With the end of the 618 promotion, this year’s shopping carnival has shown many new changes and trends. From the longest event cycle in history to the simplification of rules, from the first in-depth participation of state subsidies, to the strong entry of instant retail, to the collective low-key of head anchors and the rise of digital human live broadcasts, this promotion not only reflects the game between consumers, merchants and platforms, but also triggers deep thinking about the future direction of e-commerce promotions.
Jumping out of the inertial narratives of “deserted” and “tired”, there are many “new things” happening in this year’s 618 –
- 618, which started in mid-May, has become the “longest history”;
- Taotian’s overall marketing gameplay is simplified, directly adopting the “instant reduction” promotion method, and taking the lead in changing the complex rules of “digital questions”, which has brought good news that the GMV of 618 full-cycle Tmall after excluding refunds increased by 10% year-on-year, and the number of platform purchase users increased by double digits;
- JD.com’s physical business JD.com MALL opened multiple stores in many places across the country during the 618 period, and opened the first catering collection store “Seven Fresh Food MALL” in Harbin, enjoying 618 preferential activities online and offline;
- The national subsidy is embedded in the promotion for the first time, and the policy and business collaboration inject increments into digital, home appliances and other industries;
- Instant retail also participated in depth for the first time, bringing the two consumption philosophies of “big promotion stocking” and “instant gratification” to the forefront.
Of course, it is undeniable that on the other side of the new changes, the big promotion is still mired in a tug-of-war between growth anxiety and value reconstruction.
The platform continues to bear the dual pressure of merchants and consumers, not only to protect the business of merchants, but also to meet the harsh judgment of consumers. Merchant groups have a difficult trade-off between platform burden reduction policies and actual traffic anxiety, and some small and medium-sized merchants choose to wait and see cautiously. Consumers have shown unprecedented shrewdness, and the price comparison behavior has been upgraded from horizontal platform comparison to vertical timeline comparison, comparison between anchors and merchants, and the tolerance for price fluctuations continues to decrease.
This three-way game reflects the urgency of the e-commerce industry to adjust the traditional promotion gameplay. At a time when the promotion is gradually becoming long-term and normalized, everyone is trying to answer a core proposition: where is the future of the promotion?
The longest in history is 618, the pros and cons of the “marathon promotion”
In the past, most of the 618 were opened from the end of May or early June and lasted for about 20 days; But this year has kicked off on May 13, and the activity cycle of Taobao and JD.com has exceeded 35 days.
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It is not difficult to understand the platform’s intention to lengthen the front: to extend the traffic window, which not only stimulates consumption increments, but also retains users.In the activity cycle of more than a month, 618 can string together a number of small festivals with gift-giving shopping arrangements such as 520, Dragon Boat Festival, and Father’s Day, like a fine network that covers the shopping needs of consumers at different stages.
Theoretically, this design is beneficial to many parties: first, diversifying orders helps optimize supply chain efficiency and avoid logistics and warehousing pressure in a short period of time; second, the pre-sale mechanism can lock in sales in advance, guide merchants to prepare goods carefully, and reduce the risk of inventory backlog; The third is to give consumers more time to choose and make decisions.
However, this “time tactic” also has many problems after it is actually implemented.
For consumers, the change of time directly means “complex”.
A consumer who wants to grab a bargain may not know when to open the APP this year. The ultra-long time period is divided into three to four segments, and the price of the same product may be completely different at different times and channels, which makes budget-conscious consumers fall into the anxiety of “buying early for fear of loss, buying late without goods”.
On social media platforms, the topic of “when is 618 the cheapest” is also divided, which is also mixed with many platforms soft and wide, this uncertainty not only stimulates shopping enthusiasm, but increases the psychological burden, and many people simply choose to “lie flat and wait and see”.
Source: Xiaohongshu
For merchants, the ultra-long cycle means doubling the investment.
This year, the brand not only has to prepare multiple rounds of marketing materials for 618 and plan different stages of activities, but also takes into account the marketing activities and product preparation of several festivals during this period, and has to invest more manpower in the whole process to deal with customers who may be consulting or placing orders at any time.
For small and medium-sized businesses, the high operating costs and energy consumption brought about by the long cycle have “dissuaded” many people. Many small and medium-sized businesses have chosen to “lie flat” this year, only maintaining the rhythm of daily operations. When you open Taobao, you will also see that there are many snacks and clothing in the shopping cart, but there is actually no information about event promotions and price changes.
From this point of view, although the ultra-long-term marketing strategy has its business logic, it has significantly weakened the effect of the activity due to excessive complexity in actual implementation, and also changed the original intention.
The national subsidy was promoted for the first time, becoming a core growth driver
In fact, a large part of users pay attention to 618 because of state subsidies.
