No one can "wake up" Double 12

From shopping sprees and shopping festivals to good products and good prices, there are more and more shopping festivals. Unsurprisingly, this year's Double 12 did not stir up any waves in the public opinion field. This article will explore Double 12 with this as the background. Let's take a look!

Unsurprisingly, this year's Double 12 did not stir any waves in the public opinion field.

Taobao’s innovative “Year-end Good Price Festival” once made the outside world wonder whether Double 12 was cancelled, and the top anchors represented by Li Jiaqi did not put too much energy into the entire cycle; JD.com and Pinduoduo did not have a plan at the platform level, and compared with Double 11, they only changed the digital icons; Douyin promoted winter clothing and food in season, and Kuaishou continued to move closer to shelf e-commerce...

Like Double Eleven, "low price" is still the main theme of Double Twelve.

But these two simple words forced all parties to show their talents - Liu Qiangdong called on his brothers to refuse to lie down, Taobao took the lead according to Jack Ma's instructions, and Kuaishou, which continued to advance into shelf e-commerce, gradually changed its teacher from Douyin to Pinduoduo.

Taobao Double 12 Year-end Good Price Festival

From shopping sprees and shopping festivals to good products and good prices, Double 12 is attracting less and less attention, and players from all walks of life have still not found a magic trick to "wake it up".

1. Anxiety does not prevent you from lying down

The biggest change in this promotion may be that Taobao replaced Double Twelve with the "Year-End Good Price Festival".

Before Double 12, Taobao and Tmall had always had an S-level promotion event. It was retained when Dai Shan just took charge of Taobao last year and drastically cut marketing IPs. But now Taobao’s year-end good prices are highlighted, and it seems to be smaller in terms of investment.

Small and medium-sized businesses and billions of subsidies have become the key to the battle for “good products and good prices”.

JD.com did not announce the details of investment promotion and sales promotion as it did in previous years. There is no plan at the platform level, but the business units organize it according to their needs. This can also be confirmed by the employee post on the recent action intranet that caused Liu Qiangdong to reply.

Not to mention Pinduoduo, its biggest change should be the replacement of the "Double 11" icon on the APP with "Double 12".

The ones that may be a little more focused are Douyin and Kuaishou.

However, Douyin's "Double 12" discounts are obviously smaller than those of "Double 11", and the main products have also changed from the full category of "Double 11" to winter clothes, winter food, etc. Kuaishou may be the most powerful one, and its "bonus plan" and "big shelf brand supplements" are both strategic directions of shelf e-commerce.

Douyin Mall Double 12

After all, this shopping festival is too close to Double Eleven, the biggest shopping festival of the year, which undoubtedly exhausts all the energy of the platforms and merchants. Until now, everyone is still in the recovery stage.

The time interval between other major promotions is an important factor. Therefore, another shopping festival second only to Double Eleven every year is set on 618.

But the giants are still actively seeking change.

Kuaishou announced an organizational restructuring on December 7, transferring the "Internal Circulation Small and Medium Customer Center" from the Commercialization Division to the E-commerce Division. Kuaishou's internal circulation advertisers are its e-commerce sellers. The proportion of Kuaishou's internal circulation advertising revenue in total advertising revenue has gradually increased from 1/4 in the first quarter of 2021 to more than half in the second quarter of 2022, and has now exceeded 60%.

The commercialization department certainly hopes that the advertising turnover is as high as possible, while the e-commerce department hopes to promise merchants a considerable ROI. This adjustment is clearly biased towards e-commerce, and the idea is to help small and medium-sized merchants increase GMV first, and then consider the issue of advertising consumption and monetization rate.

This is similar to the previously launched Chuanliu Plan, which uses expert content as a starting point to introduce relevant consumers to merchants, and the Fuyao Plan, which prioritizes injecting traffic into high-quality short videos created by merchants. Both are Kuaishou's flywheels for balancing traffic and commercialization.

As a new giant riding on the wave of live streaming e-commerce, Kuaishou's adjustments occurred at the moment when it felt the most secure since its listing, but the traditional e-commerce giants that were experiencing their darkest moments were just the opposite.

Kuaishou e-commerce Double 12 year-end shopping festival

At the close of the U.S. stock market on December 12, JD.com's market value had reached about one-fifth of Pinduoduo's.

On December 9, Liu Qiangdong responded to an employee's post on the intranet, saying that he "would never lie flat no matter what." However, according to Photon Planet, JD.com's self-operated merchants have a commission rate of up to 27%, and the commission rate for non-warehousing POP merchants is also 7%, which is much higher than Tmall and Douyin's 5%, and Pinduoduo's 10 billion yuan subsidy of 3%.

JD.com emphasized at its third quarter earnings conference that it “will not compete in the market at the expense of the company’s profit margins.” So how can it establish its “low-price mentality”?

Employees who posted on the intranet believe that JD.com has captured the minds of users in 3C home appliances, but has not been successful in other categories.

So, what Liu Qiangdong needs to decide is whether JD.com should make up for its shortcomings in other categories, or make a stronger effort in 3C home appliances? Obviously, Liu Qiangdong has chosen the former, but he is afraid to spend money.

In terms of low-price competition, Taobao is in a slightly better position than JD.com because it has found a surprise weapon, 1688. According to data published by 1688 on December 5, buyers from the "Generation Z" aged 25 to 30 account for nearly 50%, and the "new middle class" aged 30 to 35 account for 45%.

According to the consistent rules of the Internet, to capture the young is to capture the future. So, as Taobao reduces costs and increases efficiency in the big promotion, can we consider setting up a separate shopping festival for 1688?

2. There are still giants entering the market

Although Double 12 ended peacefully, new forces are still being nurtured on the sidelines.

At this node of Double 12, the silent efforts of various forces can be seen to have achieved some results.

According to LatePost, the GMV of WeChat Video Account e-commerce this year has reached 100 billion yuan. Although this figure is less than one-tenth of Kuaishou and one-twentieth of Douyin, the daily active users of Video Account have surpassed Kuaishou in the third quarter of last year, and its growth potential cannot be underestimated.

Tencent also asked the WeChat payment team to join the construction of video account e-commerce. The subsequent integration with mini programs and enterprise WeChat is also their unique advantage.

Video account brand live broadcast

It has been nearly ten years since Tencent sold its e-commerce business to JD.com in 2014. Back then, Tencent admitted that it did not have the e-commerce gene, but now it has picked up e-commerce again by groping for the stones it had taken with Douyin. Ma Huateng must have had mixed feelings.

Video Account also launched the "Goods Festival" on Double 12 this year, and lowered the technical service fee rate to 1% for merchants during the promotion period, making the incentive policy clearer.

On the other hand, Meituan launched the "Double 12 Quality Life Festival" in 2016, and this year also launched the "12.12 Food Carnival Season". However, there are not many participating catering brands, and the discounts are not eye-catching. Perhaps the biggest change is that this food delivery giant is moving further into retail.

On December 1, "Meituan Grocery" was quietly renamed "Xiaoxiang Supermarket", expanding the SKU from fresh food to almost all daily necessities.

Meituan’s stock price plummeted after the release of its third-quarter financial report. The biggest reason was that its new businesses failed to reduce losses. If Meituan wants to reduce losses for "Meituan Grocery" and "Meituan Best Selection", it would be natural to move beyond the thriving fresh food business to include other high-profit categories.

Author: James Taishi

WeChat public account: "YIFAN (ID: finance_yifan)"