This year’s 618, instant retail has become a new highlight. Platforms such as Meituan, JD.com, and Taobao meet the needs of consumers “at this moment” through spokesperson marketing and supply chain optimization, promote the transformation of retail from “price involution” to “efficiency revolution”, and reshape consumption scenarios and experiences.
What is more lively than the 618 promotion is the “red, yellow and blue” homophonic stalk spokesperson war.
Meituan took the lead in joining hands with Huang Lingmo to change “Night Shanghai”, and the Shanghainese divine comedy “Takeaway Huang’s Gengling” was brainwashed online, and the high-profile entry of “Meituan Flash Sale” ignited this big promotion battlefield. Immediately afterwards, Ele.me quickly signed Blue Win Win within 48 hours, and continued to push the duel to a climax with “Blue must win”; Subsequently, JD.com also listened to the persuasion and announced that Hui Yinghong would become its spokesperson, #京东真的找了惠英红 immediately rushed to the hot search, and “red will win” aggravated the smell of gunpowder in the instant retail battlefield.
This year’s big promotion has changed – “hoarding mentality” gives way to “now”.
According to growth black box data monitoring, since May 13, Meituan, JD.com, and Taobao have launched an offensive in instant retail. Through content cluster analysis, Meituan focuses on spokespersons, preferential strength, etc., JD.com pays more attention to rider rights protection, corporate image and other topic points, while Taobao focuses on free order drainage, user experience and other dimensions.
In the past few years, the “historically low price” and “breaking through the bottom price” have been exchanged for exhausting price comparisons, complex rules, and even “psychological trauma” for consumers… As Meituan CEO Wang Xing said in the earnings call: “The ‘involution’ competition of low quality and low price is unsustainable in the long run. ”
When the price war of “unlimited involution” comes to an end, we can’t help but ask: in addition to being cheaper, what new expectations can the big promotion give us?
The answer may be hidden in the “red, yellow and blue” – instant retail is tearing open the packaging of traditional promotions with thunderous momentum. This time, the giants are no longer just fighting for “how much to save”, but “how fast it is” and “how smooth the experience is”. And how can this change of still water reshape the 618 that you and I are familiar with?
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In this 618 special research report, we will uncover three core puzzles for you:
- Moutai delivered in 30 minutes, mobile phones… Is it a gimmick or the new normal?
- Supply chain, performance efficiency, service… Which board determines success or failure?
- Instant retail and big promotions, are they mutually successful or two-way subversion?
01 Instant retail reconstruction 618 from “price involution” to “efficiency revolution”
After many years of maturity of e-commerce, consumers have a new money-saving strategy – put the things they want to buy in the shopping cart for one night, and if they want to place another order the next day. Factors such as the pre-sale mechanism and waiting logistics have further eroded consumer patience.
At the same time, Liang Changlin, CEO of Dingdong Grocery Shopping, once said: No one can refuse 30 minutes of certainty.
thereforeThe rise of instant retail is essentially the result of the evolution of consumer demand.It not only conforms to the emotional proposition of “I want what I get”, but also meets its deterministic consumption needs. 1.1 Instant satisfaction rewrites the 618 consumption decision-making chain
The high-profile “participation in the war” of instant retail marks that the traditional 618’s “pre-sale-waiting-price comparison” model is being rewritten, from “low-price temptation” to “instant availability”.
We can clearly see this change in the data on the user side:
Young people are the main force of instant retail consumption.
- More than 50% of post-95s want to receive their goods on the day of purchase. [1]
- Shoppers aged 30+ accounted for 55% of the overall instant retail consumer group, an increase of 5% compared to 2023. [2]
Image source: Kantar Kantar O2O Instant Retail White Paper 2024
- This year, the first cycle of “618” new customers has increased significantly, of which “post-95s” account for nearly 60%. [3]
- Although the penetration rate of instant retail among people under 25 is only 13%, the new product attempt rate among this demographic is 1.3 times the industry average. [2]
The sinking market has become an important driver of instant retail growth.
