This year’s 618 promotion opened in advance, and the strategies of various e-commerce platforms were differentiated, and the competitive landscape changed. Traditional giants optimize subsidies and strengthen services, content e-commerce actively participates in the war, but the influence of head anchors has weakened, and the overall smell of gunpowder has decreased, or it may become an inflection point in the transformation of the e-commerce industry.
“Mao Geping is gone? That must be gone, Mao Geping will be removed from the shelves in a second. 100,000 sets of Victoria’s Secret pajamas are gone! At eight o’clock in the evening on May 13, the 618 pre-sale officially began, Li Jiaqi took out a gong from under the table, knocked and shouted to all the girls to rush quickly, and also broadcast the results of the live broadcast room in his mouth.
On the first day of Taobao Tmall 618, Li Jiaqi appeared in the live broadcast room from one o’clock in the afternoon, starting the style of “not selling goods but explaining”, warming up for the 618 pre-sale in the evening in advance, while letting the fans in the live broadcast room quickly buy in advance, he also inadvertently revealed that Tmall held a meeting yesterday: “We are Tmall Xiongqi!” Yesterday’s meeting was still very important, and the meeting was still in good condition! ”
Li Jiaqi’s live broadcast room background change
In addition to Li Jiaqi, on the homepage of Taobao live broadcast, head anchors from all walks of life have started 618 pre-sale activities on the afternoon of May 13, from “Make a Friend” to “Bee Surprise Club”, from “Shiitake Mushrooms are Coming” to “Lie’er Baby”, the cover of each live broadcast room is indispensable with the slogan of “500 million deposit red envelopes”.
Pulling the timeline forward, as early as the May Day holiday, many head anchors opened 618 activities: Li Jiaqi opened the first wave of “618 warm-up and additional purchase” on May 2, “Make a Friend” launched the “618 Sample Festival” on May 5, and Chen Jie Kiki opened “618 Spoilers” on May 4……
The live broadcast room is noisy with gongs and drums, but consumers’ perception of this year’s 618 is quite subtle – on social platforms such as Xiaohongshu and Weibo, some people complained about “why did 618 come so quickly”, and some people sighed that “I started 618 before I thought about what to buy”.
This year, 618, which broke into the eyes of consumers in advance with an almost “stealth” attitude, is particularly low-key, but menacing.
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Taobao and Tmall opened the first wave of pre-sales as early as May 13, JD.com launched the 618 gameplay of superimposing state subsidies and takeaway subsidies of 10 billion yuan on the same day, and platforms such as Pinduoduo and Douyin also launched 618 promotions on the same day…… The platforms tacitly extended the front to 35-40 days, but did not choose high-profile publicity.
On the one hand, it is the “basin of cold water” of last year’s 618 promotion. According to Star Map data, although 618 has extended the promotion time in 2024, the total sales of the whole network during the 618 period will be 742.8 billion yuan, a decrease of 7% compared with 618 in 2023, and the first decline in the 16 years since the birth of the 618 promotion.
on the other hand, it is the rationalization of consumption that squeezes the growth space of 618. This year’s 618 is interspersed with a number of festivals, from the “May Day” holiday, Mother’s Day, 520 to the Dragon Boat Festival, promotional activities one after another, and consumers who have experienced 9 years of live e-commerce and 16 years of 618 promotions have also shifted from “stockpiling carnival” to “on-demand price comparison”, and placing orders more rationally and calmly.
After 17 years, the 618 promotion has reached an inflection point, from “platform dispute” to “user daily life”, and various platforms have also begun to think about the different development directions of the promotion – the starting point of the promotion is no longer limited to a specific date, but each platform competes to see who can provide better “people, goods, and fields”, which meets the real needs of different consumers.
01 Cats and dogs fight for the Big Three, instant discounts, takeaway and brands
As the most important consumer battlefield in the middle of the year, this year’s 618 promotion is becoming a watershed in the switching of e-commerce platform competition logic.
Taobao Tmall and JD.com coincidentally chose to “rush”.
Taobao Tmall’s 618 this year kicked off on May 13, seven days earlier than last year, and the overall activity cycle was as long as 39 days, directly setting a record for the longest in history. The first wave of “pre-emptive purchase” was from May 13th to May 26th, of which the pre-sale was from May 13th to May 16th, and the final payment and spot rush purchase began from May 16th to May 26th. However, Taobao and Tmall have not yet announced the gameplay and rhythm of the second wave of promotions from May 26 to June 20.
