Double 11 is approaching, and the platform is eager to try.
From the perspective of the industry, the e-commerce industry has entered a more standardized and mature development period from the early savage growth. At the same time, the logical change from the pursuit of scale to the pursuit of sustainable development has also brought more challenges to the industry. In this context, Double 11 is still an important sales node throughout the year, attracting the attention of platforms, merchants and consumers.
Recently, major e-commerce platforms have started to prepare for the war. Tmall, JD.com, Kuaishou and other platforms have introduced preferential policies for merchants. Coming to the sixteenth year of Double 11, what has changed now?
The battle line is elongated
According to data from QuestMobile, during the Double 11 period in 2023, the average number of daily active users in the mobile shopping app industry will be about 700 million, and the average daily average usage time will be about 38.9 minutes, an increase of about 8.4% compared with 35.9 minutes in the same period in 2022. At the same time, on November 1, the conversion effect of platform payment is also improving, and the conversion ratio of Taobao, mobile Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo payment has reached 45.0%, 41.9%, 34.9%, and 29.7% respectively.
Judging from the data, Double 11 can still bring incremental opportunities to the industry. In recent days, JD.com, Tmall, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Douyin and other platforms have successively held the 2024 Double 11 Merchant Conference.
Judging from the plans announced by major platforms, this year's Double 11 battle has kicked off, and the battle line has become longer. According to the calculation of the time announced on different platforms, this year's Double 11 may reach 26-34 days, while the 2023 Double 11 will only be 22-24 days. This means that this year can be called the longest Double 11 in history.
According to the media, the pre-sale of Tmall Double 11 will start on October 14, a full 10 days earlier than last year; JD.com's 11.11 will enter the pre-purchase stage at 8 p.m. on October 17, a week earlier than last year; Pinduoduo's Double 11 event started at 0:00 on October 14, a week earlier than last year; Douyin's Double 11 First Enjoy Good Things Festival will start on October 8, seamlessly connecting with the National Day holiday; Kuaishou Double 11 will enter the warm-up period on October 16, and start the first purchase of good things; Xiaohongshu 11.11 starts on October 12.
Zhuang Shuai, a special researcher at the E-commerce Research Center of the Network Economic Society and the founder of Bailian Consulting, believes that for merchants, the preparation time is shortened, and the preparation requirements for big promotions are higher. Of course, for mature merchants who have participated in multiple e-commerce promotions, they can take this opportunity to improve their work efficiency and seize the opportunity. For consumers, they can have more time to buy more and more goods, and buy more affordable and suitable products for themselves.
Supporting businesses
During last year's Double 11, various platforms offered "low price" killers, trying to seize consumers' minds with slogans such as "the lowest price on the whole network" and "really cheap". If last year's double 11 "low price" was the core competitiveness, then this year's double 11 price is still very important, but obviously no longer so core, platforms have set their sights on attracting merchants and increasing support for merchants.
Judging from the information released so far, this year's Double 11, major platforms have launched a series of discounts to help merchants reduce costs and increase efficiency and attract customer flow.
For example, Taotian Double 11 will spend tens of billions of yuan to support merchants to achieve business growth through "tens of billions of investment" such as consumption vouchers, red envelopes, and traffic, and at the same time help merchants effectively reduce their operating costs through "tens of billions of reductions" such as return treasures, fast payment collections, and commission returns.
In terms of JD.com, this year's Double 11 will continue to bring 100 billion new traffic to merchants through "10 billion subsidies for factory goods", 1 billion live broadcast subsidies, and 100 million advertising rewards. At the same time, JD also provides merchants with free experience of JD digital people for 15 days, JD insurance service return and exchange protection and other rights and interests.
Pinduoduo, in addition to the "10 billion subsidy", came up with a "10 billion reduction", announced that it will support new quality businesses through business subsidies and reduce operating costs, including promotion service fees, technical service fees, deposits, etc.
During the Double 11 period, Kuaishou e-commerce will provide 20 billion traffic subsidies and 2 billion user red envelopes, as well as 1 billion commodity subsidy dividends, to help merchants and talent partners achieve global collaboration and global growth.
If you look at the strategies of various platforms together, you will find that e-commerce platforms are trying to help merchants solve the problems they face in the industry through strategies such as subsidies, drainage, and cost reduction, and increase their support.
Zhuang Shuai analyzed that due to oversupply and the intensification of price and service competition on major e-commerce platforms, the relationship between supply and zero was tight, and there was more and more serious vicious competition. In order to alleviate the relationship between supply and zero, and rebuild the benign competition mechanism of merchants on the platform, major e-commerce platforms have launched merchant support policies and differentiated measures to form a pattern of mutual promotion and development.
Chen Hudong, a special researcher at the E-commerce Research Center of the Network Economic Society, said that merchants have always been the focus of e-commerce platforms, and with the rise of many live broadcast formats, the protection of consumer rights and interests is becoming more and more important, and the platform and merchants will only cooperate more and more cautiously. After all, there were a lot of violations of consumer rights and interests some time ago, so it is impossible for merchants and platforms to be immune from this big promotion. Therefore, the so-called emphasis on merchants, preferential policies or attention to the business environment is still related to some current events in the retail market.
Connectivity
In addition to the above changes, one of the highlights of this year's 11.11 is that on the eve of 11.11, all major platforms have accelerated the pace of connectivity.
On September 12, Taobao announced that it had officially added WeChat Pay capabilities and gradually opened it to all sellers. From September 27, consumers can use WeChat Pay when shopping on Taobao to buy and buy.
In addition, it is also reported that JD.com will also officially access Alipay payment, which is expected to be launched on the eve of Double 11.
In addition to the interoperability of payment, there is also news that Taobao Tmall will be officially connected to JD Logistics, which is expected to be launched in mid-October. At the same time, JD.com will also access Cainiao Express and Cainiao Post Station to share services such as delivery entrances and parcel storage.
It's worth noting that the interconnection between the giants is not new. Previously, many enterprises have gradually broken the barriers erected at the beginning of the Internet, and their attitude towards interconnection and openness has become more and more positive. In a sense, the interconnection of giants creates a more active experience for consumers to use the platform.
"The openness of the ecology depends on the consumption status of consumers, and if the consumption situation changes, the platform will become friends, so this also reflects some problems from the consumer market side, that is, through cooperation, how to give full play to their respective advantages and jointly serve consumers, which is the most important thing. Sticking to the city is obviously not suitable for the consumer market under the current situation. Chen Hudong said.
In Zhuang Shuai's view, large factories are already in the stage of competition in the stock market, and they all have their own needs for new growth and improving profitability. Resist the competition of foreign investment in the retail industry after the opening up at home, and participate in global competition abroad.
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