The total online sales amounted to 1138.6 billion yuan! I discovered 8 new trends during this year’s Double 11 shopping spree

With the continuous innovation of technology and the changes in consumer demand, the e-commerce marketing of Double Eleven in 2023 presents new trends such as smart technology, social e-commerce and online and offline integration. These trends bring more opportunities and challenges to brands and merchants, and how to bring consumers a more convenient and personalized shopping experience. Let's take a look at the interpretation and analysis of the new trends of e-commerce platforms in this article.

The Double 11 shopping festival in 2023 has officially come to an end. Although it is generally believed that "consumption downgrade" continues to intensify this year, the "performance" of Double 11 shopping festivals of many e-commerce platforms is still impressive.

JD.com: Transaction volume, order volume, and number of users all hit new highs. More than 60 brands achieved sales of over RMB 1 billion, transaction volume of nearly 20,000 brands increased by more than 3 times year-on-year, and transaction volume of new merchants increased by more than 5 times month-on-month.

Tmall: The scale of users and merchants has grown significantly, with 402 brands having sales exceeding RMB 100 million, and 38,000 brands having sales that increased by more than 100% year-on-year;

Douyin: The cumulative live broadcast time in the live broadcast room reached 58.27 million hours, the short videos with shopping carts were played 169.7 billion times, and the Douyin Mall GMV increased by 119% year-on-year;

Kuaishou: Brand GMV increased by more than 155% year-on-year, and the number of brands with a year-on-year growth of 100% was nearly 2,500; …

Let’s take a look at the data from the entire network. According to Star Map data monitoring, from 20:00 on October 31 to 23:59 on November 11 (JD.com’s monitoring start time is 20:00 on October 23), the cumulative sales of comprehensive e-commerce platforms and live streaming e-commerce platforms was 1,138.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.08%.

Although the platforms have tacitly agreed not to release the final transaction data, we can see the new changes and trends in the current consumer market from the data disclosed by each platform.

Below, I have summarized 8 trend highlights.

1. "Low price" becomes the main theme of this year's Double 11

Double 11 has come to its 15th year, but its appeal to consumers is declining year by year. Coupled with the impact of consumption downgrade and economic downturn, the pursuit of low prices has become an industry consensus.

This year, all platforms have unanimously launched the theme of "low price". Taobao has set "the lowest price on the entire network" as its core goal, with 80 million products offering the lowest price throughout the year; JD has set the theme as "really cheap", Pinduoduo's 10 billion yuan subsidy has launched the "instant discount for a single item" gameplay for the first time, and Douyin has also launched official instant discounts and subsidies.

The final data also proves that "low prices" are indeed effective in attracting new customers and promoting transactions. In the third-tier and lower-tier markets alone, Tmall's Double 11 this year added more than 20 million new purchasing users and received more than 140 million new orders; in JD.com's 9.9 free shipping channel, sales of hundreds of source products from industrial belts exceeded one million orders, and the transaction volume of JD.com's flash sale channel increased nearly 10 times compared with September.

This also means that consumers are increasingly pursuing cost-effectiveness and consumption is becoming more rational. "Low price" has also become an important weapon for platforms to open up incremental markets.

2. The platform pays more and more attention to member operations

This year, major e-commerce platforms have attached more and more importance to "membership". Taobao fully upgraded 88VIP before Double 11, JD also upgraded PLUS membership in August this year, and the popular Oriental Selection launched paid membership in October.

During this Double 11, Taobao also announced the data of 88VIP: the scale of 88VIP users exceeded 32 million, setting a new historical high, and 88VIP transactions increased by double digits year-on-year.

Not only the platform itself, but also the importance of merchant members is becoming more and more apparent. During Double 11, Taobao and Tmall brought more than 100 million new members to merchants. The number of merchant members on the entire platform increased by nearly 30% year-on-year, and the number of stores with more than 10 million merchant members reached a record high.

