According to comprehensive media reports, this year’s 618, as the first big promotion after the epidemic was lifted three years ago, has a deeper meaning. It is not only an important key to boosting consumption and domestic demand in the first half of the year, but also a test of the degree of consumption recovery.
Although e-commerce bigwigs have shouted “the largest investment in history”, they regard this 618 as an important “turnaround”, fighting for low prices and grabbing traffic. However, since the end of the 618 event, Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Douyin, and Kuaishou have not announced the total turnover of this 618 event.
Among them, JD.com simply announced that “the growth rate exceeded expectations and set a new record”, while Taobao Tmall, Suning Tesco and Pinduoduo announced the turnover and order volume of some categories.
This is the second time that Chinese e-commerce companies have not announced the results of this semi-annual big promotion. The first time was last year’s “Double 11” shopping festival.
According to the statistics of China’s e-commerce big data company “Star Map Data”, the total transaction volume of the entire network on 618 this time reached RMB 798.7 billion. Although it was 102.8 billion yuan more than last year, setting a new high in the past six years, the growth rate has slowed down for three consecutive years. This time it only increased by 14.77% compared with last year, and the growth rate fell to the lowest point in nearly three years.
Xingtu data pointed out that this year’s 618 promotion can be said to be the hardest one for each platform. Each company has launched tens of billions of subsidies, various fee reductions and traffic support policies, hoping to help stores improve their performance. It’s just that the enthusiasm of consumers is not as good as in the past, and the overall performance of the industry tends to be flat.
Store consumption has not seen a recovery, and the volume of express delivery can also be seen.
The person in charge of an express delivery outlet in Shanghai Shentong said that the 618 in 2021 will still find a proxy, but this year’s 618 business volume growth is not obvious, and the work of its own employees is not enough, and the proxy will only lose money.
Acheng, the owner of another courier station in Beijing, also lamented that the atmosphere of 618 this year was very weak, and the peak volume of express shipments in a single day did not even exceed 1,000, which was lower than last year’s water level. Although last year’s logistics was affected by multiple factors, 618’s single-day inbound express delivery volume could reach more than 1,500 pieces at most, but I thought the volume would increase after the express delivery was smooth this year, but I didn’t expect this year’s performance to be worse.
For Ah Cheng, “everyone is getting calmer, and they won’t buy their hands.” He also believes that “the enthusiasm for consumption has declined and the low-price strategy has failed” is the root cause of the desolation of 618’s express delivery business.