This year, the national subsidy is fully connected to the e-commerce promotion system for the first time, covering the three major fields of home appliances, mobile phone digital, and automobiles, and can be used in conjunction with 618 discounts and local consumption vouchers on major e-commerce platforms. And after using designated payment methods such as UnionPay, you can also have a small discount.
Liu Bo, president of Tmall, said in an interview with Late: “The national subsidy started in September last year, and compared with last year’s Double 11, the total turnover of 618 national subsidy products this year increased by 115%. Of course, because the number of commodities participating in national subsidies has increased a lot this year, the growth rate of national subsidy categories is more than 40%. ”
Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo’s national subsidy zone
For digital 3C products such as mobile phones, because of the high unit price, everyone is accustomed to deliberately waiting for big promotions such as 618 or Double 11 to start.This year’s national subsidy is a new incentive，For example, the price of the iPhone 16 Pro 128GB version has dropped to 5,499 yuan, a decrease of more than 30% from the original price, allowing consumers who were originally hesitant to quickly complete their orders.
At the same time, this year’s national subsidy category has expanded from the traditional 8 types of major appliances to 12 categories, and new small household appliances such as water purifiers and dishwashers have been added.Category expansion has also further released incremental space.All kinds of smart small household appliances rely on social attributes, appearance and innovation, through 15%-20% subsidies,It has successfully activated the early adopter consumption mentality of young people.
Driven by national subsidies, home appliance brands have also increased their investment in content marketing.
For example, Midea created a “Wonderful Night of Beautiful Life”, inviting a number of talk show stars such as Xu Zhisheng, Xiaolu, and edamame to play home appliance stalks with talk shows. During the live broadcast on Douyin, Little Swan invited Zhang Xiaowan to stage the story of the white snake and Xu Xian quarreling over laundry after being reborn. There is also the live broadcast room of Gree Electric Appliances, Dong Mingzhu and Meng Yutong also staged a “great reconciliation of the century”, which attracted a lot of attention.
Gree Douyin live broadcast room
Under the synergy of policy and business, the sales growth is quite obvious.
During the 618 period, JD.com ranked first in the industry in terms of scale and growth rate of 3C and home appliance categories, with a total of more than 1,000 home appliance and home appliance categories increasing by 200% year-on-year, and more than 2,000 home appliance and home appliance brands increasing by 100% year-on-year. At the same time, home appliance brands have reached a new high in Pinduoduo this year, and the sales scale of all categories of home appliances has doubled by 103% year-on-year.
According to the People’s Daily, in the first phase of Tmall 618 (May 13 to May 26), the total transaction volume of home appliances, home decoration, mobile phone digital and other categories participating in the national subsidy increased by 283% compared with last year’s Double 11, and the number of state subsidies received on the Tmall platform tripled compared with the same period last year’s Double 11; The overall turnover of home appliances, home furnishing, home improvement, 3C digital and other industries increased by double digits year-on-year, and more than 3,000 brands doubled their year-on-year turnover. On May 28, only in the seven days from June 4 to 10 after the opening of the second phase of Tmall 618, the average daily turnover of the air conditioning category increased by more than 90% year-on-year.
State subsidies are not the icing on the cake, but have become an effective engine to drive growth, which has played a key role in this year’s 618.
The rules are simplified to compete for consumers with “direct drops”
This year, Taobao and Tmall took the lead in breaking the convention and replacing the cross-store full discount with “official instant discount”, which sparked in-depth discussion in the industry.
This change aims to simplify the consumption link, so that consumers no longer have to rack their brains to make up orders, open the product page to intuitively see the preferential price, say goodbye to the complex calculation problems of the past, and return shopping decisions to the essence of ease. Liu Bo, vice president of Alibaba Group and president of Tmall, also said that the platform has always been conducting real-time dynamic research, and the consumer experience has indeed been greatly improved, and the consumer complaint rate has also dropped significantly.
The data also further confirms that the effect of simplifying the rules is obvious. Liu Bo said that this year’s users placed orders more simply, the return rate before delivery dropped significantly, and the return rate of the 88VIP user group dropped sharply, which was better than the industry level. It is precisely because of this that the instant reduction has become the primary reason why Tmall 618 has achieved the largest growth in the past three years this year. The GMV of 618 full-cycle Tmall after excluding refunds increased by 10% year-on-year, and the number of users purchased by the platform achieved double-digit growth.
In addition to Taotian’s cancellation of cross-store full discounts,Although platforms such as JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Douyin continue to play full reductions, on the whole, everyone is also tending to direct price reductions and discounts, striving for clearer preferential rules to make it easier for consumers to understand.