The explosion of private domain relationships has brought real orders to merchants. During the Double 11 period, the member orders of merchants on the Taobao Tmall platform increased by more than 100% for many days, and many industries including clothing performed well, with the contribution of members reaching nearly 30%.

In the future, low-price competition will still exist, but more of a competition will be about the ability to operate private domains and memberships. Whoever can retain users will be able to achieve sustained growth and profits.

3. Domestic brands are experiencing an explosion

This year, domestic brands experienced a full-scale explosion during the Double 11 shopping festival. In the statistics of all categories, among the top 20 brands in terms of online retail sales, 11 were domestic brands.

Data from the Tmall platform showed that 243 domestic brands entered the "100 million yuan club", 85 domestic brands exceeded 100 million yuan in sales as soon as they were launched, and more than 70,000 domestic brands doubled their first-day sales.

JD.com platform data shows that on the opening day of "Double 11", the sales of domestic brands of mobile phones such as Xiaomi, Honor, Huawei, OPPO, OnePlus, and vivo exceeded 100 million yuan in one second. In the first 10 minutes, the sales of domestic beauty brand PROYA increased by 70 times year-on-year, and the sales of domestic brands Fenghua and Yumeijing increased by 20 times and 10 times year-on-year respectively.

Douyin is no exception. Among the top 50 brands in terms of sales during the pre-sale period from October 20 to 30, 31 were domestic products.

With the continuous rise of "Smart Manufacturing in China", domestic brands are now accelerating their transformation towards focusing on quality, highlighting characteristics, and innovating product categories. In addition, the "post-90s" and "post-00s" are gradually becoming the main consumer force, and young consumers are more inclined to choose domestic products.

It is hoped that in the future, platforms and markets will continue to promote the development of domestic brands, allowing more domestic brands to take advantage of the opportunity to rise, not only to gain popularity in the short term, but also to move towards a long-term and stable business operation.

4. Men’s spending power exceeds that of pets

In the past, there was an interesting ranking of consumer power on the Internet: girls > children > young women > old people > dogs > men. Although it is often used as a joke, it also indirectly shows that men's consumer power is generally weaker.

This year on Double 11, men’s spending power exceeded that of pet dogs for the first time.

According to the latest Double 11 consumption list released by Tmall, the top three items for male consumers are road bikes, e-sports products and jackets, becoming the “new three treasures” for men after Moutai, fishing and Arc’teryx last year.

Among them, road bike sales increased threefold, e-sports products and jackets increased by 114% and 90% respectively. Among pet dog-related consumption, sales of whole-price baked food, milk powder and freeze-dried snacks increased by 58% to 85%.

The emergence of this phenomenon is not accidental. With the progress of society and economic development, people's lifestyles and consumption concepts are constantly changing.

Men are also beginning to pay more attention to their quality of life and health, and they are willing to spend more time and money on it. In addition, with the rise of emerging industries such as e-sports, it has also driven the consumption demand of male consumers in these areas.

5. Top anchors are losing popularity, while branded self-broadcasting is on the rise

This year, the "de-centralization" of anchors seems to have become a common goal of brands and platforms. According to iResearch data, the transaction volume of corporate self-broadcasting will reach 49.8% in 2023, with live broadcasts by experts accounting for half of the market.

During this Double 11, many brands’ independent live broadcast rooms saw an increase in traffic during the promotion period.

The transaction volume of 58 live broadcast rooms on the Tmall platform exceeded 100 million yuan, and the transaction volume of 451 store live broadcasts exceeded 10 million yuan. For the first time, a brand live broadcast room had a transaction volume of over 100 million yuan within 4 hours of the pre-sale period; Kuaishou’s brand self-broadcast GMV increased by 95% year-on-year, and the number of new brand members increased by 64% compared with the "618" period; the total number of viewers of JD.com's procurement and sales live broadcasts exceeded 380 million.

With the full opening of the era of brand self-broadcasting, top anchors are no longer the only ones in the market. This is conducive to the harmonious development of live e-commerce formats and alleviates the compression of the living space of small and medium-sized anchors and long-tail anchors.

