Article | Wang Xinxi
In 618 this year, the trend of e-commerce changed subtly.
A recent report released by Analysys shows that among the major e-commerce platforms in China, Taobao Tmall's turnover accounts for nearly half, and it still maintains a high growth rate of 14.6% under a large base.
Under the same caliber, although the number of dithering increased by 30.2%, it has slowed down significantly compared with 70% last year. In the future, it will be more and more difficult to catch up with the market share of Taobao Tmall's "half of the Jianghu".
The 618 outbreak is Tmall. Is it difficult to do business for the Diaoyin brand?
In 618 Tmall stores this year, 365 brands sold more than 100 million yuan, and more than 36000 brands doubled. As of 24:00 on June 17, the transaction amount of Taobao, which launched the "Family Bucket" activity, increased by 550% year on year.
The beauty and skin care industry, known as "cash cow", according to the data of the public account "Glaucous Intelligence", the sales of Taoxing increased by 69.2% year on year in May this year, and the sales of Tiaoyin increased by 28.28% year on year.
Similarly, the 3C digital industry sales growth rate of Taobao Tmall platform in May reached 90.1%, and the household appliance industry growth rate of 74.2%, both ranking first in the whole network, significantly ahead of other platforms. Since 618 was launched, as of June 10, the growth rate of 3C digital GMV of Taoxing platform reached 55% year on year, which was also significantly ahead of other platforms and had a dominant market share.
At the same time, since 618, the food industry of Taoxing has increased by nearly 50% year on year, of which the GMV contributed by live broadcast has increased by 261%, and there have been 10 live broadcast booths that have exceeded 100 million yuan in the whole process.
The public account "Zebra Consumption" found that, in the same period, according to the data of Cicada Rubik's Cube, the food and beverage industry of Tiaoyin grew 26.94% year on year, and the fresh vegetable and fruit industry grew 17.41% year on year, both of which were less than 50%.
There are many reasons to explain the outbreak of Tmall.
From the perspective of transaction volume, Taobao Tmall is far larger than other platforms, and its position as the No. 1 e-commerce in China is still firm. On the one hand, it is the polarization of the current domestic consumer market, The consumer confidence index has recovered, and after the survival consumption has been satisfied, it has changed to the enjoyment quality consumption.
Next is this year The integration of Taobao and Tmall is being strengthened. There is no pre-sale and direct spot sale, which breaks the barrier between Taobao and Tmall merchants. A variety of large amount coupons are issued in advance, which is conducive to consumers' planning in advance and purchasing brand goods.
In addition, according to official news, Tmall has strengthened the resource investment in building new brands, new products and explosive products this year. The investment in super new product resources has increased by three times compared with the previous investment, and 10 billion traffic resources have been invested. Since May 20, Tmall has seen the outbreak of thousands of super new products.
For example, Haier's all-in-one washing and drying machine has achieved the top 1 of all brands, all categories, and all price ranges, as well as the top 1 of the new roll category list.
We also see that this year 88VIP can return the package shipping fee for an unlimited number of times, and this year is also the year 618 when Taobao merchants first supported 88VIP coupons. In May 2024, the number of new 88VIP members increased more than twice month on month and more than three times year-on-year.
88VIP consumers have always been the main force to buy brand goods. The enthusiasm of these members has been improved, which to some extent means the prosperity of brand business.
It can be said that from Alibaba's "user first" campaign this year to the full optimization and simplification of Taobao Tmall's promotional experience, brand merchants have boosted their explosive performance in Tmall 618.
Of course, if you look at other platforms, It will be found that the shift of platforms such as Tiaoyin Fast Hands to focus on low prices has led to a decline in the traffic dividend of brand names, which is also an important reason for many brand names to return to Tmall.
From the data point of view, the overall turnover of the 618 first cycle of the dithering fast players still increased by 27% year on year, but the brand business showed a decline, and the key business of e-commerce, beauty and skin care, was diverted by Tmall.
Over the past few years, the Tiaoyin Beauty Skin Care Raceway has been growing rapidly, bringing traffic dividends to many brands, but this year's growth rate has declined significantly.
