Looking back on 2023 in the e-commerce industry, I am afraid that the future will be wonderful and ups and downs.
There are the historic moments when Pinduoduo surpassed Alibaba's market value and the high-spirited moments when Alibaba (09988) changed its leadership and changed its formation, as well as the "cold" moments when the "618" and "Double 11" shopping festivals were cold and live broadcast e-commerce was involved in the storm of public opinion many times, and of course, there are also the highlight moments of Dong Yuhui's single-handedly flying Dongfang Selection (01797), and the "backlash" moment of the fan effect caused by Li Jiaqi's sentence "Where is it expensive......
As the saying goes, the past is not admonished, and the future can be traced. From the perspective of reviewing the e-commerce industry in 2023, we may be able to bring us different inspirations.
Keywords: labor pains
According to the industry life cycle theory, every industry will go through a process of development and evolution from growth to decline.
Looking back on the e-commerce industry in 2023, after crossing the infancy period and growth period, the industry is also ushering in "labor pains" in the mature period.
First, the "618" and "Double 11" shopping festivals were cold.
Since the beginning of this year, the overall recovery trend of the consumer industry has been relatively stable, and residents' consumer demand is still suppressed in the context of the pressure on the economic environment.
Taking the "Double 11" data as an example, according to the report released by Xingtu Data, the cumulative sales of the Double 11 comprehensive e-commerce platform and live broadcast e-commerce platform in 2023 will be 1,138.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.08%. Among them, the year-on-year growth rates of comprehensive e-commerce transaction volume, live broadcast e-commerce transaction volume, new retail transaction volume and community group purchase transaction volume were -1.12%, 18.58%, 8.26% and -8.15% respectively. You must know that last year, there was a 146% growth rate of live broadcast e-commerce growth, and this year's growth rate has also dropped to 18.6%, which shows how much the growth rate of the e-commerce platform has declined this year's Double 11.
The data of "618" and "Double 12" are also not optimistic. According to Xingtu statistics, the total commodity transaction volume of "618" this year reached 798.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate of 14.77%, and the growth rate fell to the lowest point in the past three years. Regarding the "Double 12", at the end of November this year, Taobao quietly canceled the "Double 12" promotional activities and held the "Year-end Good Price Festival" instead.
Second, live broadcast e-commerce has been involved in public opinion storms many times.
While traditional e-commerce platforms have entered a growth bottleneck, since the beginning of this year, live broadcast e-commerce platforms have also developed tortuously and have been involved in public opinion turmoil many times.
For live streaming e-commerce platforms, 2023 is also an "extraordinary" year. Simba's apprentice Dandan's "forced palace" Xin Xuan CEO Guan Qian, Xiao Yang's apprentice was criticized by the China Consumers Association for "pretending to be ugly", and Li Jiaqi's sentence "Where is it expensive" in the live broadcast room was strongly resisted by consumers...... The emergence of these hot events undoubtedly does not expose the shortcomings of the current development of live broadcast e-commerce platforms.
Take Li Jiaqi's public opinion turmoil as an example, on September 10, when Li Jiaqi introduced a 79 yuan Huaxizi eyebrow pencil in the live broadcast, some netizens questioned "Huaxizi's eyebrow pencil is getting more and more expensive", and Li Jiaqi was angry, "Where is it expensive? It's been this price for so many years, don't talk nonsense with your eyes open, sometimes find your own reasons!" As soon as these words came out, the anger of the workers was instantly ignited. When the apology was still ineffective, Li Jiaqi apologized in tears in the live broadcast room to calm the anger of fans. As you can see,
Li Jiaqi, who started from the "fan effect", will obviously also be counterattacked by disrespecting the "fan effect".
At present, it is no accident that live broadcast e-commerce has been involved in the storm of public opinion many times, and it is no accident that the market has questioned the professionalism of live broadcast companies.
Keywords: breaking
After experiencing a "painful period", how to break the situation will become the key to development, because this may determine whether the industry is going to "new life" or "recession".