What is certain is that brand self-broadcasting has transformed from a trend in the past two years to a mainstream choice in the market, and even a necessary path for long-term brand operation.

6. Online + offline becomes the new normal

This year, more offline merchants are deeply involved in "Double 11".

During the "Double 11" period, physical supermarkets such as Intime Department Store, Rainbow Department Store, and CapitaLand Mall launched group purchases of shopping cards and themed live broadcasts of various categories on Meituan and Dianping.com. Physical stores such as Starbucks and McDonald's also participated in the promotion of live e-commerce, issuing consumer coupons and limited-time discounts.

JD.com’s data shows that this year’s “Double 11”, more than 400,000 offline stores participated in “Double 11” through JD.com’s home delivery, doubling the number of stores year-on-year. On 11.11, JD.com’s hourly transaction volume increased by 45% year-on-year.

Double 11 has gradually extended from online shopping to offline retail scenarios, focusing on localized differentiated services. Offline physical stores attract a large number of customers with their scene experience advantages. Compared with the complex promotion mechanism of e-commerce, offline discounts are more sincere and improve the consumer experience.

In the future, online and offline efforts will be made together, and commodity retail and service retail will prosper and co-exist, which is expected to become the new normal for digital operations of supermarkets across the country.

7. Express delivery companies reach new heights

Every year on November 11, the major express delivery companies are the busiest. Compared with the fierce price wars in previous years, this year's express delivery companies have come up with various tricks to increase delivery time in an effort to gain a larger market share.

Cainiao provides "half-day delivery" and door-to-door delivery services through the pre-sale express delivery model; in terms of international business, Cainiao has joined hands with Alibaba International Digital Business Group to provide "next-day delivery" in Hong Kong and Macau, China, and cross-border 5-day delivery services in many countries including Europe and Southeast Asia.

In October, JD Express took the lead in proposing the service commitments of "compensation if the package is not picked up within one hour", "compensation if the entire process is overdue", and "compensation if the package cannot be delivered to the door", which comprehensively shortened the waiting time for consumers.

During the Double 11 Shopping Festival, SF Express launched the "SF 360 Service Platform", which includes the "half-day delivery in the same city" express service and the "warehouse-distribution-driven warehouse" integrated service. The former provides consumers with a one-hour door-to-door pickup service and a fastest delivery service of 360 minutes in the same city, while the latter provides merchants with up to 10 waves of service frequency per day, with later order cut-offs and earlier arrivals.

Many express delivery companies are betting on door-to-door delivery services. Ultimately, this is the real demand of consumers, the key to express delivery companies improving service quality, and a breakthrough for improving consumer reputation.

8. AI big model becomes the new highlight of this year's Double 11

In addition to "low-price" competition this year, major platforms are secretly competing in AI.

During the Double 11 Shopping Festival, Taobao Q&A was officially launched, becoming the first generative AI application in the e-commerce industry. When consumers click on Taobao Q&A, it can generate answers to questions such as product selection guides, life suggestions, itinerary suggestions, and copywriting.

JD Yanxi's big model has been connected to JD Cloud's AI products such as Jing Xiaozhi, virtual anchors, and intelligent outbound calls. According to JD data, within 10 minutes of the launch, JD Cloud's intelligent customer service received more than 1.88 million consultation services.

Xiaohongshu also released an AI smart note assistant during the Double 11 period to help merchants and buyers generate titles, texts and pictures based on products when posting product notes, allowing merchants and buyers to publish product notes with one click.

In this year's Double 11, AI was used on a large scale in the e-commerce field for the first time, and e-commerce is entering the AI ​​era. There is no doubt that AI will become a key factor in determining whether they can continue to lead in the e-commerce field in the future.

Some references:

"Five major industry trends emerged during this year's Double 11" - E-Commerce News Pro
Author: Yan Tao Editor: Wu Tong

WeChat public account: Yan Tao San Shou