In the early stage of the 618 promotion this year, the beauty media "Yimeishang" statistics found that the live broadcast rooms of the major head anchors of Tiao Yin had been started for more than half a month, but the results were not optimistic. The "beauty celebrities" during the previous years' promotion period, such as Luo Wangyu, Ta Ta and Qi Er, even showed a steep decline of up to 80% compared with the results of the same period last year.
Since 618, the anchor of Tiaoyin Beauty has seen a significant decline. The investment cost of brand merchants has increased significantly, but the increment is hard to find.
According to the data of Qingyan Intelligence, Diaoyin 618 promoted the comeback of the top GMV in the beauty category on the first day. It was the only brand with a GMV of more than 50 million within 24 hours, but the GMV shrank to 10% on the second day.
From the perspective of Tmall, on the first day of sales (May 20 for Tmall), only 4 hours later, the number of brands in the beauty and skin care track reached 11. As of June 3, the number of Tmall Beauty brands has reached 43, of which 8 brands (Miguang, Marubeni, Elizabeth Arden, Lin Qingxuan, JOVS, Fresh, Osiman and Jimeng) have exceeded 100 million for the first time this year.
This may be related to the decline in the share of some head beauty anchors due to the focus of Tiao Yin's recommendation turning to low prices. At the same time of making low prices, Doukuai hopes to incubate its own brands and begin to focus on the supply of industrial belts.
Industry led merchants have become a new force of investment A large number of white card merchants grope for ways to play paid streaming, and more than 95% of transactions are converted from paid traffic.
According to the narrow broadcast report, the "Xiamen Gang", backed by the supply of the industrial belt in the southeast coast, has found a mature set of large amount of investment, widely tested the content of popular money (6000 or 7000 short video materials can be sent a day), and rapidly iterated the methodology of investment products.
In the top 20 of the beauty ranking list of Tiaoyin E-commerce, 40% of the brands were once launched by Xiamen Bang, and their positioning was close to white brands, such as VC, Dr. Wen, Sanzitang, Creator, etc. Most of these brands have been established for less than three years, and the GMV has exceeded 1 billion yuan. More exaggerations can be made to "break through 100 million yuan in a single month".
In the interview, an industry person estimated that the investment expenses could account for 60% or even 70% of the sales of certain categories. With the single digit gross profit margin, the net profit earned is basically the advertising rebate of Tiaoyin.
In view of the threshold of these anchors, the sales of many mature brands have also been affected. Because this kind of large-scale copy playing method is cut off by a few Xiamen Gang players who can play, which erodes the natural flow of other brands.
Because about 15% of transactions of mature brands come from paid traffic, others are natural flows - including offline stores, shopping guides and online private domains as support. This has also affected the sales of many mature brands.
What does the various wind directions behind reflect?
The essence of Qiaoyin interest e-commerce is "looking for people for goods" content e-commerce. It stimulates consumers' potential demand by pre ordering goods. Consumers are stimulated by content. Impulsive consumption often buys unwanted products, even at a low price. The return rate is relatively high over time, Consumers are immune to such content e-commerce.
However, based on the change of consumption trend, the focus of dithering has shifted from brand live broadcast e-commerce to low-cost goods As early as the end of 2023, Diaoyin introduced a large number of low-priced blockbuster products, and recently launched Diaoyin Mall APP, increasing resources to specifically recommend these products.
In 618 this year, with the dual support of tens of billions of traffic and official subsidies, Tiao Yin increased the price of good things in an all-round way.
According to the report of Yibang Power, since the beginning of this year, low-cost products will be labeled as "low price in the whole network", "low price easy to sell" and "low price support" on the interface of talent selection such as Diaoyin Select Alliance, and low-cost products will gain more traffic exposure. In addition, we are also testing the "automatic price change" function to provide consumers with more competitive prices.
In terms of talent, the "618 Good Things Festival of Tiao Yin Mall" introduced three types of customized content playing methods for talent at different tracks to encourage e-commerce talent to bring goods for low price good things.
Another merchant reported that the traffic rules of the live streaming of Tipping Tone had been greatly changed, and the traffic was given according to the length of stay instead of the intensive transaction.
However, the positioning of these products is the same as the low price channels on other platforms such as Pinduoduo and Taoyuan. The unit price is low and the stickiness is not strong. Dithering has invested a lot of resources in this regard, further squeezing the living space of the live broadcast room with goods and brands.
