[Epoch Times November 15, 2021](Interviewed by Epoch Times reporters Luo Ya and Li Jing) Compared with previous years, this year’s Double Eleven e-commerce shopping festival in mainland China is much calmer. Regarding the sudden “cooling down” of Double Eleven this year, observers believe that it was caused by various reasons including the economic downturn, live streaming, the epidemic, and the CCP’s strong control of Internet companies.
According to data from Tmall and JD.com, as of midnight on November 12, the total transaction volume of Tmall Double Eleven was 54403 billion (RMB, the same below); JD’s cumulative order value exceeded 349.1 billion. Compared with the same period last year, the growth rate of Alibaba’s Double Eleven transaction volume has declined.
Behind the “Cooling” of Double Eleven
According to the “Daily Business News” report, the promotional routine of Double Eleven, which has lasted for more than ten years, changed to not a one-day promotion last year, but a 22-day protracted battle. At the same time, consumers’ buying behavior is no longer concentrated on a single platform, but scattered across multiple platforms and channels.
A brand person mentioned that about 40% of the sales of Tmall stores now come from live broadcasts, but the frightening thing is, “70%-80% of these 40% are concentrated in two major anchors (Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya). There.”
Ms. Shen is a “white-collar worker” in Shanghai. She told The Epoch Times: “Internet celebrity e-commerce live broadcast rooms like Li Jiaqi have already reduced the price to a very low level on weekdays, and the public’s consumer desire has been released in advance. There is no need to wait until the double eleven.”
Ms. Shen said that for merchants, in the past, double eleven was used to reduce inventory and increase traffic as the best key node for year-end marketing. Now the good days are gone forever. Originally, in order to engage in Double Eleven, the platform subsidized merchants or tilted traffic. But now, the competition among e-commerce companies is fierce. From the original platform seeking brand play to the brand seeking platform belt. Now there is no subsidy on the platform and no one plays it. It is better to play in the live broadcast room.
On November 4, Taobao’s first wave of Double Eleven events ended. An e-commerce leader of a consumer goods company told Caijing that for the brand, the investment value of Double Eleven was basically gone, “Working overtime continuously, Investing a lot of costs can only bring about a 20% increase in sales. I even see negative growth in many brands.”
An Alibaba person mentioned that traditional e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Tmall, Pinduoduo, and JD.com all felt obvious pressure. “The traffic effect has peaked, and various tricks cannot bring significant growth.”
Mr. Wang, a civil servant from the mainland, told The Epoch Times that there are two reasons for the “calm” on Double Eleven this year. “On the one hand, the economy is sluggish, and the people’s employment and income are not satisfactory. Therefore, consumer demand is relatively weak; On the one hand, it is the epidemic. People in some places will be forced to quarantine when they receive express delivery from the’risk zone’. This has caused some people’s panic and caused them to be afraid of buying goods sent from other places.”
In addition, Beijing scholar Mr. Chen said: “This so-called Singles Day on Double Eleven, when there was no epidemic before, e-commerce made a lot of money for young people, but in the past two years, many young people and even middle-aged people have no income. Yes, the credit card defaulted and the consumption can no longer be made.”
The CCP strongly regulates Internet companies
Beginning last year, the CCP authorities have imposed strong controls on Chinese Internet companies on the grounds of “national security” and “anti-monopoly.” Many technology companies in mainland China have been interviewed or fined by the authorities. On November 2, 2020, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and other departments conducted supervision interviews with Jack Ma and others. After Alibaba Group was heavily fined 18.2 billion yuan by the authorities, companies such as Tencent, Meituan, Xiaomi, and Bytedance received multiple fines.
In addition, the CCP authorities have publicly mentioned “common prosperity” more than 60 times since this year. Internet companies such as Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan, ByteDance, and company founders have “actively” made huge donations.
Recently, the authorities have continued to put pressure on mainland Internet companies. On October 25, the Information and Communication Administration of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the Communist Party of China held an administrative guidance meeting, convening representatives of major e-commerce platform companies such as Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Meituan, and asked them not to send marketing text messages without authorization.
Mr. Chen told The Epoch Times: “The government’s rectification of the Internet, education and training industries is also an important factor. This is purely brutal. People with a little knowledge of market economy and Western liberal economics will not be so brutal. Li Shenzhi once said, Once the people of the Cultural Revolution come to power, they will endanger three to four generations of China.”
After Taobao’s first wave of Double Eleven events ended, the China Consumers Association issued an article on the same day to criticize Double Eleven’s chaos, including complex promotional activities and a concentrated outbreak of marketing spam messages. “Economic Daily” published an article that according to the Consumers Association’s years of price monitoring and consumer complaints, some merchants’ double eleven promotional prices are the same as usual, and may even be the most expensive in the whole year.
Editor in charge: Li Qiong
.