The 618 shopping festival began in May, and the Double 11 festival began in October, both having long become the most entrenched consumer mindset under the influence of shopping festival culture.

This year, the "Double 11" shopping festivals of Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo all started on October 14, whereas previously, the start of the Double 11 activities on various platforms was mostly around October 24. Continuing the rhythm of 618, this year's Double 11 cycle has broken records to become the longest in history.

At this point in time, on one hand, the volume of shopping festivals is not as loud as before. According to a McKinsey survey, consumer expectations for their own consumption growth in 2024 are relatively cautious, with an expected growth rate of 2.2% to 2.4%. The information and emotions of different consumer groups have diverged, making the current consumption expectations and category structures more complex.

Taking the 618 data as a reference, iResearch Consulting statistics show that from 2022 to 2024, the growth rate of the total network sales during 618 is gradually decreasing, and the pressure on traditional comprehensive e-commerce is more apparent.

Advertisement

On the other hand, the tension between platforms has not diminished. In addition to the aforementioned platforms, Douyin, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, and others have all chosen to move the start time to mid-October, and there have been some plans to align and benchmark services in a "close-quarters combat" manner. Tmall first announced some of its battle results, with multiple beauty brands breaking the 100 million yuan sales mark within 10 minutes of the start of sales on the evening of the 14th.

Even earlier, Pinduoduo upgraded its original "buy expensive must compensate" service to a "buy expensive double compensation" service on the eve of Double 11. In comparison, JD.com, which has also proposed a "buy expensive double compensation" service, launched it at the beginning of 2023.

Double 11 is a comprehensive test of the e-commerce industry's progress throughout the year. Let's briefly review the current state of the industry. After experiencing a collective emphasis on low prices, platforms have shifted their strategic focus to combining their own characteristics. The primary goal for shelf e-commerce like Tmall is currently to balance GMV with CMR and regain their own rhythm. The growth of Douyin e-commerce has slowed down this year, and short video forces will face more questioning about the peak of traffic.

The battlefield between shelf and content e-commerce is becoming more intertwined, with the former thirsting for traffic and the latter also moving towards a full range of categories and branding after the gradual cooling of inventory demand. It is precisely against this backdrop that this year's Double 11 may be a window to observe the future plans of platforms, and we will first focus on the traditional e-commerce that initiated and shaped the shopping festival.

01. The price competition moves into deep water

The signature of the shopping festival is always cost-effectiveness. Although many platforms have successively stated that they no longer "pursue absolute low prices," they still value it strategically and make tactical adjustments.JD.com can be considered a representative of the more aggressive faction. Starting in 2023, JD.com's promotional direction shifted to "returning to low-price mindset," and now, when there is a trend of retreat on various platforms, JD.com has chosen to increase its efforts. Looking at performance, JD.com Retail's second-quarter revenue increased by 1.5% year-on-year, and the group's net profit increased by 69% year-on-year, which provides some paper-based confidence for adhering to low prices.

From the perspective of platform positioning, JD.com's advantage categories, such as 3C and home appliances, are standardized products with recognized performance indicators and widespread market recognition, making price comparisons more direct and consumers more sensitive to price differences. This may be the reason why it is going all out when the most important shopping festival of the year is approaching.

At the press conference on October 14, CEO Xu Ran stated that in the current fierce market competition, there is still a phenomenon of vicious internal competition and bad money driving out good money. JD.com's low prices want users to truly feel "cheap and good," not "buy cheap, use expensive." At the venue, internet memes with pointed meanings such as "sweet potato powder" and "ask yourself if your salary has increased before shopping" were mentioned. On the other hand, JD.com's increased efforts are to increase the category of goods with subsidies, especially in clothing and beauty categories.

JD.com's saturated attack carries the pressure of balancing the profits of merchants and the rights of self-operated/POP platforms, but a side that needs attention is that improving supply chain capabilities through technology and cost optimization to form structural price competitiveness is likely to become the focus of the new era.

Based on this perspective, Taobao Tian is more cautious in this round of price competition. After the 618 event this year, Taobao Tian announced at a closed-door meeting to revert to allocating search weights according to GMV and no longer strongly promote the "five-star price strength" system.

Taobao Tian, especially Taobao, is characterized by a rich variety of non-standard products such as clothing, which are difficult to effectively compare prices. There are too many factors affecting consumer decisions, and the sensitivity of consumers to prices is uncertain. Therefore, it is difficult for consumers to form an overall low-price perception of comprehensive e-commerce platforms, which affects the effectiveness of hard price competition. In Alibaba's fiscal year 2025 Q1, China's commercial retail revenue decreased by 2% year-on-year.

A week before the Double 11 event, Taobao launched a section called "Tao Selection," which is built into the Taobao App in the form of a self-operated store. The presentation and target mindset of Tao Selection are similar to Tao Factory, that is, the platform takes the lead and provides exclusive traffic windows for cost-effective goods, and both are operated by Hangzhou Today's Market Supply Chain Management Co., Ltd. The advantage of official operation and platform endorsement is that the service is relatively more guaranteed, including damaged returns, instant refunds, etc., moving towards cost-effective consumption.