In the past, the priority of traffic recommended by the dithering algorithm was based on high-quality content and user dwell time. Now, the priority of traffic is given to low prices.
The beauty and skin care industry has always focused on the content front, focusing on brand transactions. With the focus of Tiao Yin's recommendation turning to low prices, some head beauty anchors, even though attractive in content, have no price advantage, and are difficult to bring traffic and transactions, leading to shrinking share.
This led many brands to return to Tmall, Han Shu, who achieved a turnover of 3.09 billion yuan last year by means of short plays, also said this year that she would "deploy heavily to Tmall". Another example is Freedom Point. Last year, the top brand of Tiaoyin sanitary napkin track turned to re bet Tmall this year, with a year-on-year growth rate of 200% during Tmall 618.
Tmall supports the business of hundreds of thousands of brand flagship stores, which is the basic plate of brand merchants. Taobao APP has a monthly life of 900 million yuan, and different consumers have different needs. The number of 88VIP members has reached 35 million, and there are a large number of people with high purchasing power. This year, the unlimited return package freight of 88VIP has also stimulated consumers to purchase more frequently.
Different from the low price traffic orientation of Tiaoyin, Taotian is currently testing a new scoring system in the internal test, Some businesses speculate that store experience scores may affect search ranking. The brand has the ability to invest higher service costs to improve the user experience This is also an important reason why Tmall has become a hot spot for brands in 618.
In short, under the situation that the growth of the content platform has slowed down, dividends have stopped, and prices have begun to roll down, many brands have regained their basic position of stable brand awareness and repurchase, and have begun to focus on Tmall.
What does the change behind 618 mean?
In short, consumers of short video and live broadcast platforms rely more on algorithms to bring brands to the front, while consumers of Tmall are more "aware" of brands.
A report by the sports brand 361D shows that during the beginning of Tmall 618, the GMV of 361D members reached 79.08 million, a year-on-year surge of 1169%; Membership GMV accounted for 59%, up 29 percentage points year on year.
The loyal users of the brand continued to contribute to the turnover of 361 degrees. During the membership date of Tmall in March this year, the GMV proportion of 361 degrees members reached 80% of the transactions of the whole store.
Tmall really understands the business logic of the brand better. The premium of the brand comes from the mind, from the initiative of consumers to find goods, and form loyalty and reputation around the brand.
Therefore, Tmall has chosen to increase investment in new products, super single products, 88VIP and brand members. While allowing Taobao's 10 billion yuan subsidies and other channels to explore the price range, Alibaba continues to use Tmall to retain users with the strongest consumption power.
On the whole, the price reduction is simple and direct, and there are not so many routines. Low price is still important, but consumers are paying more attention to the quality of goods and services, both cost performance and high-quality brand products.
When e-commerce comes to compete for comprehensive competitiveness, as a bridge connecting businesses and users, the platform should enrich the supply and quality at the first end to promote a benign win-win situation between the platform and businesses; First, we should ensure the implementation of price power, while continuing to evolve in user experience.
Tmall can ensure the user experience, price power and benign business ecology at the same time. We focus on price power, but the benign business ecology has become a short board. The pure low price strategy has hurt the brand, and brand merchants are also shifting.
This means that the competition trend of 618 e-commerce is changing, the consumption environment is becoming rational, and the brand is more inclined to upgrade its core. Compared with the consumption trend of Japan, China will also have civilian brands like Uniqlo and Muji in the future, which requires a balance between the pursuit of cost performance and brand.
If we blindly pursue low prices without limits, regardless of quality and quality, and without brands, our business will be more and more laborious, and the volume price will bring us extremely low profit margins. The sales of 200 million yuan and the profit of 550000 yuan that someone on the Internet has complained about is an extreme case.
The flow playing method and low price orientation of content e-commerce can not meet the needs of consumers for upgrading. The competitiveness of e-commerce will eventually return to the product itself, user experience and brand value.
The wind has changed, The competition in the e-commerce industry is entering the second stage. The respect for the interests and demands of businesses and the win-win coexistence of platforms, businesses and users are the development direction of the benign ecology of e-commerce. A healthier era of quality e-commerce is coming.
