The 16th Double 11 is quietly approaching its end.
This is a year that has made many consumers feel that the "Double 11 flavor has faded": the frenzy of various platforms competing for the "lowest price in the entire network" has receded in this year's Double 11, and the "verbal battle" between sales anchors for traffic and price mechanism has rarely appeared during the big promotion period. Even the Tianmao Double 11 Gala has been suspended this year.
On the other hand, many businesses are becoming increasingly nervous during major promotions. With the overall pace of Double 11 advancing to October 14th, some businesses and brands have been preparing for the tactics, strategies, and focus of this "longest Double 11 in history" since before the National Day holiday. After the tide of the "price war" recedes, businesses need to consider more questions.
How to find a new balance between low prices, sales volume, and profits? How to view the competition and investment of existing users? In this Double 11, one trend is that there are more different answers.
The Battle between Low Price and Profit
Is the 'price war' still going on this year's Singles' Day?
Zhang Zhiyu, CMO of Baozun E-commerce, told First Financial reporters that one change in this year's Singles' Day is price control, and brands will pay more attention to balancing gross profit and discount strength. She observed that many brands need to control their gross profit and reduce their discount efforts, regardless of whether they rise or fall. As e-commerce consumption enters the existing market, more brands are paying attention to "high-quality GMV". They pursue effective growth, profitability, and sustainable GMV, and look at the growth of new customers, rather than existing low-priced customers switching platforms to purchase; To look at net sales revenue, remove the "high return rate" and reflect the true cost and profit GMV; We also place more emphasis on the sales balance and development of platforms, distributors, and all channels during the Double 11 period, rather than short-term outbreaks.
Under such a goal shift, Zhang Zhiyu mentioned that compared to previous years, most brands will be relatively conservative and rational in their stocking for this year's Double 11 shopping festival, while paying attention to the differentiated adjustment of stocking pace following platform resources and category characteristics. Baozun E-commerce is responsible for the operation services of many brands. This year's Double 11, a clear feeling is the demand for "faster and more refined" operations. They need to actively promote brand inventory mobilization and refine the pricing mechanism. Every day, they need to focus on the dimensions of key products, pay attention to the depth of purchase and sell out rate, as well as competitors, adjust in a timely manner, and synchronize through multiple channels.
At the same time, brands have become more cautious in their calculations between low prices, sales volume, and profits. During Double 11, Zhang Zhiyu told reporters that one of her clients had repeatedly calculated the price mechanism due to tight sales. Is it better to give membership coupons? Is it better to give individual product coupons? What does it sell as soon as it's released? What can control profits? Until midnight, the client was still saying, "Wait for me a little longer, wait for me a little longer, our finance department hasn't given me an answer yet
The influencer live streaming room has become a hot spot in this year's Double 11 "price war". Vice President Cui Dongsheng revealed to reporters that compared to last year's Double 11, the subsidy amount for making friends in the live streaming room has increased by 15 times. "All the money should be paid into the Alipay account in the form of cash and then sent to consumers," he stressed.
There is not much difference between top anchors, and they all rely on a good shopping experience during each transaction to accumulate user trust. If you don't post once, everyone will clearly perceive that what you are selling is more expensive than others. "Cui Dongsheng said that with the development of live streaming sales, top anchors can all get products and mechanisms that are not much different. In this situation, who is willing to earn less and who is willing to give up more profit has become crucial.
While the front-end is engaged in a price war, Cui Dongsheng stated that brand value has become a more important moat. In the case where everyone provides corresponding subsidies, whoever has a higher conversion rate and efficiency will actually have better final returns. The barrier is the model of making friends on the backend without relying on IP and refined operation.
This year, we can also feel that the entire Taobao platform is releasing more profit income to strive for a larger market size and position. Cui Dongsheng believes that this sense of urgency to "protect territory" and compete for incremental space has actually become stronger among platforms. The novelty of Singles' Day among consumers has passed, and new models and methods have consumed little. Competition has entered a fierce battle, and platforms facing higher commercial demands can only defend each other's territory with real money. "If we carefully calculate the subsidy intensity of each product, I think this year may be the highest in history
How is the Double 11 situation?
Entering the midfield, the states of Double 11 players are gradually diverging.
A relatively high priced original clothing brand owner told reporters that after entering Double 11 in mid October, her store's order volume increased from 2-3 daily orders to 10-20 orders. However, this popularity persisted until the first two days of the second stage of Double 11, during which the feeling of Double 11 disappeared again.
