[11.11] Why is this year so exceptional?
Record broken this year again! The Double 11 holidays still live up to its reputation. With a new amount reached of 38.4 bn USD of GMV in 24h on Tmall, the 11-years old celebration really seems to can’t get old. Generally speaking, the major Chinese e-commerce platforms records a growth of 23.7% year on year. An even more exceptional figure considering the global context. But what makes this year festival different from previous years? What are the main trends?
The rise of live-streaming,
the consecration of influencers
For anyone who followed digital marketing this year, live-streaming on e-commerce platforms is the trend to be aware of in 2019. Yet, it’s even more relevant with this week’s Double 11 Festival.
For brands, the celebration was the perfect occasion to improve their content distribution strategy by focusing on the consumer journey through celebrity endorsements or influencers live streaming encouraged/facilitated by the platforms.
Brands recorded an increase of more than 50% in GMV thanks to live-streaming this year. An improvement that can be easily explained by the increasing popularity encountered this year of the live-stream and KOLs. In a context of Chinese consumer’s raising standards and in search for more reliable product, the endorsement by a person of trust, i.e. an influencer, become the best way to promote a product on e-commerce platforms.
For example, one of Wei Ya’s broadcast during the festival reached 42 million viewers at 2am in the middle of the night and led to almost 330 millions RMB of sales. What were you doing at 2 am on the 11th November? Wei Ya is also famous for partnering with the celebrity Kim Kardashian in order to promote her latest fragrance KKW—all 15,000 bottles were sold out in less than a minute. Indeed, this year Double 11 saw an increasing use of foreign KOLs or China-based foreign KOLs to endorse products, especially on Tmall Global.
The Quest for Consumer Insights...
through customer engagement and loyalty
Let’s face it: with rising standards and slowing economy, it is even more difficult for brands to understand their consumers and find the best ways to reach them. Their decision- making process is increasingly "disorderly" and brands have to pay more attention on how to reach them. The Double 11 Festival appeared to be the right occasion for that. More than ever, big data will be the leading fore to determine what consumers engagement is.
What about consumer’s loyalty? The goal is to engage with consumers on every steps of their journey in order to drive loyalty. For example, Taobao Cat Store Game actively engaged with consumers and their friends on social media. By opening your own Cat Store on Alipay, you could fulfill a specific task list which would send you to several product pages or you can team up with your friends to buy together. It is both an entertaining way to consume and a clever way to understand what interest your consumers the most. Furthermore, the new offerings on Tmall 88 VIP and JD PLUS showed how e-commerce are counting more and more on consumer retention instead of purely acquiring new consumers. For example, JD PLUS expanded its PLUS benefit to new platforms, like Ctrip, in order to promote their loyalty program.
But how good is 11.11.2019
compared to other years?
As usual, along with amaze and success comes interrogations and criticism. And the Double 11 Holidays are no different. With such growth, such record, e-commerce platforms are the true winners. But what about the brands?
This year, Tmall extended the period of discount to the beginning of November until 11.11, probably in an attempt to compete with its main rival JD.com who is doing the same for a couple of years now. A huge opportunity for the platforms, but an increasing difficulty for the brands.
Can they afford themselves to have such huge discount on even longer periods of times on multiple occasions throughout the years: Double 11 in November, 619 in June, Chinese New Year in February, National Week in October, Mid-Autumn Festival in September... How fast can the brand keep up with such trends? Some of them are even considering selling old products on such occasions instead of launching new produts and focusing their sales on the remaining days of the year.
On the consumer side, interrogations on the environmental aspects are rising: what good is there in such festival with so much packages transiting though the country? For a couple of years, China has been gradually taking the lead on green energies and sustainability. How does Double 11 Festival fits in it? In order to answer such concerns, Alibaba promoted this year a "greener" Double 11: November 20 is now the day to recycle trashes and packages for Cainiao, and Alibaba Clouds developed new ways to reduce the electric consumption of its data servers by 200,000 kWh. With a peak of 544,000 transactions for every second, it is clearly an exceptional technological achievement for Alibaba, but one that could also raises concerns on its ecological impact.
Key Takeaways
Exceptional record of 38.4 bn USD of GMV in 24h on Tmall only, due to an increasing use of KOLs live-streaming.
Amid more complex global context, consumption is changing in China. Brands and Chinese e-commerce platforms seize the opportunity of Double 11 to better understand it through more entertaining ways to reach consumers, loyalty program and new products.
Will Double 11 be able to maintain its growth next year? Brands start to show some difficulties to follow e-commerce platform on their « sales holidays », and consumers show concerns on the ecological impact of such sales.
Ok, that's it for this year's [11.11] !
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