This year, for traditional e-commerce, in the face of the bottleneck of the industry with slowing growth, traditional e-commerce did not "lie flat", but chose to change. The most obvious thing is that in the face of growth pressure, the men behind the two major platforms of JD Ali have sent a signal of "seeking change" - from Ma Yun's "I firmly believe that Ali will change, Ali will change", to Liu Qiangdong's "JD must change, otherwise there is no way out", it is not difficult to see that these two major e-commerce giants are brewing changes in the coming year.
First, Alibaba "changed the commander and changed the formation".
On December 20, Alibaba announced that Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group and chairman of Taotian Group, is also the CEO of Taotian Group. Dai Shan successfully completed her mission. On June 20, Alibaba officially announced that Daniel Zhang, chairman and CEO of Alibaba Holding Group, will step down and be succeeded by Tsai Chongxin and Wu Yongming in Alibaba's "Eighteen Arhats". In September 2023, Joe Tsai succeeded Daniel Zhang as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alibaba Holding Group, and Wu Yongming became CEO of Alibaba Holding Group.
Wu Yongming, as the first generation of programmers in Alibaba, is regarded as Alibaba's "sweeping monk", and this time Wu Yongming is shoulder-to-shoulder, in order to focus on Alibaba's core strategic e-commerce and cloud business, it can be seen that in the future, Taotian will make more innovative moves in AI and business scenarios.
The second is to "copy homework" from Pinduoduo, and the increasingly fierce low-price battle.
Unexpectedly, since the beginning of this year, the e-commerce giant Taobao has also begun to copy homework from Pinduoduo, that is, they have implemented a "low-price strategy". In fact, when traditional e-commerce giants copy homework from Pinduoduo, it also means that the low-price strategy that was once ridiculed by netizens has now become unattainable.
Take Taobao's implementation of the low-price strategy as an example, this year's "Double 11", Tmall focuses on the "lowest price of the year", and on the basis of 300 minus 50, it is the first large-scale official reduction. In the latest financial report meeting, 1688 and Xianyu, which focus on white label and second-hand business, were included in the first batch of Alibaba's strategic innovation business.
It can be seen that whether it is "changing the double formation" or "copying homework" to Pinduoduo's low-price promotion, it reveals the determination of traditional e-commerce giants to actively seek change.
Keywords: freshman
Obviously, after crossing the "painful period", the entire e-commerce industry still has a lot of new forces.
First, Pinduoduo has become the "new big brother" of the industry.
On November 29, 2023, the market value of Pinduoduo once surpassed Alibaba in the intraday trading of the U.S. stock market, becoming the No. 1 Chinese concept stock market value in the U.S. stocks, which is considered a historic moment. Entering December, Pinduoduo's market capitalization continued to be above Alibaba. And behind the market value of Pinduoduo surpassing Alibaba, it also means that the "new king" of e-commerce is born. As for the leap of Pinduoduo, an Ali employee also said frankly on the intranet, "That inconspicuous slash is about to become a big brother." In fact, when Alibaba began to copy homework from Pinduoduo, it at least showed that Pinduoduo's once-neglected low-price strategy is now becoming a model Xi for all platforms.
Second, content e-commerce has risen, and shaking, fast, and popular have become the "new main force" of e-commerce.
Compared with the traditional e-commerce platform in the "double 12" dumb fire, Douyin, Kuaishou, the two "new e-commerce platforms" seem to be more concerned about the "double 12", trying to snatch the brand, draw a bigger cake, it is reported that the "double 12 good things festival" of Douyin mall is from December 1 to December 12, and Kuaishou's "double 12 year-end good things festival" The activities were carried out between December 7 and 12, which was longer than the "Year-end Good Price Festival" opened by Taobao on December 9.
