Goodbye, Double 12

Taobao Double 12 was renamed "Year-end Good Price Festival"

Taobao Double 12, which has gone through 11 years, is about to change its face.

Taobao merchant service hall issued a notice that Taobao Double 12 event will be cancelled this year, and a large-scale platform event "Taobao Year-end Good Price Festival" will be held in December this year, and it is expected that investment will start at the end of November.

Taobao confirmed that the Taobao Good Price Festival will start at 8 pm on December 9. Compared with the "Double 12" in previous years, the discount strength, merchant scale, and product scale will be greatly improved. Taobao holds the year-end price festival, which is a continuation and increase of the price festival.

Source: Screenshot of Taobao merchant service hall

As soon as this news came out, it immediately became the first hot search on Weibo. Some netizens said, "I didn't have time to start, so I canceled it." There are also many netizens who complained that Taobao Double 12 just changed its name, and it is no different from the original, "arranging real benefits for everyone is much more important than what the name is."

It is understood that Double 12 is a continuation of the annual Double 11 promotion, aiming to continue to meet the shopping needs of netizens after Double 11. It has been 11 years since Taobao first launched the Double 12 campaign in 2012.

Like 11.11, 12.12 is highly regarded when it is launched. Major e-commerce platforms also intend to make Double 12 another "Double 11".

In 2017, Taobao's transaction volume exceeded 100 billion yuan during the Double 12 period, and in 2018, the transaction volume soared directly to 200 billion yuan, doubling its growth.

It's just that "flowers are not red for 100 days", and the popularity of Double 12 in the past two years has been far less than before. As the "sister day" of Double 11, the cold encounter on Double 12 was obviously affected by Double 11.

In 2021, the growth rate of Tmall's total turnover on 11.11 was only 8.45%, compared with 29% in the same period in 2020. In this year, Ali canceled the tradition of real-time large screens for turnover that was customary in previous years.

From 2018 to 2020, the proportion of hot search topics on Double 11 remained between 26% and 30%, and in 2021, there was a significant decline. From 0:00 to 19:00 on November 11, 2022, there are only 17 hot searches on Weibo related topics on Double 11.

At the same time as Double 11 is "low-key", the publicity of Double 12 has also become much worse than before. Five days before Double 12 in 2021, Taobao stores hung up advertisements for Double 12, and Tmall only announced the "20 off every 200" discount on December 10.

In 2022, Taobao, Tmall and JD.com canceled the pre-sale period of Double 12 and directly entered the warm-up stage, shortening the entire event by about a week. Many consumers have not yet realized that Double 12 has already ended.

11.11 represents the most core promotional stage of the year for e-commerce, and 12.12 is more about cleaning up the inventory left over from 11.11. In recent years, as the front line of Double 11 has become longer and longer, the presence of Double 12 has become lower.

Jack Ma once said, "Change is painful, but not changing will be even more painful." "It's time for Taobao 12.12 to make a change.

This time, Taobao canceled the double 12 and changed it to the year-end good price festival event, which seems to be just a change of soup and not a change of medicine. However, it remains to be seen whether the rebranded Good Price Festival event will be more attractive than before.

The low-cost involution of Double 11 is still not improving

This year, the low-price competition of e-commerce platforms has entered a white-hot stage, and Double 11 has directly detonated the climax of the low-price competition on the whole network.

Taobao and Tmall set the "lowest price on the whole network" as the core goal, and launched the official direct drop and instant reduction for the first time; Jingdong shouted the slogan of "really cheap", canceled the pre-sale link, and "9 pieces of 9 free shipping" and "Jingdong 10 billion subsidies" quickly drove consumption;

Platforms such as Pinduoduo, Douyin e-commerce, and Kuaishou e-commerce attract consumption through more simplified promotional methods such as tens of billions of subsidies, single item reductions, and cross-store full reductions, as well as more favorable prices.

In addition, there are also super head anchor live broadcast rooms that have also joined the low-price competition. Li Jiaqi's slogan in this year's "Double 11" live broadcast room is "low, low, low, low, double eleven look at Li Jiaqi first"; Simba's live broadcast room is also constantly emphasizing low prices, such as "less than 3 yuan to drink cus yogurt", "the same style in the store, straight down to 600", etc.

