What exactly is the “high-quality development” of live streaming e-commerce?

As consumers continue to grow, the live streaming e-commerce industry, as an e-commerce content provider, is also developing. In this context, what is the future development direction of the live streaming e-commerce industry? What can define the "high quality" of the development of live streaming e-commerce?

For most industries, this year's 618 promotion is highly anticipated in various senses.

On the one hand, various e-commerce platforms have invested unprecedented discounts and content construction to retain and attract more consumers; on the other hand, after several years of iterative evolution, the live streaming e-commerce industry has gradually entered the mainstream and become a well-known trend.

The trend here also has two meanings - Taobao, JD.com and other platforms have increased their investment in content during this 618 period. It is needless to say that live streaming players such as Taobao and Douyin. JD.com, which has long been known as a traditional shelf, has also taken the opportunity of "making friends" to start its own live streaming career.

However, when Lujiu Business Review tried to review the situation at the end of 618, it found that despite the high-profile promotion of various platforms, the actual sales volume was not positively correlated with the investment intensity of the platforms. For example, the live broadcast room of "Jia Ge Pengyou", which entered JD.com for the first time, had a sales volume of over 150 million on its debut on May 31, but on June 18, the total sales volume had dropped to around 32.65 million.

It is not difficult to see that even the leading live-streaming e-commerce platforms cannot replicate their past sales success in today’s business environment. After the entry of various celebrities and “new players” such as Xiaohongshu, simply offering a “low price” does not seem to be enough to convince consumers to “buy it” in the live-streaming room.

Industry research reports also confirm this trend.

Recently, Clour released the "2023 Live E-Commerce 618 Innovation Trend Research" report (hereinafter referred to as the Clour Report), which shows that as the industry becomes increasingly mature, in addition to price, the market pays more and more attention to standardized operations and user experience, which puts higher requirements on the professionalism of anchors and the training of anchor talents.

This also means that the future "development direction" of live streaming e-commerce has already emerged.

1. E-commerce live streaming is more than just bargaining power

This year's 618 just ended, but it is not difficult to see from the feedback of consumers and merchants that this mid-year promotion, which is known as the "largest investment in history", seems to be somewhat "well-intentioned but not capable". On the one hand, major e-commerce platforms have invested heavily in subsidies just to gain price advantages; on the other hand, people's consumption enthusiasm does not seem to be as enthusiastic as it was in the past, not to mention that in the live broadcast rooms of several super anchors, users have long been accustomed to daily low prices.

Anyone can see clearly that live streaming e-commerce has been developing for more than 7 years, and the extreme "involution" may no longer be able to drive the exponential growth of GMV. When the wild growth of traffic and GMV gradually becomes a thing of the past, then, standing at the starting point of the next 7 years, what should live streaming e-commerce do?

The Clour Report believes that innovation and upgrading will become the new normal in the live broadcast e-commerce industry. As live broadcast e-commerce catalyzes consumption upgrades, the era of full content will lead to the "new mainstream of experiential consumption". In this process, it also presents several typical characteristics, such as vertical category specialization, marketing scene authenticity, recommendation method value, interactive form entertainment, and live broadcast content variety show.

For example, Dongfang Zhenxuan. Compared with the "hawking live broadcast room", Dongfang Zhenxuan usually outputs a lot of cultural knowledge during the live broadcast. In other words, by creating "poetry and distance" in the live broadcast room, Dongfang Zhenxuan has successfully acquired a large number of white-collar fans trapped in the steel and concrete forest.

Content innovation is not only about sentimentality, but also about practical tools. For example, the "All Girls Live Broadcast Room" under Mei ONE not only maintains its advantages in product selection, but also provides "beauty classes" to show consumers usage skills in real scenarios, helping people understand products more intuitively and thus feeding back into consumer decisions.

2. This generation of consumers has also changed

The changes in the live broadcast e-commerce ecosystem have also brought many new challenges to the various anchors who "thread the needle" between consumers and brand merchants. Some players have thought of "copying anchors", but whether this method really works seems to be still under discussion. In this regard, Qi Zhenbo, the founder of Mei ONE, once mentioned in an interview with the media that "one thing that Internet celebrities cannot copy is their personal charm. This is an important feature of all Internet celebrities that make people like them - professionalism can be copied, but personal charm cannot be copied."

A mother once told Lujiu Business Review that she now only goes to Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room to buy things. If she finds something suitable, she will place an order. If not, she will not even shop on e-commerce platforms. To some extent, this also confirms Qi Zhenbo's interpretation of "personal charm".

This mother is just a microcosm of the main consumer group. In their consumption concepts, rationality and sensibility coexist harmoniously.

On the rational side, they attach great importance to information symmetry and are good at using various Internet tools for "transparent consumption". In layman's terms, when faced with the goods they need, they are a group that is "not easily fooled". While pursuing the ultimate cost-effectiveness, they also expect more value-added services.

