This year’s 618 is known as the most insensitive promotion, because the feeling of the promotion has been replaced by the special scene experience of various platforms, and digging rivers while demolishing walls will become the new normal for competition in future promotions.
From the smoke of the second takeaway war, to the rapid merger of Ele.me and Fliggy into Taotian, the 618 promotion, which is sandwiched between the big moves of the two industries, has been robbed of a few points.
The slogan “618 in the middle of the year, when the whole people fight hard” used to be a true portrayal of the e-commerce promotion in the first half of the year, and in order to attract consumers, various platforms have played the banner of “the lowest price on the whole network” and fell into a fierce price war. However, this year’s 618 presents a different scene, and the smell of gunpowder is no longer so strong.
The longest 618 in history since May 13 is very similar to the longest double 11 in history since October 14 last year, and the collective farewell to the lowest price has become the main theme of e-commerce platforms.
However, compared with the last Double 11 as the beginning of getting out of the low price of involution, this time 618 further outlines that after the e-commerce platforms no longer blindly fight each other’s price wars, they have given new answers to the new trends in the new stage.
Perhaps the confrontation on the table is no longer fierce, and some industry observers even gave the rough conclusion that “e-commerce no longer needs 618”; Some moderates believe that the big promotion nodes such as 618 and Double 11 have been diluted by short-term small promotions such as Goddess Day and Father’s Day, which are more frequent.
However, from the perspective of users, these users have indeed gained the desensitization experience of “every day is a big promotion”, but the platforms and brand merchants behind them are still in a secret battle. In particular, traditional shelf e-commerce, instant retail e-commerce, emerging content and community e-commerce platforms with their own characteristics are all opening up different promotion routes around their core advantages.
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In the future e-commerce promotion battle, after the user side is de-complicated and simplified, the comprehensive competition on the supply side will only be more intense and interesting.
The performance of each platform in 618 this time also provided valuable experience and lessons for the combat readiness of Double 11 in the second half of the year.
01 Make wedding dresses for instant retail?
The 618 war has covered from online to offline, which is an unprecedented experience for many consumers.
During the past e-commerce promotion period, countless users squatted on the APP or in the live broadcast room on the hour, eager to turn off all the networked devices of the whole family, and also to ensure the fastest network speed of the mobile phone at that moment; After doing everything you can to place an order, you have to pray that your package will arrive safely during the peak express delivery period.
Such unforgettable memories were finally swept into history by the “30-minute delivery” anytime and anywhere.
This time, 618 seamlessly connected with the takeaway war launched by JD.com after the year, and Meituan and Ele.me entered the game one after another, subsidizing all the way to the eve of 618.
Meituan officially announced on May 27 that it would join 618, and in the “618 God Price” activity launched by Meituan’s flash sale, genuine top goods such as iPhone 16 in early 4,000 yuan and Feitian Moutai without a penny increase in price have not only not lost to traditional e-commerce in terms of discounts, but also become the core highlight.
Since JD.com has fired the first shot of the second takeaway war, it has naturally been determined to further integrate traditional shelf e-commerce with instant near-field e-commerce.
Taotian has long had back-to-back experience with Ele.me, and the merger and integration after 618 obviously smelled a lot of threats and must fight with all its might.
According to LatePost on June 20, its Duoduo grocery is testing self-built commodity warehouses in first-tier cities such as Shanghai, and will launch instant delivery services as soon as August.
The Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China pointed out in the “Instant Retail Industry Development Report (2024)” released in October last year that the scale of domestic instant retail has reached 650 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 28.89%, which is 17.89 percentage points higher than the growth rate of online retail in the same period. The report also predicts that domestic instant retail will continue to grow in the next few years, and is expected to exceed 2 trillion yuan in 2030.
In the era of stock competition, the rare increment of instant retail is tantamount to a battleground for e-commerce giants.
What’s even more rare is that this 618 record report also verifies the rationality of their heavy bets.
According to Star Map data, the total comprehensive e-commerce sales of the 618 Shopping Festival in 2025 will be 855.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.2%; Among them, instant retail sales reached 29.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.7%, and community group buying sales were 12.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of -9.1%. The data that outperforms the market and stands out has further boosted the confidence of the platforms.
On June 23, Meituan announced that it would comprehensively expand instant retail and promote the quality and upgrading of new retail formats. Nearly one million physical stores in 618 miles have won more than 100 million customers on the Meituan flash sale platform, which is its confidence to increase all in.
However, the rise of instant retail means that traditional e-commerce giants need to fight on both fronts between the far and near fields, putting forward higher requirements for the platform’s supply chain management, logistics and distribution, customer service and other capabilities, and will inevitably share the bullets and firepower of subsidies and promotions. How to take into account the allocation of resources while integrating and mastering the way of balance has become the key to the Double 11 dispute in the second half of the year.
02 A small blessing in community e-commerce
On the side of the traditional e-commerce platform, content and community platforms are all trying to build their own shopping closed loop, and 618 is a big promotion node not to be missed.
However, in contrast to previous years, Xiaohongshu e-commerce, which is known for “planting grass”, did not use 618 as the core concept to promote this year, in addition to opening the traffic floodgate and cooperating with Taobao to launch the “Red Cat Plan”, it also changed the name of the “shopping” section to the “Friendly Market”.
The official statement is that it is committed to creating a native and independent soil, setting up a platform for merchants who are friendly to goods, service, and prices, and giving “maximum incentives”.
Content communities have their own genetic advantages over traditional e-commerce, that is, the trust cost and traffic source that the latter craves. Even cat and dog puzzles are sparing no effort to build a content ecology within their own platforms, but there is still a huge difference from the natural community atmosphere of Xiaohongshu and Bilibili.
