Source of this article: Times Weekly Author: Zheng Xutong
There are fewer fancy promotional activities, no more complicated and complicated full-deduction calculations, and less various promotional reports publicity. This year, Double Eleven has changed the usual tense atmosphere. However, under the surface calm, the competition has changed from open guns to secret wars. The competitors of Alibaba are still eyeing each other, hoping to grab the cake at Alibaba's home court in a more direct and effective way.
Last year, the transaction volume of Tmall increased by only 8.45% year-on-year, lower than the 28.58% of JD , and lower than the increase of with a total transaction volume of 12.22%. Alibaba has shown signs of fatigue, becoming the best reason for its competitors to continue to challenge its position this year.
Faced with pressure on transaction volume growth, Alibaba took the initiative to slow down the pace of Double Eleven this year, not working on superficial promotions, but instead emphasized the user's shopping experience, hoping to attract more consumers.
Competitors also followed up on this, and some even went further. For example, Vippines implements the principle of simplifying preferential rules, and consumers can enjoy discounts when purchasing a product; Pinduoduo adopts a direct subsidy policy without pre-sales and no final payments; JD.com claims to adopt simpler and more powerful preferential measures and work hard on service experience.
Although Alibaba plays at home, its competitors also have their own competitive advantages and are further strengthened on Double Eleven this year. Among them, JD.com has the advantage of self-built logistics, and is still expanding; Vipshop emphasizes both online and offline, has two major battlefields, and accumulates advantages in the high-end consumer market; short video platforms such as Kuaishou and Douyin use content to gather traffic, and have recently developed shelf e-commerce or local life service outside the hinterland of interest e-commerce.
Double Eleven has never been calm. After the smoke on the surface dissipates, a more cruel close-fitting fight begins. Facing the fierce attacks of opponents, Alibaba's Double Eleven home defense battle will become extremely difficult.
Source: Tuchuang Creative
Secret Battle with Double Eleven
This year's Double Eleven surface is calm, but in fact it is undercurrent.
The calm atmosphere was first released by Alibaba. On the eve of the launch of the pre-sale of Double Eleven, Alibaba Group , president of the domestic digital business sector, Dishang , said that this year, Tmall will do more to present more warmth, kindness and greenness.
Warmness, kindness and greenness have replaced the previous crazy pursuit of sales data. Behind the changes is the reality that Internet traffic has gradually peaked in recent years and the Double Eleven promotional effect has weakened year by year.
.com Economic and Social Security’s “Dianshubao” e-commerce database shows that the transaction volume of the entire network increased by 12.22% year-on-year in 2021, the lowest growth rate in history. At the same time, the Double Eleven promotional strategies of multiple e-commerce platforms have not achieved good results. Complex rules such as pre-sales, deposits, full discounts, order-sharing, and the setting of late-night rush to buy destroys consumers' shopping experience and arouses consumer dissatisfaction.
Some media reported that last year, a consumer spent more than 2,000 yuan because he did not study the preferential rules in the live broadcast room because he did not "listen to the class well" and ended up spending more than 2,000 yuan.
Against this background, this year's Double Eleven, not only did Alibaba reduce fancy promotions, but Alibaba's competitors are the same, and they even go further than Alibaba in terms of user experience such as discounts, logistics, and product selection.
Times Weekly reporter learned from Vipshop that it started the Double Eleven event at 8 pm on October 31, and consumers can enjoy discounts without having to assemble orders.
Pinduoduo will pre-install the Double Eleven promotion event until October 20, and provide return time on two days after Double Eleven, and the event will last until the evening of November 13. The person in charge of the Pinduoduo promotion project said that this round of promotion does not have pre-sales or no final payments, and consumers do not need to do arithmetic questions, and they can have a simple and affordable shopping experience.
JD also emphasized that this year's Double Eleven will return to the essence of shopping, and it will be opened at 8 pm on October 31. Lin Chen , vice president of JD Group and head of JD Retail Group Platform Business Center, said that JD.com will take simpler and more powerful preferential measures this year, bringing real prices, goods and services.
When there is no superficial fancy promotion and competition turns to services, logistics, product selection, etc., Alibaba's competitors' respective business advantages begin to emerge.
In terms of logistics, Alibaba previously chose to invest in many express delivery companies to strengthen its control, but the express delivery price war over the years has caused damage to the service quality, which has destroyed the user's shopping experience to a certain extent. JD.com, which chose to build its own logistics, has become increasingly prominent in recent years.
