This year’s 618 is particularly “quiet”. Although the promotion cycle is 39 days, the highest in history, consumer enthusiasm has significantly decreased, and the promotion strategies of platforms and merchants have become more low-key. This article will delve into the “deserted” phenomenon of this year’s 618 and analyze the reasons behind it for your reference.
The 618 promotion, known as the “most difficult in history”, came to an end after a long cycle of 39 days.
Although it is another year of 618, the momentum of the shopping festival is not as good as before, and consumers’ doubts and complaints have come one after another.
This year’s 618 was launched early from May 13, 7 days earlier than last year, and the entire promotion period was 39 days, the highest in history. During the period, marketing activities for multiple festivals such as Mother’s Day, “520” and Dragon Boat Festival were also superimposed.
However, the longer the promotion time, the more confused and tired consumers become. Many people can’t figure out which time period is the most cost-effective to participate in, and they are not sure when they can buy really cheap goods.
In terms of platforms, some rules have been simplified this year, such as abandoning the complex “making orders” gameplay and switching to more direct “instant discount” discounts, and no longer blindly emphasizing the “lowest price”.
However, the simplified rules do not seem to have completely solved the calculation problem, and many consumers are also disappointed with the actual subsidies of the platform.
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Social media is full of doubts and complaints from users: “I don’t understand what 618 is doing”, “I wanted to buy something, but I gave up after watching it for a long time, and it is not as cheap as usual”, “The instant discount is very good, but it has not been reduced” and so on. This is far from the original intention of the platform to simplify the rules and “reduce the burden” on consumers, and also reflects that consumers’ enthusiasm for such large-scale promotions is waning.
The head anchors are also much more low-key this year, and the live broadcasts of each company are less lively than the lively atmosphere of 618 in previous years.
It is difficult to reproduce the explosive power of the past during the promotion period, and the attitude of merchants is also changing. In May this year, controversies occurred one after another in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room, involving disguised price increases and the inability to deliver.
There are various signs that this year’s 618 is another shopping festival with flat performance and even weak growth.
In fact, after the overall slowdown in online e-commerce growth, platforms and merchants’ expectations for explosive growth have decreased.
But this year’s slowdown in growth is still particularly pronounced. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the proportion of online retail sales of physical goods in the total retail sales of consumer goods in China will decline in 2024, from 27.6% in 2023 to 26.8%. In the first five months of this year, this proportion further dropped to 24.5%.
The decline in some categories was particularly significant, such as the online growth of clothing products almost stagnated. In the first five months of this year, the online retail sales of physical goods increased by 14.5%, 1.2% and 6.1% respectively.
In this context, platforms and merchants no longer compete fiercely around the “lowest price on the whole network”, and it takes a process to turn to the improvement of quality and service, and the effect is not obvious for the time being. This also makes the overall competitive atmosphere of this year’s 618 less intense.
01 618 ended, what is the record of the major platforms?
Similar to previous years, major platforms did not announce the overall total sales, but selectively disclosed data on some categories.
As of 24:00 on June 18, the scale and activity of all users of Tmall “618” reached a new high, and the brand transaction grew efficiently in the whole cycle. The turnover of 453 brands on Tmall “618” exceeded 100 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24%.
During the same period, the number of users placing orders on JD.com’s “618” increased by more than 100% year-on-year, and the overall order volume of JD.com’s retail online business, offline format and JD.com’s takeaway exceeded 2.2 billion.
The most eye-catching driving force of this year’s 618 is the national subsidy, which has become the main factor in the growth of key categories on various platforms.
Compared with last year, the coverage of this year’s national subsidy policy has been significantly expanded. Last year, it mainly targeted traditional appliances such as TVs, refrigerators, and washing machines, but this year it added kitchen appliances such as range hoods, expanding the category from 8 categories to 12 categories.
It is worth noting that consumer electronics have been included in the scope of subsidies for the first time, and the home category has also received policy support, and the scope of subsidies has even been extended to the field of home decoration. All platforms have taken advantage of this policy to effectively drive the sales growth of related categories.
In the field of 3C digital and home appliances, the national subsidy is superimposed on 618, and the growth of each platform is significant.
JD.com mentioned in the battle report that during the 618 period, the scale and growth rate of 3C and home appliance categories ranked first in the industry; In terms of Tmall, among the brands that have exceeded 1 billion, these two categories account for more than half, including Apple, Midea, Haier, Xiaomi, Huawei, vivo, etc.; Pinduoduo announced brand and single product data, for example, the sales of popular mobile phone products such as Xiaomi 15, vivo X200 Pro, and iPhone16 Pro Max have increased by 3 to 8 times, and the sales of air conditioners of brands such as Midea, Xiaomi, and Haier have increased by more than 2 times.
