Author: Tian Qiaoyun
Editor: Ge Weiwei
"It's going to be different. ”
The TV series "Flowers" has just ended, and the Yellow River Road in the play has become an Internet celebrity check-in point because of the bustling merchants, and the deafening firecrackers and fireworks in the sky during the Chinese New Year have brought a wave of memories to the post-70s and post-80s.
In addition to firecrackers and fireworks, wearing new clothes is also one of the most traditional customs of Chinese to celebrate the New Year.
Buying a Chinese New Year outfit with red elements or zodiac patterns is a mainstream and unmistakable way to celebrate the New Year. However, as the post-90s and post-95s have been upgraded to parents and become the consumption responsibility of the family, their choice of New Year's clothes shows a very different consumption preference from the previous parents.
Habitually, they don't want to buy clothes that are one size bigger and wear them this year and next year, and on the channel, they are not obsessed with having to go to the department store to pick up clothes, they enjoy the ease and convenience of placing orders on mobile phone live broadcasts.
Not long ago, the "2024 Taobao Children's Clothing and Children's Shoes Industry Trend White Paper" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") released by Taobao Mother and Child and Zhizhen GI shows that the online consumption capacity of families with children is rapidly improving, and the average monthly online consumption of families with children is more than 2,000 yuan, which has increased from 25% in 2018 to 29% in 2022.
From the perspective of the intergenerational distribution structure of the population, the proportion of the post-90s population has increased from 19% to 28%, and as the Internet growth generation, the younger generation of parents has a high willingness and stickiness to consume online channels.
So, what exactly has changed consumer habits? and what exactly are we talking about when we talk about consumption grading?
01. When "good shopping" comes online from the mall
When it comes to shopping, it's easy to think of all sorts of small shops that open up on the street, or department stores and shopping malls that are easily accessible.
However, when the younger generation has become the main consumer force, they are more willing to move their fingers to "shop" online. Recently, data from the Taobao New Year Festival shows that among the users who place orders for New Year's goods, the post-95 generation accounts for more than half, and the atmosphere of shopping on Taobao is getting stronger and stronger......
As we all know, Taobao was born for "buying and selling". It was not until 2020 that Taobao launched "Shopping", transforming from a transaction attribute to a grass planting attribute, and the content has since become an important driving force for the development of various industries in Taobao.
However, behind the content is not limited to the content, the core competitiveness of the store in the e-commerce platform is still the product, and the essence of the content is to help the brand better convey its product power and express its own differentiation and competitiveness.
Simply put, it is the attractiveness of a product to consumers, mainly including the comprehensive strength of product innovation, design, quality and price, and it is not that the cheaper the product, the more product power. So, on Taobao, some stores that focus on high-quality goods are growing faster.
For example, "Poco Blush", an independent designer children's clothing brand founded in 2019, achieved a high growth of more than 200% on Taobao last year. In the view of the manager, Pan Jinyan, high quality is not to sell ordinary goods at a high-end price, but from the demand side, whether it can meet the expression of personality and life attitude of the exquisite mother group.
Poco Blush not only pursues the design sense of the clothing itself and the high quality of the production process, but also each series of products has its own story. For example, this year they developed the "Legend of the Hungry Dragon" New Year clothing series, combining the characteristics of children's love of food to create the image of the "greedy dragon", and then integrating traditional elements such as sugar gourds and dumplings into the design.
图源poco blush淘宝店
According to TMIC's questionnaire survey, compared with other platforms, consumers believe that Taobao children's clothing and children's shoes are characterized by rich product types and more diverse brands.
In July 2023, Dai Shan, CEO of Taotian Group, said that Taobao will be positioned as a rich and interesting neighborhood where people come and go, and tens of millions of merchants, hundreds of millions of creators and various service providers will gather in the next five years.
Such an ecological environment provides more possibilities for merchants to try content. In addition to cooperating with talent anchors, merchants also conduct daily live broadcasts in stores.
From the supply side, the number of live broadcast accounts of Taobao children's clothing and children's shoes increased year-on-year. In particular, more and more influencer anchors are bringing richer and more diverse content to the live broadcast, and the live broadcast UV of Taobao children's clothing and children's shoes has achieved double-digit growth, and the payment conversion rate has also increased significantly year-on-year.
On the other hand, the popularity of short videos has also provided a new model for content creation.
Ali consumer insight data shows that the number of Taobao short videos has increased by 200%, and the number of effective short video playbacks has increased by 210%.
Content based on live broadcasts and short videos has become an important window for brands to be "seen" by the new generation of consumers.
Judging from the data, the investment in content has a very significant effect on the conversion of sales. During last year's June 18 promotion, the number of merchants investing in short video production on Taobao increased by 55%, the number of content creators increased by 200%, the number of users who watched short videos every day increased by 113%, and the number of views and viewing time doubled.
02. Price, appearance, and quality, all the post-90s generations
Demand forces supply, and supply creates new choices for consumers.