Behind Douyin and Kuaishou's emphasis on "Double 12" is to anchor the growth potential of content e-commerce. On this year's Double 11, Douyin's GMV and order volume have broken historical peaks, with Douyin Mall GMV increasing by 119% year-on-year, the overall number of dynamic sales merchants on the platform increasing by 91% year-on-year, and the number of consumers in Douyin Mall scenes increasing by 111% year-on-year. Kuaishou also reached a record high in terms of turnover, with a year-on-year increase of nearly 50% in the order volume of Kuaishou e-commerce in the whole cycle, a year-on-year increase of more than 50% in the number of large-scale and global dynamic sales products, a year-on-year increase of 160% in the GMV of the pan-shelf field, a year-on-year increase of 139% in the GMV of the short video field, and a year-on-year increase of 146% in the GMV of search transactions.
In addition, Xiaohongshu, which has transformed into a "buyer e-commerce", has also entered the "peach blossom period" of its business. In this year's "Double 11", the number of Xiaohongshu e-commerce orders was 3.8 times that of the same period last year, and the number of participating merchants was 4.1 times that of the same period last year. Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui's live broadcast room exceeded 100 million GMV in a single game.
Third, the pattern of live streaming has begun to change, and the decentralization trend of head anchors is obvious.
From the end of 2021, Wei Ya and Sydney have been blocked for tax evasion, and major social accounts such as Douyin and Weibo and Taobao stores have been blocked, allowing everyone to see the negative impact of the live broadcast room's over-reliance on individual anchors, and now Li Jiaqi has offended consumers with the sentence "Where is it expensive", resulting in the popularity of the live broadcast room is no longer hot. It can be seen that the disadvantages of traffic malformation and tilt to merchants are exposed.
At present, the uneven development of the business ecology caused by the head anchor effect has also shaken the live streaming platform, and the focus of the platform and MCN institutions has gradually begun to tilt towards the "majority of people". For example, Luo Yonghao's "Make a Friend" (01450) live broadcast room has realized"De-Luo Yonghao", while adapting to the changes in Douyin traffic distribution, creating a live broadcast matrix number, and on the other hand, from content-driven to product-driven, transforming the personal IP effect into channel IP.
In 2023, the battle report released by Tmall's "Double 11" did not mention any information about the top anchors, and the focus also fell on the data growth of store broadcasts. Tmall said that in the "Double 11" in 2023, 58 live broadcast rooms will have transactions exceeding 100 million yuan, of which 14 will exceed 100 million yuan for the first time, and the head camp will expand significantly. The performance of store live broadcast is particularly outstanding, with 38 stores broadcasting more than 100 million yuan, 451 stores broadcasting more than 10 million yuan, and Tmall power consumption, jewelry, sports and outdoor, home decoration and home furnishing, clothing and other industries have achieved a bright growth rate.
At the same time, Dong Yuhui achieved Oriental Selection (01797), which promoted New Oriental to successfully transform from a training institution to a leader in MCN institutions. At the same time, with the successful transformation of New Oriental, a number of Hong Kong stock education concept stocks have also opened the road of live broadcasting, taking Gaotu as an example, taking advantage of the popularity of Dongfang's selection of "backstabbing" Dong Yuhui, the stock price has skyrocketed, and it has become a popular live broadcast e-commerce concept stock...... Behind the transformation of these education stocks into live broadcast e-commerce concept stocks, it undoubtedly means that they are becoming a new force in the e-commerce industry.
In addition, since the beginning of this year, the rise of AI+ e-commerce and instant retail, and the continuous growth of cross-border e-commerce have further enriched the territory of the e-commerce industry.
epilogue
As the saying goes, "Whatever happens is good for me". From another point of view, the e-commerce industry has experienced a bottleneck period of slowing growth, and the live broadcast e-commerce has encountered a storm of public opinion, which is not all bad.
Since the beginning of this year, in order to promote the healthy development of the e-commerce industry, the state has also issued a series of new policies to standardize the business behavior of e-commerce platforms and strengthen the supervision of the e-commerce industry. For example, on February 6, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Outline for the Construction of a Quality Power" to standardize the development of a new model of live broadcast e-commerce.
From this, it can be seen that after this "painful period" of the e-commerce industry, the future will become more standardized and more vigorous.