However, through the national subsidy policy, we can see some potential problems that platforms are about to face.
The first is the risk of consumer overdraft – consumers buy home appliances and digital products in order to enjoy subsidies, which may lead to a sharp decline in market demand in the short term after the end of the policy.
Secondly, users attracted by subsidies tend to be highly price-sensitive. If the platform cannot maintain price competitiveness after the subsidy declines, users may turn to other preferential channels or more cost-effective platforms.
This year, 618 also has some players who “play cards out of common sense”.
When other platforms are promoting with great fanfare, Xiaohongshu is particularly quiet, not only did not launch 618 exclusive activities, but even replaced the traditional shopping entrance with relaxed activities such as “friendly market opening”, which significantly diluted the concept of 618. In contrast, Douyin and Kuaishou still held the 618 Shopping Festival as usual.
Although most platforms have handed over seemingly good growth data, this 618 is actually not as “rolled” as before, and the platform has replaced the low-price strategy full of “gunpowder” in the past two years with simplified rules and quality strategies, and correspondingly, the feedback from merchants and consumers has become more flat.
02 The most difficult 618 in history, all parties don’t want to roll up
This year, 618 has indeed seen a trend of “simplifying rules”, such as Tmall canceling the traditional “full reduction order” and changing it to a more direct “official instant reduction”; Douyin e-commerce also promotes “instant discounts” and “one-piece direct drops”.
But in the actual consumer experience, whether these rules are really simplified is a question mark.
Some consumers feel that after the “instant reduction”, there is no need to do math problems, but some people still feel that the rules are complex and not intuitive enough.
Taking Tmall as an example, although it has launched a 15% “official discount”, it has also launched a “no-threshold 90% off consumption coupon” only for 88VIP members.
For non-member users, if you want to get a greater discount, you need to consider whether to spend 88 yuan to open a membership. Moreover, almost most of the leading brands have participated in the 88VIP event. This makes users who do not have 88VIP feel that they have missed the discount and “lost 100 million”.
Even for 88VIP members, it is troublesome to make full use of the 90% off coupon: there is a limit to the number of coupons, each coupon can only be used once, and the unused face value will be invalidated. This results in users either wasting coupons or needing to carefully put together orders to use up the full face value.
In addition, the number of coupons issued by the platform is limited (only three in the second half of 618), and you have to wait for additional coupons to be issued from time to time, plus the category coupons that need to be grabbed, some of which need to be used within 24 hours, and the whole process is tiring.
88VIP’s rule explanation page especially popularizes science to consumers “Why is it sometimes more expensive and more expensive?” “What is a 90% discount coupon ‘limited to one use’?” However, consumers generally believe that the rules are complicated and unwilling to delve into them, and even give up placing orders because of this.
Photo/Taobao APP
In fact, the platform’s strategy is to bundle subsidies with membership rights. In addition to Tmall, JD.com is also strengthening its membership value, hoping to increase user stickiness and repurchase rates through exclusive discounts and rights.
For example, JD.com significantly upgraded its PLUS membership rights and interests in early 2025, expanded the scope of free shipping, added the redemption of life services such as housekeeping and car washing, and launched the “180-day only replacement and no repair” service in the core digital 3C category.
Tmall also announced the growth of 88VIP during the 618 period – the number of members exceeded 50 million, a record high.
The platform has its own considerations, and consumers also have their own problems.
Most users are not members, and they are dissatisfied that if they do not consider member-only coupons, the “instant discount” discount alone may not be enough, or even less cost-effective than usual purchases.
Why does the big promotion seem less cheap after “instant discount” instead of “full discount”?
One of the reasons is that some brands have the behavior of “rising first and then falling”. Although the platform claims a 15% discount, if the price of the product itself increases before 618, the price after the discount may not be advantageous, or even higher than usual.
In addition, this time 618 has no other red envelopes superimposed, so consumers naturally do not feel the benefits.
The lack of obvious subsidies and the failure of the price protection mechanism have become the main reasons for extinguishing the enthusiasm of many consumers for 618 this year.
Changes in consumer attitudes have also forced merchants to reevaluate the value of big promotions.