Recently, there hasn't been much increase in daily sales compared to last year. The last day of Double 11 (sales) will definitely be better, but the goods that need to be prepared are also ready, and it's not expected to be better than last year. "A porcelain industry merchant is no longer busy with Double 11. He observed that as Double 11 approaches its end, couriers are coming to pick up packages earlier and earlier, indicating that the overall sales of businesses in this area are continuing to cool down.
The Double 11 craze in the home appliance industry is still ongoing. The operator of a leading home appliance brand told reporters that although the extension of the promotion front may result in most users' demand being concentrated in the first wave, the national subsidy policy for home appliances will not end until the end of the year. Due to the subsidy policy being funded by various municipal governments, there is a need for continuous backend switching to handle tasks such as product listing and delisting, traffic guidance, customer service, design, supply chain integration, and communication with platform staff. In the past two days, his workload has remained very heavy. According to Star Map data, as of October 30th, household appliances ranked first with sales of 132.4 billion yuan, accounting for 15.7% of the market share.
In addition, he stated that although brands did not dynamically adjust prices during the Double 11 shopping festival, they can use platform resources to indirectly lower prices, such as billions of subsidies, Taobao flash sales, Juhuasuan, 88VIP and other coupon amounts at different venues, so that some consumers who are proficient in shopping platforms can achieve "shearing sheep hair". How to make more use of platform resources has also become one of the tasks for many brand operations during this Double 11 shopping festival.
Zhang Zhiyu mentioned that this year's Double 11 is no longer called Double 11 within the Baozun, but rather Double 11 month. Throughout the month, the Baozun is experiencing a tense rhythm and exciting changes. With the more flexible pace of the big promotion, during the Double 11 period, brands from various reception rooms of Baozun will come to discuss from time to time. In terms of inventory, mechanism, activity registration, store atmosphere, media adjustment, broadcast follow-up, and supply side preparation, brands and services need to follow up faster.
During the entire Double 11 period, Zhang Zhiyu's working hours noticeably increased. She often arrived at the company at 8 o'clock to attend meetings, meet with clients, coordinate with the platform, and complete various tasks... At 12 o'clock in the evening, she also set an alarm to check the sales targets for the day. Even towards the end, this state of work continues.
Behind the busy and idle state of different merchants and brands, some industry insiders analyzed to reporters that the traffic siphon effect of big promotions is becoming more obvious, with most traffic flowing to brands, top anchor live rooms, etc. The significance of big promotions for some merchants is declining.
Looking back at Singles' Day as a whole, the upcoming November 11th will become the biggest suspense of this year's Singles' Day.
According to star chart data, as of October 30th, the cumulative sales revenue of the entire network during the 2024 Double 11 shopping festival reached 845 billion yuan. Previously, Star Map data showed that the total online sales revenue for Double 11 in 2023 was 1.1386 trillion yuan. This means that, without considering the extension of the Double 11 event period, before the start of the second wave of Double 11 activities (10.31-11.11), this year's Double 11 achieved nearly 74% of last year's sales.
Previously, Zhang Zhiyu told reporters that due to the longer lead time of this year's Double 11, Baozun E-commerce is expected to achieve 70% of sales in the first wave of the sales cycle.
One background is that over the years, during Singles' Day, the peak sales of merchants often concentrate on pre-sales, early stages of events, and Singles' Day. According to the data monitored by Star Map Data in 2023, the total sales revenue of comprehensive e-commerce platforms on Double 11 (November 10 20:00 to November 11 24:00) was 277.7 billion yuan, accounting for 30.1% of the total sales revenue of comprehensive e-commerce platforms throughout the Double 11 cycle that year.
The State Post Bureau recently announced that on October 22, the entire industry received 729 million express packages, a year-on-year increase of 74%, setting a new record for daily business volume. The previous highest daily business volume occurred on November 11, 2021, with approximately 690 million items. In 2023, during Double 11, the peak in the volume of collected express delivery orders also occurred on November 11.
On November 11th this year, will merchants continue the previous peak of Double 11 sales, or will they find that consumers' wallet share has already been consumed? With this year's major promotion cycle advancing and extending by nearly ten days, whether we can win the final battle of Double 11 is related to the overall trend of Double 11 sales and also tests the rhythm control of merchants towards the increasingly extended major promotion cycle.