On the emotional side, they also want to demonstrate freedom, independence and individuality, advocate value identification, are willing to pay for their own interests and preferred brands, and will give priority to their favorite KOLs. This way of spending money that makes themselves happy is also a manifestation of their emotional consumption.

Most Internet ecosystems follow the principle of "high traffic leads to high traffic", but it is not difficult to see from the trend that if anchors and their organizations want to firmly grasp the logic of traffic, whether it is to enrich product content or to create a differentiated sales model, they must fundamentally stand in the perspective of consumers, think about problems and empathize with them. This is also an important part of anchors' professionalism and credibility.

Of course, it is worth mentioning that the product itself is always the cornerstone of a transaction. Taking Mei ONE as an example, its product selection process is divided into six stages: investment matching, merchant sample delivery, offer submission, preliminary selection meeting, team trial and final selection meeting.

Among the four core criteria for product evaluation, product safety is placed first. It is not difficult to see that low prices can certainly be the only way to attract a large number of new customers, but stable product quality control is the decisive factor in turning consumers into repeat customers.

3. “Content Methodology” in the Post-E-commerce Live Broadcasting Era

After the logistics factors such as products and after-sales are in place, whether the content is creative, differentiated, and more in line with the aesthetics of the times is undoubtedly the key to improving business conversion. A snack food supplier in Henan told Lujiu Business Review that a certain snack under his brand is supplied to both offline supermarkets and top anchors such as Li Jiaqi, but there is a significant difference in the purchase price. "Compared with offline supermarkets, anchors such as Li Jiaqi purchase goods at a lower price, and they also have to pay additional sales commissions."

He gave Lujiu Business Review an example of a previous collaboration with a live streamer, where he gave the live streamer a 10 million share of the 70 million GMV. "But by comparison, it's still more profitable than supplying goods to supermarkets." He believes that the strong sales capabilities demonstrated by live streaming rooms are inseparable from providing consumers with more effective information and value-added services.

Even for unfamiliar products, some live broadcast rooms can simulate actual usage scenarios to explain product knowledge. During the 618 period, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room opened a series of columns called "Li Jiaqi's Small Classroom". Through the explanation of professional knowledge in skin care, makeup, etc., consumers with different skin types, different needs, and different budgets can quickly choose products that suit them.

This type of "open" content attempt not only enhances users' sense of participation and trust, but also has the more important meaning of gradually establishing industry live broadcast talent standards by showing how leading institutions train anchors. After this, e-commerce live broadcasting will hopefully get rid of the situation where anchor talent is "available but not sought after" and can also "cultivate" industry talent through high standards.

However, among the three major elements of "people, goods, and place" in the e-commerce industry, the scene is not only the live broadcast room built on the mobile phone screen, but also a systematic middle and back-end that can improve the efficiency of live broadcast and achieve efficient sales.

In this regard, Mei ONE is constantly experimenting. Take their newly launched ONE live broadcast product selection platform as an example. The data background of its PC terminal has accumulated all the products, categories, brands and sales data of past live broadcasts, as well as the merchants, contracts and product qualification data directly related to product selection.

When the aforementioned product selection process starts to operate, the product selection platform serving as the data background can form effective collaboration between merchants and anchors, and provide consumers with products of the best quality and price in a data-optimized manner.

On the other hand, as intuitive consumption data begins to be transmitted to the live broadcast side and the brand side, the corresponding live broadcast content will inevitably be adjusted accordingly. On the platform side, Douyin launched marketing activities such as "Meet the New National Trend", allowing time-honored brands that were once hidden in the alleys to begin to go nationwide; and on the anchor side, it empowers domestic products more through forms such as brand co-creation and brand collaboration.

For example, on May 2, 2023, after visiting the "source ingredients" of the Chando brand, Chando and Li Jiaqi launched the first special live broadcast of tracing the source in the small town of Lulang in the Himalayas. This unique plateau live broadcast achieved remarkable results, creating a new "height" for domestic beauty products. It also allowed the audience to feel the beauty of the combination of technology and nature, while gaining a deeper understanding of the long-term persistence of domestic brands in ingredients and efficacy, as well as the value behind years of persistence.

This is just the tip of the iceberg among many cases of live e-commerce empowering domestic products. With the help of live e-commerce, more and more high-quality domestic products are being seen, used, and liked by more and more consumers.

Whether it is the establishment of standards on the industry side or the continuous innovation on the content side, on the one hand, the reason is that the industry development has gradually reached its ceiling; on the other hand, when platforms and anchors can no longer "make money without doing anything", they also need a more stable supply of talents and more standardized and scientific content production methods, so that the content production of live e-commerce can gradually get rid of the dilemma of "relying on luck for food".

In other words, this is also the inevitable transition of an industry from wild growth to standardized development. When industry standards are continuously established through the actions of leading companies, live streaming e-commerce at the crossroads can find a more certain direction for the future.

Author: Qiao Shan

Source: WeChat public account "Lujiu Business Review (ID: liujiucaijing69)"