CBN Friday Special丨What’s new in 2022 Double 11: Simple rule

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Hello! Welcome to this edition of CBN Friday Special. I’m Stephanie Li.

Today is November 11. And today is arguably the biggest annual shopping festival in China, even in the world, though pre-sales actually kicked off three weeks ago.

Evolving from a small promotional shopping period in China back in 2009, double 11 has become an international shopping bonanza for hundreds of thousands of retailers, eclipsing its closest rival, Black Friday.

Entering its 14th year, the annual sales feels a bit different than last year’s eye-catching green strategies from Tmall and dynamic brand debuts in the metaverse: this year a more quiet shopping festival has emerged, a good time to rethink the role of the year's top shopping festival. 

For the first time, Alibaba’s Tmall shortened the promotion period by slightly delaying the presales start date to October 24 from 2021’s October 20, followed by two sales periods: October 31 to November 3, and November 10 to 11.

Record-smashing gross merchandise volume (GMV) used to be the symbol of past Double 11 shopping festivals. Last year, Alibaba reported a GMV of 540.3 billion yuan ($84.54 billion), and JD.com reported a GMV of 349.1 billion yuan ($54.6 billion). However, 2021’s GMV posted its slowest growth ever, and this year's “618” on JD.com flatlined too, while Alibaba didn’t even disclose the GMV of the June shopping festival.

A latest survey by consultants at Bain & Co found that almost 34% of the 3,000 consumers surveyed said they will decrease their Double 11 spending, nearly four times the 9% who said they would reduce spending last year. 

With sales failing to impress, brands are trying to use the shopping extravaganza to reach and lock in customers in the long-run by offering lucrative loyalty programs. What makes this year’s double 11 stands out, among all the other new trends, is that brands and platforms go from chasing high GMV to increasing customer loyalty.

Both retailers and brands have learned the importance of loyal customers, particularly in major shopping events like Double 11. According to Alibaba, there are 42 brands on Tmall with over 10 million members and 600 brands with over 1 million members. In many cases, these loyal members contributed 40% of GMV. Alibaba is also providing exclusive offers for its own 88VIP loyalty program members. As of June 2022, the annual spending average of over 2 million members has reached 57,000 yuan ($7,858).

According to Bain & Co’s survey, during an uncertain year for many retailers globally, struggling with supply-chain logjams and inflation in raw material prices, a successful double 11 can make a big difference to their bottom line. “Some online retailers are banking on rich content and community interaction to provide that sticky and distinctive consumer pull,” Bain & Co noted.

A membership club offers repeat customers incentives for loyalty all-year-round instead of a one-off sugar rush. But it doesn’t mean discounts are losing their charm, because frugality is a fashionable theme currently in Chinese mainstream culture, and brands that offer high value-for-money will continue to do well.

AlixPartners’ 2022 annual survey tracking the double 11 shopping festival has found that nearly 60% of consumers are looking to increase spending this year, and younger consumers are more likely to increase their spending. 

During the first hour of this year's presale period, more than 3,000 brands doubled their GMV compared to last year, according to Alibaba. The turnover for 102 brands surpassed 100 million yuan in the first hour of its promotional campaign. It added live-streaming viewers rose 600% from last year in the first hour of its promotion. JD also announced that sales for 253 homegrown cosmetics and skincare brands grew more than 100% year-on-year. 

This year’s early data has been encouraging, and seems to suggest many people still believe that discounts and promotions are the best way to drive up e-commerce sales, at the least given the current complex economic condition. 

Meanwhile, Alibaba is investing in service and logistics. The company has extended its lowest-price guarantee from the previous 15 days to 27 days, offering free shipping for returns, and launched a new feature that allows shoppers to place one order with the ability to ship to multiple addresses.

More importantly, this year, instead of forcing exhausted and frustrated online shoppers to do maths with increasingly complicated rules and spending long hours trying to decipher the discount prerequisites and coupons offered by different merchants, many platforms have simply lowered the bars. Both Tmall and JD.com have simplified their double 11 promotions, preferring to focus on a more straightforward “spend 300 yuan, get 50 off” on Tmall or “spend 299 yuan, get 50 off” on JD.

However, its still way too early to assume that this year’s sales is without tricks or “taolu”. The term “refund” soon became a top trending topic on China’s biggest microblogging platform, Weibo, because shoppers have expressed regret over putting down deposits for things they don’t really need. Per Taobao’s refund rules, vendors required these shoppers to pay the total amount for their impulse purchases before they could claim a refund. 

Furthermore, some vendors changed order status to "in progress" as soon as they were paid, allowing no delay for shoppers to request an immediate refund.

Meanwhile, several eagle-eyed customers have caught multiple brands changing their prices daily, making it impossible to know if their presale deals were really worth the splurge. 

Another notable trend this year, or rather an ongoing theme, is that the competition between live-streaming platforms continues to heat up and becomes more like a dogfight.

This year, live-streaming is still hot, especially with celebrity hosts. On the first day of double 11 pre-sales, the top live-streaming commerce influencer Li Jiaqi generated 460 million views and a GMV of 21.5 billion yuan, nearly doubling his own record of 10.6 billion from last year’s Double 11 promotions. Some 291 products with prices of up to 10,000 yuan were almost sold out. 

