This year’s 618 promotion, e-commerce platforms are no longer obsessed with “price wars”, but turn to ecological competition and comprehensive strength competition. From optimizing the promotion mechanism to expanding allies and empowering merchants, after the smoke of gunpowder dissipated, each platform actively deployed ecological warfare and found a new path for the long-term development of the e-commerce industry, and this 618 has become an important “test paper” for the strategic transformation of the platform.
The 618 war of e-commerce has come to an end.
Since May 13, platforms such as Tmall, JD.com, and Douyin have launched the 618 promotion, nearly a week earlier than last year, setting a record for the longest in history.
In addition, there have been many adjustments to the promotional gameplay of major e-commerce platforms this year: Taobao has canceled the cross-store full discount, and instead bought one can also be discounted immediately, with discounts of up to 50%; JD.com superimposed the dual engine of “state subsidy + takeaway 10 billion subsidy” on the basis of the original promotional discounts; Douyin also emphasizes “one piece of direct drop” and invests in 100 million cash subsidies and 100 billion traffic resources.
The platforms no longer shouted “the lowest price on the whole network”, and the smell of gunpowder “faded” a lot. As low prices have become the norm and big promotions have become the norm, platforms are no longer limited to fighting for low prices, but have turned to all-round supply chain optimization, user experience improvement, platform ecological co-construction and other comprehensive strength competitions.
However, compared with the price war of open guns and cannons, the competition of comprehensive strength is more of a test of the platform’s internal strength, from fighting alone to combining vertical and horizontal, the ending of the breakthrough battle in the second half of e-commerce may be hidden in the layout of the ecological war.
01 618 promotion does not fight a “price war”
Although this year’s 618 promotion came earlier and became simpler, many consumers ridiculed: “In previous years, staying up late was a full reduction, but this year I can finally lie flat, but I can’t think of anything else to buy.” ”
After all, just after the Spring Festival, festivals such as the 38th Festival and the Qingming Festival have appeared one after another, and in May alone, there are May Day Golden Week, Mother’s Day, 520 and other festivals, and promotional activities are one after another, and consumers’ shopping enthusiasm is inevitably consumed.
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Many consumers said that this year’s 618 is almost the cheapest one, but there are not many that can be bought. At the moment when the promotion is normalized, many consumers have long lost the habit of stocking up at low prices, and would rather buy again if necessary, after all, the price gap is not big.
Consumers’ “insensitivity” has also been transformed into “anxiety” in the e-commerce industry. During the “618” period last year, the cumulative sales of integrated e-commerce platforms and live broadcast platforms were 742.8 billion yuan, down nearly 7% year-on-year, which was the first negative growth since the birth of “618”.
In addition to the reason for the “shrinkage” of consumers’ wallets, the deterioration of the shopping experience during the promotion is also one of the influencing factors, and during the 618 period last year, major platforms still couldn’t let go of the price war. But before the big promotion ended, some merchants complained that the return rate of this promotion was as high as more than 80%, and women’s clothing became the hardest hit area.
On the one hand, the “extremely low price” has diluted the profits of merchants, and some merchants will inevitably make a balance in terms of quality, service, logistics, etc., and the product quality does not meet expectations, and consumers can only choose to return; On the other hand, under the preferential mechanism of full reduction, consumers may “buy first and then return” by making up orders, coupled with the “refund only” policy, which also amplifies the business risks of merchants.
Therefore, after last year’s 618 promotion, platforms such as Taotian, JD.com, and Douyin have adjusted their search weight and traffic distribution, weakened the absolute low price strategy, and returned to the GMV priority strategy; In addition, major platforms have also begun to loosen the “refund only” and put the healthy development of the e-commerce ecosystem back to the first priority.
It can be seen that e-commerce platforms are beginning to realize the “cost” brought about by absolutely low prices, which will affect every link of the e-commerce ecosystem: the platform’s GMV and profit margins are affected; Merchant business has also been hit; After consumers shop at low prices, they do not get a better consumer experience.
After a series of adjustments by the platforms, the sales situation of “Double 11” last year began to reverse, and the cumulative sales of comprehensive e-commerce platforms and live broadcast e-commerce platforms were 1,441.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.6%, which is a lot higher than that of 2022 and 2023.
