Neglected consumer groups
The hottest anchor some time ago was a smile and a show talent. With lip-synching "earthy" short videos, their short video works have received more than 100 million views on various platforms.
Solid data indicators make them a real middle-aged and elderly top stream, with more than 19 million fans and 12 million fans before Xiucai was banned.
From the perspective of fan composition, 70.44% of "Xiucai" fans are women, 79.8% are over 40 years old, and eighty percent of users are middle-aged and above. Fan user portraits with a smile have a similar age structure. Middle-aged and elderly people over 50 years old constitute the absolute mainstream of the two anchor fan groups.
Before young netizens played memes, they had already accumulated an extremely large fan base and ranked among the top of the platform. Some netizens joked that the two anchors fought a PK, "can hollow out a province's pension."
Source: Screenshot of Douyin APP
On the hot Weibo search topic of "Xiucai was blocked in the information cocoon", many people were shocked that Xiucai and other anchors had tens of millions of fans, but they had no understanding before. Behind this is the familiarity and strangeness between two generations.
From the Taobao mobile terminal led by Jiang Fan to the development of short video recommendation algorithms by Zhang Yiming and Su Hua, the entire Internet industry is exploring personalized algorithm recommendations to achieve more accurate push, enhance user stickiness of the platform, and pave the way for future commercial conversion. Users of different genders, ages, preferences, and income types will be pushed different content by the platform.
On the other hand, with a huge population base, even individual content preferences can find common ground. According to QuestMobile data, in 2022, the net increase of users on the whole network will be 22.14 million, and the total size of China's mobile Internet users will exceed the 1.2 billion mark.
At the same time, China's mobile Internet users over 51 years old accounted for 26.4%, which has exceeded a quarter of the total number of Internet users, becoming a force to be reckoned with. Considering the domestic population structure, the needs of middle-aged and elderly groups are presented as a mass demand with predictable sustainability.
The degree of Internet access across the country continues to deepen steadily, indicators such as per capita usage time have increased significantly in the past year, and users' online stickiness has become more and more intense. Middle-aged and elderly users with more disposable time have even helped increase the per capita usage time of short video apps. On the content side, the silver-haired crowd has become the main force of consumption.
Silver hair feeds a large number of live broadcast rooms
The needs of middle-aged and elderly groups do not stop at content. With the sinking of e-commerce, they also expect to use online shopping and consumption like young people, and enjoy the convenience of the Internet era without leaving home.
In fact, there have long been businesses with a keen sense of smell who have been aware of this blue ocean market. In May this year, the blogger who brought the first goods on Douyin was not a mature MCN agency such as Oriental Selection or Make a Friend, nor Xiao Yangge, a top Douyin Internet celebrity with more than 100 million fans, but Xinjiang Hetian Yu Lao Zheng, who had only 800,000 fans at that time.
In the same month, Xinjiang Hetian Yulao Zheng completed sales of 647 million, more than 100 million higher than the second place Oriental Selection.
His success is not a one-shot deal, in fact, he is at the top of the top ten list of TikTok goods every month this year. Third-party data shows that nearly half of the fans of Yulao Zheng in Hetian, Xinjiang, are people over 50 years old, and the 30 to 50-year-old group accounts for the other half. On non-standard products such as jade, which has a high unit price, they show strong consumption strength.
Some urban silver hair and small town middle-aged and elderly people have begun to become new increments of e-commerce platforms.
Source: Screenshot of Douyin APP
The live broadcast room that meets the needs of middle-aged and elderly people is not only Xinjiang Hetian Yu Lao Zheng.
The 55-year-old anchor "I am Capricorn" has only been in live streaming e-commerce for a year and a half, but has already accumulated nearly one million fans. From the perspective of character and content, "I Am Capricorn" has won a vote for fans by sharing the scarf tying method, living with my daughter, and traveling daily. In the process of bringing goods, she will especially explain and promote the details of products such as fabrics and shapes that middle-aged and elderly women pay attention to.