JD.com, the founder of 618, chose to officially start the 618 promotion on May 31 this year, half a month later than Alibaba. However, JD.com launched a warm-up activity called “Heartbeat Shopping Season” from May 13th to May 28th, which can be regarded as opening 618 early in disguise.
Among them, the most intuitive change in Taobao Tmall 618 this year is to abandon the cross-store full discount rules that have been used for many years, and instead adopt direct reduction gameplay such as “instant discount”, compared with previous years, the threshold of consumption coupons is also lower, and 88VIP has also added three new consumption coupons of 500-50.
Full reduction and instant reduction, the difference between the two is only one word, but the actual difference is not small. Compared with the “instant discount” of direct discount and price reduction, the full reduction is actually the logic of “making up the order”, Tmall President Jia Luo once explained the reason for the full reduction, “When you walk into a small supermarket, this small supermarket only has 100 products, consumers will pay more attention to the discount of a single product; But when you walk into this supermarket, there are already 100,000 products, in order to improve the buying experience for consumers, the supermarket often chooses to provide a shopping basket for unified settlement.”
It can be said that the emergence of full reduction is actually in line with the changes of a consumption era, in the period of consumption upgrading, consumers have many shopping needs, and full discount can provide consumers with more discounts and improve purchase efficiency.
But in recent years, consumer trends have quietly changed.
The rise of Mixue Bingcheng, all kinds of “replacements” are in power, consumers who once pursued consumption upgrades, have begun to downgrade consumption, the cost-effective crowd is gradually large, and the full reduction is gradually different from the consumption habits of consumers, and the immediate reduction is more advantageous – in the face of low-priced goods of 10 yuan and 20 yuan, it is only two or three yuan less than the threshold of 200-30 and 300-50.
Taobao homepage changes and 618 instant discount products
In this case, the instant discount is more attractive than the full discount, and it can also allow consumers of different levels to enjoy discounts.
In contrast, JD.com still maintains the full reduction rule, but for the first time it has integrated resources such as government subsidies and JD.com’s takeaway subsidies of 10 billion yuan, and has also opened a number of theme day activities, directly filling the promotion schedule, striving to attract consumers with different needs.
Taobao, Tmall and JD.com did not put the “lowest price” label this time, and also simplified the process of merchants participating in the promotion. Compared with last year, Taobao Tmall and JD.com have told the story of “price power”, and this year they obviously have different ideas and choose different battlefields.
Taobao Tmall chose to join hands with Xiaohongshu on the eve of this 618, directly opened up the “link” function in the comment area of Xiaohongshu, and directly “moved” consumers into Taobao Tmall with Xiaohongshu’s popular notes, and replenished ammunition for itself with the help of external traffic.
JD.com, which has vigorously deployed takeaway and instant retail business this year, has extended the battlefield outward. On the one hand, it integrates the global traffic outside the station, follows the old tradition and Bilibili to launch the “Jinghuo Plan”, and also opens up the Xiaohongshu direct link function, on the other hand, using new consumption scenarios such as takeaway and flash sales on the homepage of the main station, through the strategy of high-frequency and low-frequency, the takeaway riders have become “traffic porters” – QuestMobile data shows that after the takeaway business is embedded in JD.com’s “second delivery” channel, The average daily usage time of the JD.com APP increased from 18.3 hours on February 11 to 19.9 hours on April 19, and the average number of daily uses also increased from 4.8 times on February 11 to 5.1 times on April 9.
Source: QuestMobile
Pinduoduo, another player in the three members of “Cat and Dog Fight”, chose to dig deeper into the moat of price power while targeting brands and services when opponents were busy building a new battlefield.
Pinduoduo, which also opened 618 on May 13, has not yet appeared on the homepage of 618-related words, only by searching for “618” can you reach the 618 promotion page, the current announced promotion rhythm is similar to previous years, but still does not give up emphasizing the price power of the foundation.
618 has not yet appeared on Pinduoduo’s homepage
However, it is worth noting that although Pinduoduo requires products participating in the promotion to provide “price guarantee” services, some brands do not need to achieve the “lowest price on the whole network” in the Pinduoduo 618 promotion activities, but only need to achieve the same model and price for the same model in the benchmark store. On the eve of 618, Pinduoduo also launched Pinduoduo Station, which supports door-to-door delivery, makes a fuss about the “last mile”, and provides terminal express services.