Behind this is the comprehensive governance of the e-commerce ecosystem by e-commerce platforms based on user experience considerations since the second half of last year. For example, major platforms announced the relaxation of “refund only”, which is essentially a “support for the good and the bad” for the merchant ecosystem; Taobao and JD.com have upgraded the rights and interests of VIP users to stimulate consumers’ desire to buy by improving the after-sales service experience.
This trend also continues to this year’s 618 promotion, Taotian, Douyin, Vipshop and other platforms have launched a “one-piece instant discount” promotion mechanism, which also announces the fact that “low price” has become the standard configuration of the industry, and the platform does not want to carry out “price involution”, so that the e-commerce ecology can return to a virtuous circle is the primary goal.
On the one hand, increase traffic support and support high-quality merchants. For example, Taotian advocates AI-driven business growth, and Alibaba’s mother will invest 3 billion red envelope subsidies; JD.com launched the “Pilot Plan” to issue hundreds of millions of advertising incentives to stimulate the marketing potential of merchants; Douyin announced that it will invest in 100 million traffic support, providing priority exposure and exclusive display positions at the core traffic entrance.
On the other hand, optimize the user experience to meet the needs of users in all scenarios. For example, Taotian has launched the “lowest price verification mechanism” to prevent merchants from rising first and then falling, further strengthening price trust; Pinduoduo has launched Pinduoduo Station, which supports door-to-door delivery and optimizes the terminal delivery experience.
Therefore, although this “618” does not seem to have “gunpowder”, the platforms are not “no longer rolled”, but “rolled” to the depths, by further integrating the platform-merchant-supply chain ecology, to improve the overall operational efficiency, so as to dig deep into the increments that have not yet been released.
02 From “platform competition” to “ecological competition”
In this way, the competition of this “618” is actually more intense than every previous session, and the platforms need to improve their business capabilities from more dimensions, and in order to become a “hexagonal warrior”, the platforms invariably choose to expand their allies.
On the eve of 618 this year, Taotian and Xiaohongshu reached a strategic cooperation, announcing the joint creation of the “Red Cat Plan”, adding an “advertising link” function under Xiaohongshu notes, and users can directly jump from Xiaohongshu to Taobao Tmall App for shopping.
Coincidentally, JD.com also chose to extend the battlefield, and it cooperated with Bilibili to launch the “Jinghuo Plan” early, draining traffic to JD.com through Bilibili’s grass planting video and achieving transformation. In addition, following Taotian, JD.com also cooperated with Xiaohongshu to launch the “Hongjing Plan”.
In February this year, Pinduoduo also announced the launch of the dual-platform live broadcast model of Douyin merchants, vigorously recruiting Douyin live broadcast merchants to enter Duoduo live broadcast, further making up for the platform’s shortcomings in the field of live broadcast e-commerce.
It can be seen from the “two-way rush” between Internet platforms that the e-commerce industry is moving towards the “era of cooperation”, and the game between e-commerce platforms is changing from “competition” to “competition”.
In the past, the e-commerce industry has gone through several stages of “shelf e-commerce-live broadcast e-commerce-content planting”, taking the “super-headed” Li Jiaqi as an example, who is the iconic figure who has eaten the industry dividends from the process of shelf e-commerce cross-border live broadcast e-commerce.
Since then, more potential emerging anchors and content creators have appeared on content platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili. They may not have the “lowest price on the whole network”, but they can win the trust and loyalty of users with professional content and accurate recommendations in the subdivision.
Behind this is the process of consumer attention becoming more and more “fragmented”. Studies have proved that 5-7 times of advertising reach under traditional media can trigger consumers’ purchase decisions, but now it takes more than ten times to generate a consumption decision.
Therefore, it is becoming more and more difficult to stimulate consumers by relying only on the immediate influence of a live broadcast, especially in terms of product information, brand awareness, and usage scenarios, the explanation time of about 10 minutes for each single product is far from meeting the needs of consumers.
This is also the reason for the rise of this year’s “content planting” model, which can mass-produce more interesting, more professional and more scenario-based high-quality content, helping merchants further open up differentiated display methods and strengthen transaction conversion.
In addition, compared with the “flood irrigation” flow mechanism, merchants will invest traffic in more vertical and segmented content, which will more accurately reach the target consumer group and further reduce the trial and error cost of merchants.