Of course, there are also those who are not optimistic about community e-commerce and believe that users who come to the content community do not have a pure consumption purpose, and excessive commercialization will cause disgust and resistance, and even lead to a lose-lose situation.
Bilibili, the video community most favored by young people with the greatest consumption potential, has not dared to insert opening advertisements so far, because of this logical consideration. Kuaishou before Douyin also emphasized the attributes of its “old iron” community all the time, and the “trust economy” derived from it became its capital to enter the e-commerce track.
Compared with the above two, Douyin’s “interest e-commerce” and Xiaohongshu’s “buyer e-commerce” have a smoother logic of transitioning from content to business, the former relies on algorithms to stimulate the potential consumption needs of entertainment users, and the latter becomes buyers by cultivating aesthetic and tonal content creators, and then realizes the accurate docking of people and goods by recommending grass planting.
However, the transaction under the buyer mode essentially does not change the underlying logic of people looking for goods and goods, but only improves the transaction efficiency in the decision-making process, and has overlaps with the “talent economy” with the live broadcast room as the carrier.
Therefore, perhaps seeing the limited ceiling, Xiaohongshu will no longer push buyer e-commerce to the C position during the 618 period in 2024, but will adjust to the new concept of “lifestyle e-commerce”, believing that users are not only buying good products, but buying a longing life.
▲Photo/Screenshot of Zhou Qi’s Xiaohongshu homepage
The latest “friendly market” can be said to continue to explore the upper limit of the most critical atmosphere of the community platform.
The life you yearn for does not need to be displayed on the shelves like standardized goods, but should be discovered by people in the community who are casually wandering around. What Xiaohongshu wants to do is to discover and cultivate merchants and products that meet this beautiful standard, so that users can complete consumption surrounded by a desire to explore and a sense of participation.
It is foreseeable that content and community e-commerce are returning to their original intention of the platform before e-commerce, so as to alleviate the anxiety of mechanical imitation of the ceiling of traditional e-commerce.
Although in the short term, this small luck model that focuses on reclaiming self-reserved land cannot be matched by traditional e-commerce giants, its future potential should not be underestimated.
The big promotions of 618 and Double 11 are more like tools for expanding the boundaries of their evangelistic concepts, rather than indispensable concentrated and concentrated birth magic weapons.
03 Dig the river while demolishing the wall
Looking back on the hustle and bustle of the 618 promotion over the years, there are strict barriers between e-commerce platforms that regard each other as their biggest rivals.
The most obvious is the disconnected logistics and distribution system and payment methods, and the traffic is regarded as an exclusive treasure, firmly controlled within its own platform. On the eve of Double 11 last year, this situation was quietly broken by the tacit understanding of the former opponent.
The goods on Taobao have been able to quickly reach users through JD Logistics, and JD Logistics has spared no effort to provide services for Tmall merchants, so that the flow of goods is more free and smooth.
In the payment sector, Taotian opened its arms to access WeChat Pay, which also gave consumers more choices. In the past, the traffic resources that were like thunder pools that could not be crossed were also opened to shelf e-commerce by content and community platforms during this year’s 618 period. In addition to the “Red Cat Plan” mentioned above, Xiaohongshu also joined hands with JD.com to launch the “Red Beijing Plan” in a similar model, and station B next door came up with the “Beijing Fire Plan” in cooperation with JD.com.
In terms of the scale of self-operated e-commerce, Byte, which only catches up with traditional giants, launched the “Star Cube” with Taobao Star Task last year, and launched the JD.com version of the “Beijing Rubik’s Cube” in April this year, making the grass planting and transformation link of content experts more efficient and transparent.
It is not difficult to find that distribution, payment and even traffic are being regarded as basic facilities that can be shared by all platforms involved in e-commerce, becoming the raw materials for making the cake bigger together, rather than clarifying the knives and forks that divide the cake between you and me.
However, demolishing the wall is by no means that everyone has abandoned the gap between portals and no longer pursued the maximization of individual interests, but has shifted competition to a higher dimension, so that users and merchants no longer need to bear the cost of “choosing one of the two” for the sake of fighting between platforms.
Therefore, while demolishing the wall on the one hand, digging a deep moat in full swing on the other side is also the focus of e-commerce platforms going all out during the 618 period.
For example, Taotian, as a leader in e-commerce for many years, has become the main force behind the 10% growth of GMV, but the process of supporting the good and eliminating the bad has also raised the threshold of small and medium-sized businesses in disguise; JD.com’s entry into the wine industry after takeaway is bound to open up the online and offline consumption scenes, and of course, the high-altitude under the self-operated strategy must also take into account the sustainable trickle. Others such as Douyin, Kuaishou, as well as Pinduoduo and Xiaohongshu, are also facing up to their shortcomings while making the longboard as long as possible.
After consumers are attracted to different e-commerce platforms, they can feel different consumption experiences in their respective scenarios on the basis of meeting convenient and fast shopping needs. This has created such a diverse picture of “the same promotion, different feelings”.
This year’s 618 is known as the most insensitive promotion, perhaps because the feeling of the promotion has been replaced by the special scene experience of various platforms.
Under the further differentiation and ultimate pursuit, this year’s Double 11 also makes people look forward to it.
Resources:
Market capitalization list, “The rules of 618, have changed! 》
Star Map Data, “2025 618 Network Sales Data Interpretation Report”
Ministry of Commerce Research Institute, “Instant Retail Industry Development Report (2024)”
Shangyin Society, “618 after abandoning the price war, major e-commerce platforms “parting ways””