However, Li’s company denied the numbers citing inaccurate data and lack of evidence, so the jury may still be out on the impact of livestreaming efforts. 

Another leading KOL Luo Yonghao joined Taobao's live commerce event, rather than Douyin’s live session. But Douyin’s performance in live commerce has been catching up aggressively to others. In fact, 58% of respondents who plan to participate in live streaming intend to use Douyin, up from 38% last year, according to data released by AlixPartners’ annual survey.

In light of traffic monetization, even Bilibili, a video-sharing site popular among Gen Z, has joined the e-commerce shopping bonanza and launched its own live streaming shopping function ahead of double 11, even though they still have a long way to go to catch up.

当日历翻到11.11，标志着又一年“双十一”如期而至。已经走过了14年的“双十一”，今年又有些哪些新“套路”？

早在10月24日，“双十一”第一批预售已经拉开帷幕，电商平台频出新招。天猫数据显示，在天猫“双十一”预售开启一小时内，3000多个品牌预估成交额同比翻倍增长；四小时内，淘宝直播共产生了130个预售金额破千万元的直播间。而抖音、快手、京东、小红书等平台的“双十一”硝烟，也早已从20日起就开始酝酿。

在经历了堪称历史最冷的618之后，阿里、京东都希望通过本届“双十一”一扫消费低迷，竭尽所能地讨好消费者。针对网友广泛诟病的预售期过长“疲劳节”、满减规则复杂“算术题”、优惠力度下降“套路节”等问题，阿里、京东们也在用实际行动作出回应。

今年“双十一”，无论是“预售付定金”阶段还是“售卖”阶段，都告别了零点，电商平台纷纷改从晚上8点开始，让消费者不用再熬夜。优惠对比上，目前看，今年貌似少了各种烧脑的优惠计算题，平台之间的优惠水平亦相差不大。例如，京东是“双十一”期间跨店每满299元减50元；天猫则是跨店每满300元减50元。

值得注意的是，今年“双十一”，电商平台还加了一些小功能。例如，为了凑单更方便，有电商平台推出“多地址下单”，也就是说，消费者在支付一个订单时，可以将里面的商品寄送到不同的地址。另外，有平台还扩容了购物车，购物车上限从120个商品扩展到300个。“价保”和“一键退差价”也成为不少电商平台标配，让消费者先“买买买”，后续发现买贵了再退差价。

天猫“双十一”与往年另一个最大变化就是，不再一味强调GMV，而是强调“简单、普惠”。其实，弱化GMV已经不是太新鲜的事情了，前两年，阿里的“双十一”就在有意识的减少外界对GMV的关注。伴随着环境的变化，外界也开始走出“唯GMV论”，更加关注增长质量和消费体验了，而这是今年天猫发力的重点。

对于商家而言，从前期预售阶段的情况来看，今年商家进一步告别价格战，反而加大了对有品质、附加值更高产品的投放力度，瞄准的正是扮演着重要角色的“会员”群体。

近日，天猫发布的亿元规模会员俱乐部名单显示，11月1日当天，82家知名品牌跻身天猫会员成交亿元俱乐部，超4000家品牌会员成交同比增长100%；有2700家品牌的销售额中，会员成交占比超过50%。

仅就“双十一”而言，10月，贝恩公司在相关报告中表示，消费者的购物平台选择愈发多元化。报告指出，2021年，有56%的受访者表示，他们计划于“双十一”期间在3个或以上的平台购物，今年这一比例上升至69%。同时，有37%的受访者表示，今年计划去5个及以上的平台购物。这表明，很多消费者认为不同零售商的“双十一”优惠力度大同小异，不必忠于一家。

以往，低线城市的消费者是推动“双十一”GMV增长的主力军，但今年在低线城市准备参加“双十一”的受访者中，仅有8%是从未参加过“双11”的新客，低于2021年12%的比例。新客越来越少，竞争越发激烈，电商平台不得不转变策略。

贝恩公司全球合伙人、大中华区零售业务主席刘洋也在近期表示，从去年开始，“双十一”购物节就从最早的争取更多的渗透到后续的高端化、两极分化到争夺钱包份额，“到去年开始更多关注客户的忠诚度和建立留存度和盈利能力。”

“今年，很多零售商已经把重点和目标转移到了更加有质量的发展。”刘洋表示，现在的零售商和市场重视度会更多转移到忠诚度的争夺，而不只是关注GMV的竞争。

今年二季度，京东在用户增长层面开始释出更多“动态数据”，其中包含DAU（日均活跃用户数）、用户购物频次和ARPU（用户平均贡献收入）等。除此之外，DTC（Direct to Consumer，直接面向消费者）也成为越来越多消费品牌的立足点和转型重点。DTC时代，会员体系的重要性进一步彰显。

2022年天猫“双十一”发布会上，阿里巴巴国内数字商业板块淘宝天猫产业发展和运营中心总裁吹雪也明确表示，面对未来，阿里集团整体的消费战略下，淘宝和天猫也会从交易到消费进行新的战略转型，“我们也提出了具有天猫特色的跨业务多场景的新的DTC模式，我们坚定地认为用户和数据是我们一起共同面对未来的基石。”

当然，今年的直播间之战也卷出了新高度。