- During this year’s 618 period, small and medium-sized cities such as Liaocheng and Populus euphratica won the top 5 growth rates in Meituan’s flash sale turnover. Consumers in sinking markets also have a strong demand for immediacy for goods, and instant retail can provide a more convenient shopping experience in these areas, making up for the relatively insufficient offline business resources. [2]
- Senior middle class and exquisite mothers constitute the core consumer force, contributing 22% and 21% of the market share respectively. These household decision-makers are upgrading instant retail from an emergency procurement channel to a daily supply hub for households, driving steady growth in customer unit prices for three consecutive years. [2]
Image source: Kantar Kantar O2O Instant Retail White Paper 2024
Based on the further deepening of the consumption habits and user needs of customers of all ages and consumption levels, instant retail occupies more and more scenes and a larger proportion of daily consumption, so that this promotion has found new incremental space outside the traditional model.
1.2 Supply chain and fulfillment efficiency have become a new battlefield
What remains unchanged is retail, what has changed is efficiency.
In this platform from “subsidy war” to “minute-level performance” competition, the three major camps of JD.com, Taobao Flash Sale, and Meituan Flash Sale all take “hourly delivery” and “minute delivery” as their core selling points, promoting the evolution of 618 from a “promotion festival” to a “retail efficiency testing ground”.
There are two pain points of traditional e-commerce promotions:First, consumers need to go through a long full-cycle process such as pre-sale, logistics distribution, return and exchange, and are hesitant in terms of time cost; Second, the complex full reduction rules and hoarding mechanism lead to an increase in the psychological decision-making burden of users, and the “spot” + “half-hour delivery” provided by instant retail in the promotion environment can directly solve the above two problems.
However, due to the different resources of each platform, their respective angles and ways of entering instant retail are also different.
From the front end to the back end, whether it is order processing efficiency, warehousing and sorting efficiency, distribution timeliness, etc., it is being comprehensively upgraded, which also changes the business logic of traditional promotions: from the past “pressure distribution” to the future “regional agile supply”, it has become a topic under this new cycle.
1.3 Near-field retail reshapes the 618 consumption scenario
Quantitative change drives qualitative change.
When the highly developed manufacturing industry and the business environment of excessive involution promote product homogenization, after the high-intensity “involution competition”, today’s supply and demand relationship has tended to “oversupply”. In fact, since the past few years, the consumer industry has been talking about the marketing form from “people looking for goods” to “goods looking for people”.
In this year’s promotion, the performance of super head anchors such as Li Jiaqi is not eye-catching. According to the statistics of Qingyan Intelligence, as of 1:30 a.m. on May 14, the GMV of beauty on the first day of pre-sale in Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room reached 25-3.5 billion yuan, while the data in 2024 and 2023 were 2.675 billion yuan and 4.977 billion yuan respectively. At the same time, a total of 385 beauty products were put on the shelves in the live broadcast room on the first day, covering 145 beauty brands, compared with 371 products and 141 brands last year, the unit price of customers has decreased.
Due to the absolute advantage of price, consumers’ enthusiasm for big promotions has been greatly reduced, and they are no longer squatting in the live broadcast room to grab goods as before. On the contrary, many people are not aware of the beginning of this year’s promotion, and even the voice on social platforms is very low.
However, instant retail does not completely replace traditional e-commerce, but complements it. For the big promotion, consumers are instantly stimulated by demand in the life scene through “takeaway shopping”, which will blur the previously relatively separated online and offline fields, but integrate the three fields of online flagship stores, takeaway flash sales, and offline stores into a “big retail” consumption scenario.
In addition, for brand merchants, in addition to traditional store operations and online operations, new instant retail channels will reshape their creative paths and traffic distribution.
As Alibaba revealed in the fourth quarter and full-year financial report results meeting of fiscal year 2025, Taobao Flash Sale, as Alibaba’s layout in instant retail, will deepen the integration of far-field and near-field e-commerce in the future, and open up the pallet and price system of Tmall’s official flagship store and “flash sale” through linkage with brand city warehouses and offline stores, providing underlying support for omni-channel retail.
