(Image from Baidu invasion and deletion)
Text ▍ Chen Bo
No girl can spend a penny in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room, if there is, then she must be Wei Ya's girl.
On October 20, the first wave of pre-sales of Tmall Double 11 was opened in turn in the gong, and consumers who could not wait also flocked to the live broadcast rooms of various anchors.
After accumulating up to 12 hours of live broadcasting, the head anchor Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya both won, the former with a cumulative view of 250 million people and a total transaction amount of more than 10 billion yuan of nearly 10.7 billion yuan, while the cumulative number of viewers of the latter was 240 million people, and the total transaction amount was as high as 8.3 billion yuan.
In one night, the sales data of these 2 head anchors crushed the annual revenue of most listed companies, making people just want to say: OMG!
one
Double 11 cycle
Why is it getting longer?
Double 11 in 2021 is as early as 2020, and still maintains the rhythm of "double knuckle stick". Coming early means that the cycle of double 11 will become particularly long, and the double 11 of these 2 years is 20 days earlier than before, and it is also opened in the form of the head anchor live pre-sale. Last year, Wei Ya's total sales were 3.521 billion yuan and Li Jiaqi was 3.327 billion yuan, but the sum of these 2 already amazing enough figures was even less than this year's Wei Ya's one-night record.
From these data, it is not difficult to see that as the life cycle of Double 11 becomes longer and longer, the challenge of sales data has become higher and higher every year. The original double 11, only 1 day, the whole field 50% off, simple and sincere. In contrast, the current double 11, although the gameplay is upgraded every year, has already changed its taste, giving people a feeling of going to double 11 for double 11. To put it simply, anchors and merchants are frantically brushing data in order to want a more beautiful GMV.
In 2019, the total trading volume of Double 11 has reached 268.4 billion yuan, although the figure is considerable, but the increase is not high compared with 2018, only 25.7%. Obviously, double 11, which has been held for 12 years, has seen growth fatigue, and sales data has touched the peak. Under such conditions, in order to make the volume of double 11 a more imposing number, it is only possible to make the cycle of activity and statistics longer and longer. From the data point of view, the elongation of the activity cycle can indeed make the sales data more exciting, the final turnover of Double 11 in 2020 reached 498.2 billion yuan, and 450 brands exceeded 100 million yuan, an increase of 86.6%.
This year, Li Jiaqi and Wei Ya once again created jaw-dropping data through pre-sales, with a total of 250 million people appearing in Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room in less than a day, while his number of fans was only 54.906 million. Even Li Jiaqi himself sent a Weibo in disbelief: "We watch 20 million people every day, 250 million today." All the girls, where did you come from? ”
250 million and 240 million are not small numbers, according to the 48th "Statistical Report on the Development of China's Internet Network" released by the China Internet Network Information Center, as of June 2021, the number of Chinese Internet users reached 1.011 billion. That is to say, on the night of October 20th, nearly 1/3 of the people went to watch the live broadcast when the hamster hoarded goods.
To be honest, this number is very scary, not only let us see the live broadcast force in full swing, but also feel the crazy sense of national consumption. This year's Double 11 will continue to reach new highs, but this number is still based on the premise of lengthening the cycle.
two
The hidden dangers behind the hot sales of Double 11
In less than 1 day, these 2 head anchors recorded a transaction amount of more than 19 billion. This data is not at all comparable to 1 ordinary listed company, and even the data is exaggerated enough to make people have to question whether there is a certain degree of moisture in it.
In 2016, the first year of "live streaming with goods", E-commerce platforms such as Taobao and JD.com have successively set up their own live broadcast departments, and the live e-commerce business has grown rapidly. Later, in 2020, affected by the epidemic and the offline economy downturn, in order to survive in adversity, merchants have turned to online live streaming with goods, and an outbreak period of live streaming with goods has immediately swept China. Relevant data show that in the first half of 2020 alone, there were tens of millions of live broadcasts, and tens of thousands of live broadcasts per day.
Behind the live broadcast with goods in the sky, there are actually some hidden dangers that have not yet erupted:
First, it is inevitable that there will be a large amount of water injection with live streaming, and brushing orders has become an open secret in the industry. Every year after the double 11, there will be a wave of high returns.
Second, the merchant asks the head anchor to help them bring goods, although it can increase the sales volume, but on the other hand, the cost of the merchant to play the advertising eyeball is far more than the sales revenue. Whether this situation can be sustained is a big question. At the same time, often once the price of the product is reduced, the quality of the product will be more or less discounted.
Third, the low price is one of the key reasons for the rise of live streaming with goods, and there is no live broadcast at a low price. But if you think about it, this practice of increasing sales at a low price may bring some benefits for a while, but it is by no means a long-term solution.
This scene suddenly reminded me of two other things. Last year, Pinduoduo and Tesla had a fight. The reason is that Pinduoduo launched a "limited-time spike" channel group purchase to deliver the Model 3 to the owner, Tesla did not want to think about it after hearing the news, and said that this batch of consumers are suspected of violating Tesla's "no resale" clause and will unilaterally cancel the order according to the contract breach clause. Similarly, this year Apple has also had a similar situation with Pinduoduo, and the iPhone 13 has also blocked Pinduoduo's low-price sales to a certain extent.
As can be seen from these 2 examples, for those brands with a longer-term perspective, they do not want their products to win in the market at a low price. Product quality can be trusted by consumers, which has a longer-term value.
From another point of view, if the sales of a certain brand are suddenly exaggerated during the double 11 period, this can reflect from the side that the sales of such a brand must be very bleak, and this short-lived high sales itself is very deformed.
In contrast, the double 11 hoarding that is now pervading the consumer group is actually a relatively deformed consumer behavior. Consumers are easily overwhelmed by the consumer atmosphere created by businesses and media, and after a passionate consumption, on the one hand, they will hoard a lot of non-essential products, resulting in waste of resources. On the other hand, exquisite poverty, in turn, will continue to promote bad consumption behavior, and finally form a subconscious consumption habit.
three
Double 11 is time to cool down!
Personally, the taste of Double 11 is really getting impure, which would have been a good thing and a unique online shopping festival in China. But in the past 2 years, after the live broadcast with goods joined the double 11, the focus of media coverage has long changed from excitement and admiration to caution and doubt.
The reason why Double 11 will flourish in China is because most Chinese consumers like to "figure cheap", but after the rise of the live broadcast economy, this annual "figure cheap" has suddenly turned into "figure cheap" every day. In this case, the existence of double 11 is not so special. Therefore, in this year's double 11, merchants and anchors with goods have reduced the price of goods to a lower dimension than daily, which is like "killing chickens and eggs", which is not a very normal situation, and it is impossible to maintain it for a long time.
In the end, the happiest people in this year's Double 11 may not be the platforms of those heads, nor the big anchors, let alone the merchants, but the advertising companies that sell traffic. During the double 11 period, all e-commerce companies are grabbing traffic, and advertising and pulling customers at any cost have become the most common tactics. We have formed a consensus during the double 11 period, that is, we will never pick this kind of day to send products, because advertising has long been taken away by the overwhelming e-commerce, and it is impossible to grab it.
In addition to the advertising agencies that sell traffic, the rest of the people, whether consumers or manufacturers, or those fledgling anchors, we are just the festive atmosphere group of this shopping carnival. Especially those small manufacturers and small anchors, perhaps when they turn back to liquidate their own achievements, they will suddenly find that they are busy with a lonely job, making more than selling cabbage, and even losing money is not in the minority.
At the age of 12, you are really not small, and you should learn to be rational, mature, healthy and long-term.