The annual Double 11 shopping festival has come to an end. According to data from various sources, the peak search volume for this year’s Double 11 decreased by 60% compared to the same period last year. On Weibo’s trending topics list, the average duration of Double 11-related topics has also dropped from nearly 8 hours in 2019 to less than 3 hours this year.
In addition, this year’s Double 11 is a year of “invisible” e-commerce transaction amounts. Both JD.com and Tmall, the two major traditional e-commerce platforms, only released data such as order quantity, user scale, brand, and merchant transaction amounts, abandoning the frenzy after midnight seen in previous years.
There are even rumors circulating online that this year’s Double 11 witnessed a significant decline in e-commerce transaction amounts, with the total transaction volume on major platforms experiencing a “halving” compared to previous years. Data from the third-party organization “Xingtu Data” indicates that this year’s comprehensive e-commerce sales during Double 11 reached 923.5 billion yuan, marking a consecutive two-year decline.
As a result, this year’s Double 11 has been dubbed the most dismal one yet. So, what is the actual situation?
According to interviews with several e-commerce platforms by a reporter from The Paper, despite intense competition this year, transaction amounts did not experience a significant decline and even showed year-on-year growth.
“This year is the first Double 11 after the pandemic, and it’s also a good start for us,” confessed a top executive from one of the top three e-commerce platforms, revealing that the performance of many e-commerce companies was good this year. Some companies even held victory banquets internally to celebrate. “Compared to last year, the overall consumption environment is warming up, and there is still confidence in the future consumption outlook.”
Double 11 turns cold? Multiple institutions claim e-commerce market has not declined
Despite downplaying Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV), the results of this year’s Double 11 do not seem “cold” according to the report cards from various platforms.
Taobao Group stated that this year, both order quantity and total transaction amount experienced comprehensive growth, with cumulative visits exceeding 800 million, reaching a historical peak. The user base for 88VIP surpassed 32 million, hitting a new high, and the transaction volume of 88VIP saw a double-digit percentage increase year-on-year.
JD.com reported that as of 11:59 PM on November 11th, transaction volume, order quantity, and user numbers reached new highs. The total viewership of JD’s live broadcasts surpassed 380 million. Currently, more than 60 brands have sales exceeding 1 billion yuan, and the transaction volume of nearly 20,000 brands has tripled year-on-year.
According to insiders from these two platforms, both Taobao and JD.com experienced a year-on-year increase in transaction volume this year. “For JD.com, the addition of live broadcasts this year provided incremental volume, and overall consumption has somewhat recovered compared to last year,” disclosed an insider from JD.com.
A top live broadcast figure also revealed that this year was the first time their company participated in JD’s Double 11, and the overall sales reached about two-thirds of Taobao’s live broadcast, indicating strong growth potential in the future.
Multiple research reports from various institutions also indicate an optimistic performance for this year’s Double 11. According to a research report from CITIC Securities, combining sales data from various companies and express delivery data from the State Post Bureau, it is estimated that the year-on-year growth rate of the e-commerce market during Double 11 will be between 7% and 9%, with comprehensive e-commerce growing by 4-5% year-on-year. CITIC Securities predicts that Pinduoduo will grow by over 20% year-on-year, and JD.com and Tmall will grow by low single digits and low double digits, respectively, while content e-commerce platforms will grow by 30% or more.
Goldman Sachs released a research report stating that the number of packages during Double 11 increased by 23% to 24%, and the overall GMV of the industry is expected to achieve mid-to-high single-digit growth. Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo are predicted to have Double 11 GMV growth rates of 1%, 3%, and 20%, respectively, maintaining optimism for the e-commerce industry in the future.
E-commerce landscape changes: “New players” challenge Alibaba and JD.com
It is noteworthy that traditional e-commerce platforms are facing new challengers.
During this year’s Double 11, new players such as Douyin (TikTok) and Kuaishou are rapidly rising, sharing the traffic that was once dominated by traditional giants like Alibaba and JD.com.
The performance of Douyin e-commerce is particularly eye-catching. According to data disclosed by Douyin, during this year’s Double 11, the cumulative live broadcast duration in Douyin e-commerce reached 58.27 million hours, short videos added to the shopping cart were played 169.7 billion times, and the GMV of Douyin Mall grew by 119% year-on-year.