It can be seen that “content planting” has become a new growth logic in the new e-commerce era, which not only changes the decision-making path of consumers, but also reshapes the interaction mode between brands and users, and is more in line with the demands of merchants to achieve precision marketing.
However, it is worth noting that compared with the crazy struggle between shelf e-commerce and content e-commerce in the early years, platforms now have unanimously chosen to reduce conflicts and participate in traffic distribution in a symbiotic and win-win way for the new traffic distribution model.
On the one hand, as the e-commerce industry enters the stage of stock competition, the bottomless involution between platforms cannot create new volume, but makes the cake bigger together, so that more profits can be distributed in each link.
On the other hand, in order to tap the increment in the stock market, the platform should also shift from traffic competition to efficiency competition, and enable merchants and consumers to establish more efficient connections through more accurate and efficient marketing methods.
In fact, “wall demolition” has long become the keyword of the e-commerce industry in recent years, in addition to opening up the content field and shelf field, the barriers of the platform in the sharing channel and payment channel have also been gradually “removed”, thus bringing new traffic and data.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Research Report mentioned that platform interconnection is expected to bring 20%-30% of incremental users to Taobao, with a total scale of 200 million to 300 million. Wu Jia, president of Taotian User Platform Division, also said that after accessing WeChat Pay, the frequency and user scale of young users on Taobao and users in the sinking market are growing rapidly.
In the already very mature domestic e-commerce market, whoever has a more open ecology and more efficient collaboration will be able to seize the commanding heights of the next round of growth, and it is foreseeable that the siphon effect of Internet giants such as Taotian and JD.com will be further strengthened.
03 Merchant operations have become a new battlefield, and the smell of gunpowder has faded but the ability requirements are higher
It can be seen that the future e-commerce competition will no longer be a simple GMV competition, but a competition of platform ecological capabilities, including resource integration capabilities and marketing conversion efficiency, with the ultimate goal of serving merchants and customers to gain a more lasting competitive advantage in the long-term battle of the e-commerce industry.
This has also become a new contest for this 618 promotion. clarify the grass planting link, so that merchants can invest in a targeted manner; introduce AI technology to improve the operating efficiency of merchants; Increasing traffic support and allowing high-quality merchants to be seen has become the main means for platforms to serve high-quality merchants.
Taotian and JD.com have formed a traffic alliance, which can not only introduce external traffic to supplement the platform with ammunition, but also further clarify the grass planting link, so that merchants can formulate marketing plans based on more refined data feedback.
Content platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou are also trying to make up for their shortcomings. In recent years, Douyin has begun to increase its support for small and medium-sized businesses, tilting traffic to high-quality short videos and brand store broadcasts. In addition, this year, 618 Douyin also provides merchants with global promotion and AI support through a huge number of thousand rivers.
Douyin has increased its support for store broadcasting, essentially hoping to further give full play to the ability of short video grass planting, and more comprehensively display the merchant environment, product explanations and other content through store broadcasting, so that small and medium-sized businesses can complete operations such as pulling up repurchases and private domain drainage.
After launching the Keling AI generation model, Kuaishou has further penetrated AI technology into the whole business link, helping merchants complete one-click operations from script writing to video generation, and reducing merchants’ time and labor costs in editing short videos.
It is worth mentioning that the platform can also achieve service revenue growth while empowering merchants. Taking Taotian as an example, according to Alibaba’s fourth quarter and full year results of fiscal year 2025, customer management revenue increased by 12% year-on-year in the fourth quarter, and the number of 88VIP members exceeded 50 million, achieving double-digit year-on-year growth.
In the business world, change is an eternal subject. In the past year, e-commerce platforms have continuously adjusted their strategic direction, essentially constantly adjusting the weights so that all links in the internal ecology can achieve balance to meet longer-term development.
But now it seems that platforms are no longer satisfied with the “slow variables” of deep cultivation of shelf farms, content fields and data capabilities, and are trying to find resonance in the vertical and horizontal integration to achieve resource integration and complementary advantages of the e-commerce ecosystem.
Jumping out of the traditional thinking of e-commerce, platforms are re-examining the development logic of the e-commerce industry, from “crazy involution” to “competition and wisdom”, platforms can only achieve business growth by maintaining the foundation of ecological prosperity
This 618 promotion is not only the first “test paper” of the strategic transformation of e-commerce platforms, but also a long-term test of their business efficiency.