From the perspective of price, the consumer groups she targets have strong spending power, contributing far beyond the average unit price of the Douyin clothing track. From pearl necklaces and cashmere coats that cost thousands of yuan, to autumn coats of one or two thousand, scarves and silk shirts with hundreds of dollars, they all have good monthly sales. Middle-aged and elderly women in Beijing and Shanghai constitute the main force of her live broadcast room consumption, and the monthly GMV can reach nearly 100 million.
There is also the tourism industry. According to Ctrip's data, the number of users over the age of 60 has reached 10 million. On platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu, topics such as sunset red tourism are highly discussed, and Yu Minhong is even more aware of the blue ocean market to take the initiative and lead the New Oriental team to deeply cultivate high-end middle-aged and elderly tourism products.
Source: Screenshot of Oriental Selection Live Broadcast
New Oriental WeChat public account released the article "Re-entrepreneurship! New Oriental Cultural Tourism! It is hoped that middle-aged and elderly people will go out in those ordinary daily lives to find their "colorful" and "enthusiastic".
This is another decisive venture of Yu Minhong. From the current product point of view, New Oriental's planning of tourism products pays attention to the demands of middle-aged and elderly people: in addition to regular tour guides, each group is equipped with cultural lecturers and travel butlers, respectively focusing on the humanistic and historical output of scenic spots and caring for middle-aged and elderly groups, and providing high-quality cultural tourism services with a sense of cultural happiness, knowledge acquisition and personal pursuit.
Yu Minhong also said: "In the layout of the cultural tourism industry, no matter how many stormy waves, I will continue to move forward with New Oriental." The "Oriental Selection to See the World" sub-account has been broadcast live in Yunnan, Jiangsu, Xinjiang, Shanxi, Gansu and other places, selling local agricultural products on the one hand and cultural tourism products on the other, which has attracted more than 3.23 million fans.
The maximum increment for the Internet
The middle-aged and elderly population is no longer regarded as a marginal audience of the Internet, but has become a hidden bonanza for content scenes and live streaming e-commerce, and their purchasing power and loyalty cannot be underestimated.
Traditionally, leading e-commerce companies have focused on winning over young customers, while the needs of middle-aged and elderly consumers have been relatively ignored. However, the current trend shows that this huge consumer demand has yet to be mined, and middle-aged and elderly people have their own interests and needs in various fields, and these needs mean business opportunities.
Looking back at the entire e-commerce development process, merchant enterprises targeting middle-aged and elderly people have always existed, but they still do not occupy the main position in the entire e-commerce market.
More importantly, although these platforms and merchants regard middle-aged and elderly people as a target group in strategic choices, the main body of purchasing behavior is still the main force of the e-commerce market: young and middle-aged people.
When Ali Jingdong took the lead in completing the age-appropriate and barrier-free upgrade, Pinduoduo opened up the sinking market, Douyin Kuaishou walked through the short video track, and promoted the channel of live e-commerce to a wider audience, middle-aged and elderly people no longer generally rely on their children's online shopping, but can make convenient shopping through new channels, and silver generators can really go through the path.
According to data from iMedia Consulting in 2021, the daily consumption of China's silver-haired group is dominated by offline supermarkets and e-commerce platforms, of which the consumption of e-commerce platforms reached 71.2%, which is only 0.9% lower than the 72.1% lower than the offline supermarket channel. In particular, the 50- to 60-year-old population is seen as the largest increase in the Internet in recent years.
By gaining insight into the preferences and buying habits of middle-aged and older people, merchants and content creators can craft products and services to meet their needs.
Although at present, there are still anchors such as Xiucai, who have attracted widespread disgust because of remarks such as "give me your medical expenses", the deeper reason is that the huge needs of middle-aged and elderly people in the consumption of spiritual products and other fields have not been valued and met for a long time.
Compared with the younger generation who shoulder the pressures of work, mortgage, childcare, etc., urban middle-aged and elderly people have stable income and more disposable time. With the decline of the digital economy and information technology, they have also begun to put forward higher demands for quality, cultural connotation and service experience.
In the digital economy and information age, how to respond to the demands of this group of people will be a question that mainstream platforms and businesses must answer. There are huge business opportunities here.