For example, JD.com has added a “lowest price in half a year” to lock in the bottom line of the price of goods within half a year, eliminating users’ “anxiety about buying expensive”; Cross-store full discount supports the superposition of all categories of products to avoid consumer misunderstandings. Pinduoduo requires merchants who have a big promotion atmosphere on the C-end to mark their products to provide consumers with “price reduction and compensation” services, which is also to reduce consumers’ concerns about price fluctuations. Douyin also has gameplay such as “one piece direct drop” and “official 15% off”, which conveys the price advantage to users in real time with simpler and straightforward discounts.
The strategic adjustment of each platform is essentially a return to the essence of retail in the context of the fading of traffic dividends, and compete for consumers’ limited attention and purchasing power with more direct concessions and clearer rules.
Instant retail is strong in the game, and small and medium-sized businesses are worried
There is another significant change in 618 this year:For the first time, instant retail platforms have become deeply involved in it and have become an important role in the promotion.The three major platforms of Meituan, Ele.me, and JD.com’s “red, yellow and blue” continued the fierce competition in the food delivery market in the first half of the year, igniting the war to the 618 promotion. From spokesperson homophonic meme marketing to the scale of resource investment, the importance of instant retail business on various platforms has reached an unprecedented height.
This deep participation is not only due to the interoperability of the promotion itself in the retail industry, but also due to the generalization of the promotion concept of 618, which creates a natural adaptation environment for the integration of instant retail. In addition, the deeper changes also lie in the iterative upgrading of consumption habits. Nielsen’s research report also shows that more than 70% of instant retail users are young people under the age of 35, and the awareness of hoarding is relatively weak. thereforeWhen the timeliness advantage of “30-minute delivery” meets the price that is almost the same as that of e-commerce platforms, instant retail can naturally become the first choice for young consumers.
Platform activities are in full swing, not only reconstructing the consumption scene, but also having a significant impact on the merchant ecology.
Similar to the situation on e-commerce platforms, chain brands are the protagonists of instant retail 618, and they quickly seized this wave of dividends by virtue of their supply chain advantages.
According to Meituan data, the turnover of liquor on the first day of Meituan’s flash sale 618 increased by 70 times year-on-year, and brands such as Wuliangye and Luzhou Laojiao took the lead in realizing the instant delivery of high-end liquor. During the 618 period, when Ele.me and JD.com takeaway were opened, the first thing users saw were the products of chain brands such as Laoxiang Chicken, Juewei Duck Neck, Luckin Coffee, and Cudi Coffee.
However, small and medium-sized businesses are already difficult to cope with the traffic siphon effect of head brands, and they are facing doubled traffic differentiation pressure during the promotion period, and the living space may continue to be squeezed.
A proposal issued by the Chongqing Coffee Industry Association in June this year highlighted this problem. The proposal pointed out that because coffee ready-made beverages are listed as a key category with high subsidies by the platform, the market price has fallen off a cliff, affecting the healthy development of the industry. Most of the co-signatories of this proposal are local independent coffee brands, which fully reflects the subsidies of takeaway platforms to large chain coffee brands, which has led to a sharp decline in orders from local small and medium-sized cafes.
It is conceivable that the fierce competition in the instant retail track will continue after 618. Liu Qiangdong held a small-scale sharing meeting the day before 618, and also emphasized that the takeaway business and JD.com’s instant retail and traditional e-commerce businesses have created synergies. In the second half of this year, JD.com’s focus is also to maintain the big track of instant retail and local life. For small and medium-sized businesses, there is still a long time to explore new ways to survive in ecological reconstruction.
External link cooperation continues to deepen, but the content platform has collectively “calmed down”
Cross-border cooperation between platforms is also a major industry focus of this year’s 618. Xiaohongshu has reached strategic cooperation with Taotian and JD.com, launched the “Red Cat Plan” and “Hongjing Plan”, opened the external link function of notes, and built a fast channel for users to convert content from grass planting to e-commerce. Bilibili has been talking about the ecological “open-loop” strategy since 2023, and has been continuing to collaborate with e-commerce platforms in recent years.
The cooperation between e-commerce platforms and content platforms has gradually deepened, but surprisingly, the layout of content platforms during 618 this year has appeared more calm and restrained.
From the perspective of rhythm, the e-commerce platform has fully launched the warm-up of the promotion in mid-May, but content platforms such as Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, and Weibo have not followed up synchronously, and there is no exclusive activity page online, and high-frequency advertising is rarely seen on the homepage. It was not until the week of 618 that the content platform had a more intensive 618 advertising push.
In factWhether it is announcing the time node of the promotion or creating a consumption atmosphere, it needs to be planned in advance, and the rhythm between the platforms is misaligned, and the effect will naturally be reduced.
In terms of cooperation mode,The content platform has also changed its “bombardment” aggressive marketing strategy in the past few years.
In the past, platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili would make special pages during the promotion period, using interactive gameplay to encourage users to watch grass planting videos, click on links to jump to e-commerce platforms to buy goods; It will also vigorously support bloggers to carry out live streaming, launch incentive policies to promote Internet celebrity bloggers to participate in promotions, and do grass marketing for brands.