According to Jiemian News, a shoe and clothing merchant said frankly, “I don’t have high expectations for the big promotion this year, anyway, I can feel that consumers are desensitized to the big promotion.” Although the unit price of customers has become lower, the decline in the warm-up period has offset the increase in the activity period, and the sales volume has not changed much month-on-month. ”
In addition, old problems such as high return rates still plague merchants. Although the regulatory authorities interviewed major e-commerce platforms at the beginning of the year to rectify the abuse of the “refund only” rule, some platforms were not implemented in place, merchants lacked effective appeal channels, and may even face the risk of freezing store funds due to communication problems.
According to Value Planet, some clothing merchants reported that the return rate of women’s clothing has reached 60%-80%, and such a high return rate makes them dare not stock up in large quantities.
In the first half of this year, the Internet celebrity Taobao women’s clothing store with 1.9 million followers and the affordable domestic beauty brand “Ni Jizi” announced the closure of stores one after another, reflecting the difficult market environment.
03 The head anchors have also kept a low profile
In the future, how can e-commerce platforms find increments?
In recent years, part of the main driving force for e-commerce growth has come from live streaming e-commerce. According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, from 2020 to 2024, the national online retail sales increased from 11.76 trillion yuan to 15.52 trillion yuan, while the market size of live streaming e-commerce increased by more than 4 trillion yuan during the same period, becoming a key engine for overall growth.
It can be said that without live e-commerce, the entire e-commerce industry may have come to a standstill.
Today, the core challenge facing the industry is that the scale of live streaming e-commerce, as the main growth engine, seems to be close to the ceiling.
In the past few years, the platform has relied on a few overhead anchors to drive growth, but now everyone is generally aware that traffic needs to be distributed more evenly for the entire ecosystem to be healthier. Therefore, platforms like Douyin and Taobao are adjusting their algorithms, tilting traffic, and vigorously supporting mid-waist anchors.
The head anchors are also taking the initiative to change, although the methods taken are different, but the core goal is to reduce dependence on personal IP.
This shift is not difficult to understand. There is a great risk of over-reliance on personal IP, and in May this year, two controversial incidents occurred in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room: first, a domestic beauty brand temporarily modified the preferential rules, and then a forced refund after the price problem of the Roborock technology sweeping robot. These two things disappointed consumers and plunged Li Jiaqi into a storm of public opinion.
In fact, the once glorious head anchors are gradually fading out. Brother Xiao Yang and Wei Ya have basically withdrawn from the live broadcast, and Brother Xiao Yang has turned to short dramas and electronic syllables, handing over the account to the apprentice. Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast has decreased significantly, focusing only on participating in pre-sale days and launch days, and the frequency of appearances is much lower than last year.
Luo Yonghao used digital humans to switch to the smaller Baidu e-commerce during this year’s 618, and although his first live broadcast set a new sales record on the Baidu platform, there is still a gap compared with his past debut results on other major platforms. Dong Yuhui still maintains a relatively “Buddhist” attitude, and the live broadcast time in the 618 special preview (June 2-6) is only 2 hours.
On the one hand, the low-key change of the head anchor is affected by the rise of a large number of small and medium-sized anchors and merchant self-broadcasting (store broadcasting), which are rapidly segmenting market share. On the other hand, the more fundamental reason is that the growth of live streaming e-commerce itself has hit a bottleneck. According to iiMedia Consulting statistics, the size of China’s live broadcast e-commerce market is expected to reach 1.9 trillion yuan last year, but the growth rate has plummeted from 600% in 2018 to 15%.
Even during the big promotion, it is difficult for live e-commerce to reproduce the explosive power of the past. Li Jiaqi admitted in an interview in March this year that he values long-term companionship of users rather than pursuing short-term outbreaks like Double 11.
This actually reflects the general trend of the entire live broadcast e-commerce and even the entire e-commerce market: after the end of the high-speed growth period, it is difficult to make big dividends. The growth rate of mainstream e-commerce platforms has generally slowed down in recent years. The endless price war is unsustainable, and the platform has begun to weaken the simple price comparison and emphasize product quality and characteristics.
The fundamental reason is that the market incremental space is limited, online consumption has entered the stage of stock competition, and platforms are mainly competing for share in the existing market.
In fact, since the second half of last year, major platforms have been adjusting their strategies in an attempt to reverse the vicious competition of “low-price involution”. Taotian proposed to “support the good and eliminate the bad”, Pinduoduo plans to invest 100 billion yuan to promote supply-side upgrades, and Douyin e-commerce launched a special project of “Treasure Shop” to support high-quality brand merchants through measures such as good store certification and marking, new store support, etc.
However, to truly establish a new competitive pattern with quality and service as the core, the entire industry still needs to go through a long transformation process.