96% of children's clothing consumers believe that the style and style of children's clothing is very important, under the same product quality, they are willing to spend more money for good looks.
According to the white paper, in the Taobao children's clothing and children's shoes industry, cost performance and quality are also the two poles of growth, and personalized and segmented goods have stronger consumption potential.
In fact, consumers' "both want and want" has become an important driving force for consumption grading in the current consumption environment.
In the highly discrete and highly competitive market of children's clothing, the most effective way to break out of the encirclement is to use the power of big data to find opportunities to occupy consumers' minds in subdivided scenarios and subdivided categories. Finally, with the landing of small data, differentiated products are used to make consumers see, remember, and think.
However, it is not enough to reach consumers, how to complete the conversion efficiently? The white paper finds that it is important to dig deep into consumption scenarios and gain deep insight into consumption trends.
Consumption scenarios cannot be created in a vacuum, and the emergence of new consumption scenarios is closely related to the dynamic advancement of consumption consciousness. For example, in the children's clothing and footwear industry, as children's self-consciousness awakens, they will be more active in purchasing and even leading purchase decisions.
The birth of new scenes will drive the birth of new styles and trends.
In the white paper released this time, Taobao disclosed seven style trends of children's clothing and children's shoes in 2024 - sports clubs, green field traces, mountain streams, children's Y2K, Barbie aesthetics, new forest pictorial, and genius interpretation.
Taking the style of sports clubs as an example, when sports for all become a new topic, sports will naturally become a new fashion trend.
According to data, Taobao's spring/summer-related search trends have increased by more than 40%. In terms of consumption amount, less than 200 yuan has become a high-demand and noteworthy track. These observations and data provide new ideas for the research and development of new products for merchants.
Zhou Zhilong, founder and director of operations of Little uuBigs, said that according to Taobao's trend analysis, he had found the popularity of the outdoors, and then found the blank competition point of children's jackets - there are children's jackets on the market, but they only "shrink" the adult jackets.
Subsequently, he took the lead in the industry to launch a jacket that is more suitable for children's aesthetic and use needs, and led the fashion of children's jacket through contrasting colors and special designs of small pockets. And driven by the jacket, the sales of the matching pants are also very hot.
图源Little uuBigs淘宝店
Through the in-depth analysis of consumer portraits and the in-depth interpretation of popular or trending styles, Taobao recommends that merchants not only focus on the development and design of new products, but also start from the multiple perspectives of trending product operation, live broadcast field gameplay, and store operation to enhance the overall competitiveness of the store.
03. Ecology and tools are indispensable
"When I first opened the store, I didn't have peers around me to communicate with, but in the past two years, there have been significantly more brands of friends. Pan Jinyan believes that this is a good signal, which shows that Taobao's ecology is getting better and better.
He believes that after the ecosystem is established, the platform will launch more new policies and tools, and iterate on some more effective methods to help merchants like him grow better.
This is indeed the case. The "Trending Goods Track" launched by Taobao Children's Wear can help merchants find a new rhythm while clarifying the operation link of trending goods, and continue to discover new opportunities by promoting new products to participate in the incubation of the platform.
Taking scene-based goods as an example, children's quick-drying pants in sports scenes, children's skin clothing/sunscreen clothing, sunglasses, etc. in outdoor scenes are all popular categories pursued by consumers;
The growth of new products in the trend track not only gives consumers more choices, but also brings new vitality to the children's clothing market and attracts more emerging businesses to join in innovation.
However, once a trend is identified and a new product is launched, it is often difficult to attract the first wave of new customers during a cold start. In particular, how to "make new money" in the public domain within a limited budget?
Taobao has launched the "New Product Operation", which is an official platform for the operation of new products by industry juniors and merchants.
In addition, planting grass outside the station and trading on the station have also become another low-cost option for many businesses to attract new customers.
Kevin, the owner of "its smile", explained his own experience: by planting grass on social media and then directing them to Taobao, he quickly captured the first wave of customers by issuing store coupons.
图源its smile淘宝店
He believes that high-quality children's clothing is not cost-effective, and it is difficult for mothers to place orders with just a few photos. Store coupons can greatly reduce the experience cost of new customers, and when they receive the clothes and have a real feeling of texture, the repurchase will come naturally.
For old customers, Taobao suggests that you can increase the number of customer orders through repurchase coupons and other methods, and the "matching purchase" function can not only help the store increase the unit price of customers, but also increase the sales of other items in the store through popular products.
For consumers, the channel is not the most important factor influencing decision-making, but whether they can get them and provide them with new experiences is. In the new consumption environment, brands, merchants and consumers are no longer simply supply and demand, but influence and penetrate each other.
Through digital technology, these mutual influences and penetration will eventually be "recorded" and collide with more opportunities in subdivided fields. In the era of involution, consumers have begun to have new attitudes, and brands or merchants can use the power of the platform to grasp new consumption trends and find more business opportunities.