Things Festival has exceeded 100 million, currently ranking first on the big promotion brand list, and its stores are also ranked first on the big promotion TOP small store list.

Compared with the previous high-profile and powerful promotional strategies, this year's 38 promotion has revealed different self-pleasing consumption trends. Whether these can be applied to the next promotion and thus win the favor of consumers requires timing to consider.

For more e-commerce platforms, low prices and service experience are still in parallel, becoming an important indicator to test their forward momentum. The 38 promotion has also become the first battle to implement the new express delivery rules after they were promulgated. Labels like JD.com's "free door-to-door returns" are also improving consumers' shopping experience. The 38 shopping festival passed quietly, but in fact, there are undercurrents. The future e-commerce war will be more intense and cruel.

Author: Houma; WeChat public account: Yiyuguancha