Compared with the other two, Pinduoduo chooses to use support policies to attract brand merchants that are lacking on the platform, and use services to attract consumers who pay more attention to back-end fulfillment capabilities.
In the early two years, the “cat and dog fight” of rolling prices, merchants and rolling services on the same track tacitly stopped mentioning the “lowest price on the whole network” and found their own way out.
02 Content e-commerce, big promotion to make up for shortcomings
The content platform is also not absent from the 618 promotion in 2025.
Douyin’s 618 also chose to start on May 13 and last until the end of June 18, which is divided into three stages: rush period, charging period and outbreak period, continuing the core gameplay such as “instant discount” and “one piece direct drop”. Kuaishou opened 618 investment registration as early as May 8, although the specific rhythm and gameplay have not yet been announced, but it can be seen from the “520+618 Dual Node Plan” revealed by Kuaishou that Kuaishou’s 618 promotion will not be short.
For Douyin and Kuaishou, this year’s 618 is also an inflection point.
According to Tiger Sniff, the total GMV of Douyin e-commerce in 2024 will be about 3.43 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 35%, and its market share has reached the third place in the industry. However, if you stretch the timeline, you can find that the growth rate of Douyin e-commerce is slowing down, with a year-on-year increase of 320% in May 2022 and an 80% year-on-year increase in May 2023.
Kuaishou, which was once compared to Douyin, is in a more difficult situation. According to Kuaishou’s financial report, in 2024, the annual GMV of Kuaishou e-commerce will be 1.39 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.3%, less than half the scale of Douyin, and the growth rate is getting slower and slower, and in 2022 and 2023, the GMV of Kuaishou e-commerce will be 901.2 billion and 1,184.4 billion yuan respectively, with a growth rate of 32% and 31% respectively.
Consumers who have experienced 9 years of live broadcast e-commerce are “desensitized” to the excitement brought by live streaming, and the voice of the head anchors in the two platforms of Douyin and Kuaishou is also getting smaller.
On Douyin, Brother Xiao Yang fell into a controversy and stopped broadcasting for half a year, although he appeared recently, but it is still unknown whether he can resume broadcasting in 618, and the original head anchors of Douyin such as Dongfang Selection and Make a Friend have also started multi-platform operations; On Kuaishou, Simba’s personal account was last updated in November 2024, and he had no intention of participating in the 618 promotion, and most of his appearances this year were in the live broadcast room of his apprentice Dandan.
Simba and Brother Xiao Yang’s renewal stays in 2024
The absence of head anchors or multi-platform battles has also allowed the two major content e-commerce platforms to explore new paths by relying on the rapid growth of live streaming.
This year’s 618, Douyin chose to use traffic and consumption coupons to support the “good prices” registered on the platform, provide resources for short videos, live broadcast rooms and search channels for popular products, and launch commission-free upgrades for merchants.
On the one hand, it is to promote the development of Douyin shelf e-commerce, and on the other hand, it is to promote the development of store broadcasting – data previously released by Douyin officials shows that from February 2024 to January 2025, among all merchants who earn income through live streaming, store broadcast sales merchants account for nearly 70%. At the same time, Tiger Sniff reported that in 2024, the total proportion of shelf scenes and store broadcasts in the Douyin e-commerce GMV market will exceed 70%, the contribution of head talents will drop to 9% of the market, and the proportion of small and medium-sized talents will rise to 21%. Shelf e-commerce and store broadcasting are becoming new additions to Douyin.
Source: Tiger Sniff
Kuaishou’s “make-up class” is even more difficult, although the promotion cycle has become longer, but the absence of the head anchor Simba obviously makes this promotion less a powerful weapon. Even if Simba’s apprentice Dandan announced early that he would start the first battle of 618 on May 16, it is still unknown whether users can pay for it.
Xiaohongshu, which will change the concept of “buyer e-commerce” into the concept of “lifestyle e-commerce” in 2024, will also actively participate in this 618 promotion.