But this year, content platforms are significantly calmer and more adducted. Xiaohongshu’s 618 was renamed “Friendly Market”, directly removing the label of the 618 traditional promotion; When searching for related keywords, the content directly promoted by experts for 618 has also decreased, and only the head beauty brands still maintain high exposure. In the member shopping area of Bilibili, the products are mainly animation game peripherals and computer hardware, and there are no other categories such as beauty and clothing that vigorously promote UP. The action of Weibo is more direct and simple, that is, through regular advertising resources such as opening screen advertisements, homepage banners, pop-ups, etc., to attract traffic to the e-commerce platform, and there is no exclusive activity of 618 on the site.
Xiaohongshu, Bilibili, Weibo
This change also reflects that brand merchants and content platforms have a clearer understanding of promotions: at a time when consumers are becoming more rational and market competition is fierce, it is difficult to obtain as generous returns as in the past.
The head anchor collectively kept a low profile, and the broadcaster shop broadcast one thing and the other
The super head anchors, who were originally the protagonists of the big promotion, are also much more low-key in this year’s 618. Simba, Dong Yuhui, etc. have significantly reduced the frequency and exposure of live broadcasts, and Li Jiaqi has focused on the pre-sale day and the launch date, and the rest of the time has been handed over to other anchors in the team.
On the one hand, the collective “low-key” of big anchors reflects consumers’ fatigue of big promotions and the pursuit of simple shopping methods. whileThe head anchor can no longer provide an absolute price advantage, and consumers’ pursuit of low prices is also stronger, and the price comparison behavior covers all channels, which makes consumers’ dependence and trust in the head anchor significantly reduced.
In this context, big anchors are reducing their over-reliance on a single IP and paving the way for future development by laying out their own brands and supporting broadcast teams. For example, this year, Li Jiaqi’s team arranged the live broadcast room of “All Parents’ Happy Home”, which is also a new attempt to open up the middle-aged and elderly market and break the current traffic ceiling.
On the other hand, the platform is also accelerating the decentralization of the live broadcast ecosystem, tilting traffic to mid-waist anchors and brand store broadcasters with a larger base.
For example, Douyin e-commerce began to boost store broadcasting and shelf yards more last year, and also clearly emphasized that compared with relying on Dabo, store broadcasting has many advantages such as more controllable costs, high flexibility, and user assets can be precipitated. According to data released by Douyin e-commerce, during the 618 period this year, half of the turnover driven by the platform’s live broadcast has come from store broadcasting, and nearly 70% of all merchants with live broadcast turnover exceeding 10 million yuan have adopted the store broadcast model.
Douyin 618 brand store broadcast
Jumping out of the broadcast and the store, ““Digital human anchor” is also a highlight of this year’s 618。
Since the debut of “Procurement and Marketing Dongge” last year, JD.com said that digital humans have fully achieved “high commercial availability” this year. According to data released by JD.com, more than 17,000 brand merchants have used JD.com’s digital human live broadcast this year. And the current cost of digital humans is only 1/10 of that of real anchors, but it can drive a 30% increase in conversion rates.
MCM JD Digital Human Live
Not only JD.com, but Baidu is also promoting the commercialization of digital human live broadcasting. On June 15, Luo Yonghao’s digital human debuted on Baidu’s live broadcast, attracting more than 10 million onlookers and a single GMV of more than 55 million yuan. On June 17, Baidu AI Day, Baidu also announced that Luo Yonghao will serve as the chief product experience officer of Baidu Huiboxing to bring goods to Baidu’s digital human live broadcast.
Luo Yonghao’s digital human live broadcast
But rationally, judging from the current situation, it is still too early to say that digital human live broadcast is “fully rising”. There are still many mainstream platforms restricting the flow of digital human live broadcasts, and existing digital human live broadcasts will also have problems such as poor experience and weak interactivity. Previously, some brand merchants said that the actual effect of digital human live broadcast is often unsatisfactory, and the traffic decay rate is fast.
When facing AI and other technology products, brand merchants often have double thresholds in terms of cognition and operation, and need to provide systematic training and direct support from the platform. Therefore, for digital human live broadcast to be truly popular, it requires continuous breakthroughs at the technical level and greater support from various platforms on the premise of maintaining the ecological balance of existing anchors.
This year’s entire 618 promotion has undergone profound adjustments. Behind the many changes is the continuous deepening of the tripartite game between consumers, merchants and platforms, and it is also the inevitable result of the development of traditional e-commerce promotion festivals to a certain stage.
How to balance innovation with simplification of rules, how to balance merchant growth and user experience, determines the evolution direction of 618, Double 11 and other more promotional festivals, and is also a problem that e-commerce platforms still need to explore.