According to the statistics of Xingtu, during this year's Double 11, the overall sales scale of integrated e-commerce and live broadcast e-commerce reached 1,138.6 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of 2.08%. Compared with the same period last year, this year only increased by 23.1 billion, and last year, there was a 146% growth rate of live broadcast e-commerce, which plummeted to 18.6% this year, and comprehensive e-commerce is in a negative growth state.

Source: Dongge interprets the e-commerce official account Data source: Xingtu data

According to the official data of Taotian Group, a total of 402 brands on the Double 11 platform this year have exceeded 100 million yuan, and the transaction volume of 38,000 brands has increased by more than 100% year-on-year. More than 2 million small and medium-sized merchants, with a year-on-year increase of more than 100%.

Jingdong data shows that this year's "Double 11" Jingdong has accumulated about 300 brand sales of more than 100 million yuan, more than 60 brand sales of more than 1 billion yuan, and nearly 20,000 brand turnover increased by more than 3 times year-on-year.

The low-price strategy does fit the current consumer's pursuit of cost-effective mentality and enhances consumption enthusiasm, but it has also led to a sharp decline in the unit price. Although the platform turnover is quite large, it is reflected in the final transaction volume has not increased significantly.

At the same time, compared with last year, the growth rate of Double 11 has also decreased this year. Mainly because the pre-sale system of e-commerce platforms has changed this year, JD.com's spot sales have weakened the concentrated outbreak on the day of Double 11.

Compared with integrated e-commerce, the situation of live e-commerce on Double 11 this year is better.

The double 11 theme of Jingdong's live broadcast room is "no pit fees, no talent commissions, it is cheaper", and the total number of viewers exceeded 380 million. Xiaohongshu's buyer's live broadcast is also very out of the circle, and its professional and exquisite live broadcast style has attracted a large number of consumers' attention, and the sales of beauty care buyer Zhang Xiaohui and fashion buyer Dong Jie have exceeded 100 million yuan in a single game.

In addition, AI has been applied on a large scale during this year's Double 11, with a large number of digital human anchors and AI customer service being launched to provide 24-hour uninterrupted service and sales for the store's live broadcast room. Although there is still a big gap between AI anchors and live anchors, they have begun to play a role in assisting broadcasters and draining traffic.

Live shopping has gradually become normalized, and low-price promotions on platforms are not uncommon. For consumers, 11.11 is losing its freshness. There are many consumers who will still participate in 11.11, but buy less. Consumers are more pragmatic and no longer impulsively chop their hands, leaving less to pick up on Double 12.

E-commerce platforms fight for year-end promotions again

Taobao's merger of Double 12 and the year-end bargain festival can be said to be a major change.

Double 11 and Double 12 have been implemented for several years, and they have fallen into a period of growth bottleneck, and consumers are also tired of various preferential games. In order to lack the promotion at the end of the year, Taobao also urgently needs to find new ways to grow. The cancellation of 12.12 is a bold attempt.

For consumers, Double 12 has become a year-end good price festival, which means a longer shopping cycle, which is conducive to consumers to make more rational consumption decisions. At the special node at the end of the year, it can also bring more discounts to consumers.

On November 23, Taobao Tmall Merchants and Ecological Partners Conference said that Taobao will provide an independent shopping cart in the store for the first time, allowing users to make up orders in the store in the private domain.

Xiang Qiu, the person in charge of Taobao Tmall's merchant business, said, "When future buyers conduct in-depth browsing in the store, they can directly complete efficient settlement in the store, and merchants do not have to worry about traffic leaving their stores." After the user finishes shopping, they can continue to watch the live broadcast, continue to share, and continue to browse the content. ”

Source: Qianniu Headlines

E-commerce festivals are already very common, but promoting festivals alone will not achieve sustainable growth. E-commerce platforms should improve quality services from the perspective of users in order to be invincible in e-commerce competition.

At present, only Douyin e-commerce has released the Double 12 event gameplay. The Douyin Mall Double 12 Good Things Festival will be held from December 1st to December 12th. The activity supports cross-store discounts, that is, 20 yuan for every 150 yuan.

It is worth noting that after the end of the Douyin Double 12 Good Things Festival, the Douyin Mall Warm Winter Good Things Festival will also be opened, which will be held from December 13th to December 17th, and it also supports cross-store full reduction.

The Double 12 event of other e-commerce platforms should also be on the way. The final battle of e-commerce in 2023 is slowly kicking off.

Author | Pandora