Although the specific time rhythm and gameplay have not yet been announced, at the beginning of this year, Xiaohongshu first launched the function of linking on the national comment area, and then opened up a direct chain with Taobao, Tmall and JD.com on the eve of 618, obviously wanting to further realize the “closed loop of transactions” in the platform, while supplementing the “goods” in the platform, and taking advantage of the momentum to fight this big promotion battle.
As a rising star, the video account also did not announce the specific time rhythm and gameplay, but the movement has been not small.
First, on the eve of 618, the “good store” logo was launched to provide more public domain traffic for stores with the “good store” logo, and then it released a hot brand attraction incentive activity that matched the rhythm of 618, providing users with WeChat orders of no more than 3 orders with a total amount of 20-10 in the same order. Dongfang Selection, which operates on multiple platforms, also quietly started broadcasting on the video account.
Dongfang Selection started a number of live broadcasts on the video account
Moving forward in time, WeChat’s vigorous development of “pushers” this year may also join this 618 promotion, using methods similar to Taobao customers to activate WeChat’s private domain traffic, and further open up WeChat video accounts and other components.
Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu and Channels collectively participated in the war, but so far, this year’s 618 has neither a noisy battle report of gongs and drums, nor a cry from the head anchor. When the content traffic dividend peaks, GMV growth must be efficient from the shelf, profit from the supply chain, and repurchase from the private domain.
03 618, no gunpowder
In 2008, JD.com launched the 618 mid-year promotion for the first time, using 618 to prove the lethality of the “price butcher”.
At that time, 618 was just an event launched by Liu Qiangdong to celebrate the company’s mid-year results. But after that, 618, like Double 11, gradually changed from a celebration day of an e-commerce platform to a battlefield of many e-commerce platforms, from a promotion festival to a “business Olympics” with the participation of the whole people, becoming an inescapable topic for Chinese e-commerce platforms, and also witnessing the golden age of China’s e-commerce.
Liu Qiangdong in his early years
The early 618 promotion was full of gunpowder.
The price war is the weapon of the e-commerce platform, GMV is the medal, and even the merchant will face the situation of choosing one of the two, the anchor in the live broadcast room beats gongs and drums to publicize the momentum, and consumers stay up late to make Excel sheets, and compare which platform is more cost-effective and cost-effective according to the calculator…… Various platforms continue to experiment with their own strategies in 618, launch various gameplay, and sample for Double 11 in the second half of the year.
Until 618 in 2019, Pinduoduo broke into the battlefield with “10 billion subsidies”, and then normalized the “10 billion subsidies”, the rhythm of “618 every day”, and more and more big promotions on e-commerce platforms, so that low prices became a daily standard, and the aura of promotional festivals began to fall, and 618 also changed from price wars and traffic wars to deeper wrestling between platforms.
This year’s 618, Taobao and Tmall use instant discounts, wanting to improve user decision-making efficiency and conform to the current consumption environment; JD.com relies on takeaway subsidies and instant retail to verify the value of high-frequency scenarios; Douyin has developed shelf e-commerce to further tap the value of traffic…… The strategy seems to be scattered, but in fact it points to the same proposition: when low prices become standard and traffic dividends peak, e-commerce platforms also begin to find their way to the next stop in different ways.
The change in platform strategy also reflects the changes in the industry.
In 2003, Taobao’s first order was a sword
Since last year, various e-commerce platforms have gradually returned to merchants and focused on their core business.
In 2024, Taobao will first optimize the five-star price power system, and in July it will take the lead in announcing the relaxation of the “refund only” policy, and launch the “return treasure” service to reduce merchants’ operating costs for after-sales scenarios, and Tmall will also “free annual fees” in September 2024 for merchants who achieve the annual target of operating turnover from January to August 2024. JD.com and Pinduoduo will also launch support policies for merchants in 2024, and Pinduoduo, as a representative of low-priced e-commerce, also established a “Merchant Rights Protection Committee” in January this year…… When growth slows down, retaining the supply side may be more urgent than competing for consumer traffic.
This 17-year promotion may be becoming an inflection point in the e-commerce industry.
When e-commerce platforms are no longer obsessed with creating a “shopping festival myth”, no longer use the numbers on the battle report to prove the success of the promotion, but bow their heads to tinker with logistics, polish services, and study the needs of consumers and merchants, it may mean that competition is gradually returning to its essence, and who can meet the more certain needs of consumers can win in the stock market.