In May of this year, the president of Douyin e-commerce, Wei Wenwen, revealed in an interview that Douyin e-commerce’s transaction volume had increased by over 80% in the past year. Among them, the GMV of the mall increased by 277% year-on-year, e-commerce search GMV increased by 159% year-on-year, and shelf scene GMV accounted for more than 30% of platform GMV.
A source within Douyin revealed that after just over two years since its establishment, the platform’s merchandise transaction volume surpassed trillions of yuan, achieving the same result that JD.com took 14 years, Alibaba took 9 years, and Pinduoduo took 4 years.
“This year, Douyin’s overall transaction volume is expected to reach a scale of 2 trillion yuan, while the overall scale of Taobao is in the range of 8 trillion to 9 trillion yuan,” another insider from Douyin told The Paper. “Although the growth is rapid, there is still a certain gap in scale between the two. Rather than saying it is benchmarking Taobao, it is more appropriate to say it is benchmarking Taobao Live.”
The silent battle between Douyin and Taobao has been ongoing for some time, with many Douyin-incubated internet celebrities, including those like “Meeting Friends,” “Eastern Selection,” and Liu Xuanhong, moving to the Taobao platform.
Shirt seller “Lao Luo” on Douyin told The Paper that the distribution mechanism of Douyin e-commerce is based on data, including factors such as the duration of stay, swiping time, playback volume, comment count, and collection count. This decentralized system can only be explored for its mechanism and cannot artificially interfere with video playback volume. This is different from Taobao’s more “centralized” business logic, which has led to many influencers being poached by Taobao.
In addition to Douyin, another live-streaming e-commerce platform, Kuaishou, is also growing rapidly. Data shows that during this year’s Double 11, the number of products sold on Kuaishou increased by more than 50%, and the order quantity increased by nearly 50%. The GMV of small and medium-sized businesses increased by over 75% year-on-year. “The logic of Douyin and Kuaishou is different. Douyin emphasizes public domain traffic, while Kuaishou emphasizes repurchase rates. Therefore, Douyin’s explosiveness is better, and Kuaishou’s repurchase rate is higher,” revealed an insider from Kuaishou to the reporter.
Data from Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) shows that during this year’s Double 11, the number of e-commerce orders on Xiaohongshu was 3.8 times that of the same period last year, the number of participating merchants was 4.1 times that of the same period last year, and the GMV of live broadcast rooms was 4.2 times that of the same period last year.
Bilibili stated that during this year’s Double 11, the GMV of merchandise sales increased by 251% year-on-year. The atmosphere of consumption and transactions in the community is also becoming more intense, with the number of Bilibili shopping videos increasing by 233% year-on-year during the big promotion period, and the number of shopping live broadcasts increasing by 105% year-on-year.
Platforms actively “interlocking,” consumers becoming more rational
However, while the platforms are fiercely competing with each other, the “festive” or “carnival” feeling for both merchants and consumers seems to be diminishing. From a certain perspective, the perception of “quietness” may stem from this.
“Now the Double 11 battlefield has been stretched very long, and the rhythm and timing of each platform are different; we are all already numb to it,” said a shoe seller named “Wenjie.” In his view, the increasingly intense price wars between platforms ultimately result in the “wool coming out of the sheep,” with most of the costs borne by the merchants themselves.
According to third-party data, during this year’s Double 11, only half of the products achieved the lowest price of the year. Many consumers complained about “discounts and full reductions being too troublesome,” “too many routines, too lazy to calculate,” and “needing to stay in live broadcast rooms, and also pay deposits and final payments in batches, too troublesome,” revealing fatigue from the diverse shopping discount designs.
“This is the tenth year of Double 11, and the shopping festival is becoming more routine, and consumers are becoming more rational,” said Pan Helin, joint director and researcher at the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center of the International Joint Business School of Zhejiang University. He believes that the e-commerce market has entered a red ocean stage, and the competition between e-commerce platforms for users has entered a stock competition. To improve performance in the future, e-commerce platforms need to motivate the purchasing contributions of individual consumers or expand to the global market to provide increments through international market development.
“At present, it is difficult to judge whether the statement of ‘quietness’ is accurate because each platform has not disclosed specific sales data,” Pan said. He believes that, from the perspective of consumer perception, it is indeed possible to feel “aesthetic fatigue” from the year-to-year shopping festivals. However, judging from the battle reports released by e-commerce platforms, the enthusiasm of each platform participating in Double 11 remains high in the short term, indicating that the competition for traffic in the e-commerce industry will still be very intense.