This Double 11, Taobao Tian still released a low-price marketing signal of "in addition to discounts and immediate discounts, an additional investment of 30 billion consumer coupons and red packets." However, the "overall low-price perception" mentioned earlier may depend on long-term businesses such as Bai Bu, 88VIP, and Tao Selection to build, and the "concentrated explosion" effect that the shopping festival can achieve still needs to be observed.

According to data published by Taobao Tian, this year's transaction scale and the number of cooperative merchants of Taobao Bai Bu have both increased by multiples, and 88VIP, which was polished in the second half of the year, is also maintaining double-digit growth. At the same time, the competition in price competitiveness under refined operation has become a tacit understanding among e-commerce companies. JD.com's Jingxi self-operated and 9.9 yuan postage channels, "factory goods Bai Bu" are expanding categories, and Pinduoduo's billion yuan reduction for merchants is trying to reduce the cost of merchants' operations.

The price war has not retreated, but has penetrated more into the details of daily operations.02, How to Mobilize Tired Participants

By the year 2024, the biggest challenge of the shopping festival might be how to excite everyone. After all, in recent years' public opinion, the shopping festival is always associated with the keyword "fatigue". Merchants are tired of frequent concessions, and consumers are tired of complex rules or "Schrödinger's benefits".

Earlier, during the 618 festival, many platforms canceled pre-sales to streamline the process. This Double 11, Tao Tian retained the pre-sale link, and the platform's explanation is that pre-sales can meet market demand and create value for merchants. "Many merchants think pre-sales are very important for business. Pre-sales can bring incremental opportunities, and consumers also accept their pre-sales."

The pre-sale link of the big promotion, after weighing the pros and cons, is usually more beneficial to merchants. Merchants can collect sales information in advance through pre-sales, better solve stock and inventory problems, and recover part of the funds in advance. At the same time, pre-sales themselves are a marketing strategy that can increase product exposure. However, for consumers, the delayed shopping experience brought by the pre-sale cycle of tens to dozens of days often dilutes the pleasure brought by limited discounts.

The Double 11 merchant recruitment conference held earlier has announced that merchants participating in the Taobao billion subsidy during the event period will receive a 100% return of Tmall commission. At the same time, the platform newly released a fully managed product "Billion Star Gathering", which is an uncertain growth tool open to all merchants for registration. In the previous cycle where efforts were concentrated on low prices, merchants may be the most pressured party. Entering a relatively cautious cycle, the pressure-relieving operations have correspondingly increased.

Tao Tian launched a "refund only" service last December, which is clearly beneficial to consumers and has become an industry standard. The service was optimized in July this year, including enhancing the merchants' after-sales autonomy by referring to evaluation scores, optimizing the merchants' appeal process, etc. In addition, in early September, Taobao announced support for WeChat payment functions and gradually opened them to all sellers. JD Logistics also announced before Double 11 that it would connect to Taobao, providing more logistics options for merchants.

The platform's active burden reduction and pressure relief for merchants is beneficial to the balance of the e-commerce triangle relationship. Tmall President Jialuo said at a media communication meeting that during this year's National Day holiday, the offline sales of many large international platforms were not good, but the growth on the line and Tmall was very good; coupled with changes in consumption characteristics and the introduction of government subsidies, this year's Double 11 bears more expectations from the platform and merchants.

However, in the upcoming super long promotion cycle, consumer perception will determine whether these promises and expectations can be realized. As for Tao Tian, including pre-sales, the rhythm of this Double 11 event is not much different from before, and consumers' psychological expectations for the shopping festival are basically the same as in previous years. A major change is the simplification of the calculation rules for red envelopes and consumer coupons, and the actual price of the product is directly displayed on the product page that consumers browse for easy comparison.

Another factor worth noting is that this Double 11 will be the first Double 11 after Alibaba's young team took over. In December last year, Tao Tian Group underwent a comprehensive management adjustment, and six young managers were appointed to key business departments such as Taobao, Tmall, and M2C, reporting directly to Tao Tian Chairman and CEO Wu Yongming.

As the first answer sheet handed over after the young and strong "took power", the performance of Double 11 may directly affect the strategic rhythm of Tao Tian thereafter.03, Written at the End

At present, shopping festivals, especially the Double 11 event, have long been a topic that has been thoroughly discussed. All efforts tend to avoid turning it into a zero-sum game between platforms, merchants, and consumers, where traffic can only be driven by a seesaw effect.

An interesting perspective to observe is that alongside the rise of shopping festivals like Double 11, the "shopping festival strategy" has also emerged and become a prominent field of study. Its contributing factors include a trend towards rationality in overall consumer sentiment, the expanding influence of content platforms, increasingly complex platform rules, and the ultimate impact of a partial loss of interpretive power over Double 11. Not only during the "special time nodes" of major promotions, but also corresponding to this phenomenon is the content anxiety that has been plaguing traditional shelf e-commerce in recent years.

E-commerce does not want shopping festivals to evolve into a consumer spectacle where consumers come merely to pursue a sense of participation in the festive event. The importance of "guidance" is visibly on the rise. After all, in an era of extreme material abundance, merely providing options is not enough; it is also necessary to help users make choices.