02 618 Feeding back instant retail from “scene experiment” to “ecological upgrade”
The Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce predicts that by 2030, our country’s instant retail market will exceed 2 trillion yuan, which can be comparable to the annual transaction volume of a leading e-commerce platform. [4]
Since 2015, e-commerce platforms have successively launched innovative retail formats such as cross-regional commodity supply networks, local life service brands and next-day delivery business models.
Nowadays, instant retail has evolved 618 from a “promotion festival” to a “full-cycle retail efficiency testing ground”, a surprise attack launched by timeliness, pushing Chinese retail into the hard-core era of “calculating user experience by the minute and second”.
2.1 Promote market education for instant retail with 618
From the perspective of the consumer mind, the medium role of instant retail platforms is crucial.
According to the research data of GroupM think tank Shanhaijin, instant retail has become a platform for users to compare prices and choose the best, and will help increase the share of brands in the minds of consumers, and provide consumers with the opportunity to gain an in-depth understanding of products and brands in high-frequency daily consumption. [5]
At the same time, the dual advantages of convenience and experience make consumers more willing to make quick transactions through this channel, and the role of instant retail platforms is becoming more and more important in the process of improving repurchases, deepening connections, social interaction, conveying trust, and arousing interest.
Data source: WPP Mountains and Seas Today
2.2 Rely on 618 to expand the format of instant retail
GroupM think tank Shanhaijin’s survey of consumers’ use of instant retail to purchase categories found that the vigorous development of instant retail is inseparable from the profound changes in consumer life scenarios. [5]
In addition to traditional catering takeaway, fresh food, medical health, flowers and other fields, the penetration rate of instant retail in many emerging scenarios is rising, quickly covering digital home appliances, maternal and baby products, beauty, pets, shoes and clothing and other non-meal businesses, truly opening up a new retail pattern of all categories of takeaway business.
Data source: WPP Mountains and Seas Today
According to the 618 first-cycle consumption data insights released by Meituan Flash Sale, from May 28 to June 1, the turnover of more than 800 brands and retailers in categories such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Decathlon, Little Genius, Lego, Wumart Supermarket, Crooked Horse Delivery Wine, 3C home appliances, sporting goods, beauty and skin care, maternal and infant milk powder, children’s toys, supermarkets and other categories doubled.
Less than a month after Taobao Flash Sale was launched on May 2, non-tea orders accounted for 75%. Taobao continued to launch the “Milk Tea Free Order” activity, cultivating user habits with 100 million cups of milk tea free orders, and introducing Taobao’s 1 billion users into the instant retail scene.
What’s even more interesting is that even clothing, a category that doesn’t seem to need timeliness, has also achieved results through flash sales.During the 618 period, the average unit price of clothing brands on Taobao exceeded 400 yuan.
Clothing brands such as VERO MODA, ONLY, JACK & JONES have seen a record increase of more than 200% in Taobao flash sales orders compared to daily sales.
Overall, takeaway has completely broken through the conventional categories of food, beverages, and medicines, and more and more daily consumption has shifted from “planning” to “immediacy”.
03 Write at the end
The collision between instant retail and 618 is essentially a two-way adaptation of consumer demand and supply efficiency: consumers are forced to rebuild the fulfillment network “at this moment”, and the minute-level delivery capability further releases instant consumption scenarios.
In the future retail battlefield, the outcome will depend on whether the enterprise can provide the fastest and most accurate response at the moment when users “want it at the moment”. There is no way out in this minute-level war, and its end will redefine the efficiency boundaries and experience ceilings of Chinese retail.
But behind the carnival, platforms and merchants need to understand that instant retail is a scene revolution, not an all-round subversion”, which can efficiently cover standardized and high-frequency needs, but it still needs to find a mature transformation path in the field of complex SKUs and perceptual decision-making.
Resources:
[1] Accenture, “Focusing on China’s Post-95 Consumer Group”
[2] Kantar Kantar “2024 Kantar O2O Instant Retail White Paper”
[3] Meituan flash sale data
[4] Instant Retail Industry Development Report (2024) by the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce
[5] Qunyi think tank Shan Hai Jin