Times Weekly reporter learned that this year's Double Eleven, JD.com continued to expand its logistics advantages, and its full-link service investment in increased by 50% year-on-year compared with , and continued to expand the pre-sale scale. After consumers paid the final payment, couriers could perform the "last mile" delivery.
In terms of logistics, Suning.com , which is good at online and offline cooperation, has also made great efforts. Relying on Suning.com's own logistics, it has expanded the scope of integrated delivery and installation services to all prefecture-level cities and more than 90% of county-level cities across the country, and cooperated with Meituan . During Double Eleven, Suning.com's orders are placed on Meituan during the Shelves without delivery fees.
Source: Tuchuang Creative
In addition, the price guarantee measures for Tmall upgrades have been taken further.
This year, Tmall Double Eleven warranty period was extended from the previous "15 days after ordering" to "27 days after ordering". JD.com also announced that it has more than 500 million products to support 30-day-price insurance. A relevant person in charge of Suning.com told the Times Weekly reporter that Suning.com launched products with 30-day insurance, 30-day refunds and 365-day exchanges during Double Eleven. Douyin also actively followed up, changing the price warranty period "15 days after payment" to "15 days after Double Eleven event", that is, the maximum price warranty period is 34 days.
Some e-commerce platforms also hope to win through product differentiation.
For example, the special products promoted by JD during Double Eleven include 300,000 agricultural products, and for imported products, it cooperates with Shenzhen duty-free and Haihui duty-free companies and other companies.
VIPShop focuses on the high-end consumer market this year on Double Eleven. A relevant person in charge of Vipshop told the Times Weekly reporter that users' demand for luxury goods is increasing year by year. Vipshop launched the "Vippen Luxury" column this year, focusing on international luxury goods and international first-tier brands. It also held the "Luxury Day" event on the eve of Double Eleven, and its overall sales increased by 3 times compared with daily life.
The showdown of the e-commerce ecosystem
Faced with the huge Alibaba e-commerce, competitors have also begun to rely on cooperation to maximize their interests.
In the past, short video platforms and traditional e-commerce platforms often had the action of "breaking links". In March this year, Kuaishou cut off Taobao's external links and blocked the live broadcast room and jumped to JD.com. In 2020, Douyin cut off Taobao's external links.
Recently, Kuaishou has resumed external link connections with JD.com and Tmall.
On November 2, a person close to Kuaishou told the Times Weekly reporter that the link restored this time is mainly aimed at the special period of Double Eleven promotion. From October 28 to December 31, Kuaishou Xiaohuangche can use Tmall product links, and from October 28 to November 30, JD self-operated product links can use JD self-operated product links. It has not yet been clarified whether the link will be restored for a long time.
Although the details of the cooperation between Kuaishou and JD.com and Tmall and the sharing model are unknown, it is foreseeable that traffic from Kuaishou will increase the transaction volume of JD.com and Tmall, and Kuaishou will also use this to better deal with the challenges from other opponents during Double Eleven.
Not only that, various platforms are also working hard to create their own shopping festivals outside of Double Eleven to build their own e-commerce ecosystem different from Alibaba.
old brands such as JD.com, whose 618 Shopping Festival has been held for many years, can compete with Double Eleven. In addition to the price discount, logistics delivery on the same day or next day has also been achieved in many places across the country.
Kuaishou's "116 Xinyi Shopping Festival" has been held for 5 sessions. At its home court, it has recently made significant direct subsidies to core products such as big-name digital home appliances, beauty, and fresh food. Before the Double Eleven shopping peak, it diverted some shopping demand.
In addition to the e-commerce shopping festival, Kuaishou has also focused on developing local life in recent years. Within the year, it has upgraded local life to a first-level department parallel to the main website, commercialization, e-commerce, internationalization and other businesses, and recruited local life service providers in many places.
Douyin has the "818 Discover Good Goods Festival". In addition to its already advantageous interest in e-commerce, it has also focused on developing shelf e-commerce recently, and has entered Alibaba's shelf e-commerce hinterland, forming a closed loop for finding people and finding goods.With the efforts of shelf e-commerce, as of the evening of October 27, the exposure of pre-sale products of Douyin e-commerce increased by 447% year-on-year, and the transaction volume after-sales service may grow strongly.
It is not difficult to see that the opponents’ challenges to Alibaba are no longer limited to Double Eleven. For Alibaba, the rise of the new e-commerce ecosystem may be a more threatening challenge and cannot be underestimated.
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