Dubbed as the "simplest 6.18" mid-year promotion in history, the major e-commerce retail platforms have gradually released their battle reports.
Overall, during this year's "6.18" period, major e-commerce platforms not only continued their low stock price strategy, but also simplified their promotion forms, bidding farewell to pre-sales and extending the promotion period to better compete for market share, which also indicates that industry competition has become increasingly fierce.
In addition, during the "6.18" period, live-streaming e-commerce took on more diverse characteristics, while overall performance remained good. Additionally, offline physical stores also actively participated in the "6.18" e-commerce promotion through instant retail platforms, and the trend of online and offline integration in the retail industry became more apparent.
According to data monitored by Xingtu, the overall cumulative sales during the "6.18" period in 2024 amounted to 742.8 billion yuan (excluding duplicate values across channels). Sales across various channels were: 571.7 billion yuan for comprehensive e-commerce platforms, 206.8 billion yuan for live-streaming e-commerce, and 24.9 billion yuan for instant retail channels.
The importance of Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) has been continuously downplayed.
Although Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) has been continuously downplayed by major platforms, as the protagonist of the "6.18" e-commerce promotion, JD.com, Tmall and other leading platforms have successively released "6.18" data, which still reflects some new changes in the industry.
JD.com's official data shows that as of 23:59 on June 18, more than 500 million users placed orders on JD.com during the "6.18" promotion. In terms of sales performance, JD.com's total transaction volume and number of orders both reached new highs during the 2024 "6.18" event. During the promotion, 83 brands had accumulated transaction volume exceeding 1 billion yuan, and over 150,000 small and medium-sized merchants saw their sales increase by more than 50%. Meanwhile, JD.com's new product transaction volume generated by new users increased by more than 70% year-on-year, and the number of orders increased by more than 130% year-on-year.
Tmall's data also shows good growth momentum, which also reflects the influence of leading platforms. On June 19, Tmall released data showing that as of 24:00 on June 18, 365 brands reached sales exceeding 1 billion yuan during the "6.18" period on Tmall, and more than 36,000 brands saw their sales double. The number of new members added to the 88VIP program increased by 65% year-on-year, and the membership reached a record high. Among the 365 brands with sales exceeding 1 billion yuan, brands such as Apple, Midea, Haier, Xiaomi, and Moutai were among the "billionaire club" on Tmall's "6.18" event.
It is worth noting that during this year's "6.18" e-commerce festival, major platforms simplified their promotion forms, cancelled pre-sales, and intensified their low stock price strategy. Taking JD.com as an example, on June 15th, JD.com announced that it would add more than 10 billion yuan to invest in subsidies during the "6.18" period, while launching a "super surprise red envelope" promotion with a red envelope amount of up to 3,800 yuan, which also drove a significant increase in orders.
Data shows that during the promotion, the number of online items on JD.com's billion-yuan subsidy channel increased by more than 100% year-on-year, while the number of users and order volume under the subsidy both increased by more than 150% year-on-year. The number of online items on JD.com's "9.9 free shipping" channel exceeded one million throughout the promotion, and the number of users and order volume both increased by more than 100 times year-on-year. In addition, the first "2 yuan free shipping day" on JD.com's "9.9 free shipping" channel saw sales quantities increase by hundreds of times year-on-year.
"Compared with previous years, this year's '6.18' e-commerce promotion seems to have seen a decrease in overall consumer enthusiasm. Faced with this situation, e-commerce platforms have continued their low stock price strategy and intensified promotion efforts, making competition even more intense for limited market share. At the same time, this year's '6.18' promotional period was extended, and simplification was only a way of calculating promotions for consumers and retailers. For brands and platforms, however, workload increased compared to previous years, and the price protection period was synchronized with the promotion, easing the pressure on logistics. Therefore, to win consumers, pre-sales no longer serve a purpose." Xingtu's Vice President Wang Ying said in an interview with Securities Times.
"Compared with previous years, this year's '6.18' e-commerce promotion seems to have seen a decrease in overall consumer enthusiasm. Faced with this situation, e-commerce platforms have continued their low stock price strategy and intensified promotion efforts, making competition even more intense for limited market share. At the same time, this year's '6.18' promotional period was extended, and simplification was only a way of calculating promotions for consumers and retailers. For brands and platforms, however, workload increased compared to previous years, and the price protection period was synchronized with the promotion, easing the pressure on logistics. Therefore, to win consumers, pre-sales no longer serve a purpose." Xingtu's Vice President Wang Ying said in an interview with Securities Times.
Traditional e-commerce boosts live streaming.
This year's "6.18" e-commerce promotion saw live-streaming e-commerce performance still outstanding, becoming a major highlight of the market. At the same time, traditional e-commerce players are competing to enhance their layout in live-streaming, particularly JD.com's digital human live-streaming merchandise sales have attracted widespread attention.
According to Xingtu's data, the cumulative sales of live-streaming e-commerce during the '6.18' period in 2024 amounted to 206.8 billion yuan, with Douyin still ranked first among live-streaming e-commerce platforms. During last year's '6.18' period, live-streaming e-commerce had a cumulative sales volume of 184.4 billion yuan.
While the industry is experiencing steady growth, leading live-streaming platforms have also shown outstanding performance. The number of Taobao Live streaming rooms that reach 100 million yuan in sales increased by 53% year-on-year, which generated 34 experts and 47 shops that achieved 100 million yuan in sales. In the food and fresh sector, live streaming has become a new growth pole. As of June 17th, the sales growth of food and fresh products during the Tmall promotion hit 261%.
"Although the overall market growth is weak, the growth of live streaming e-commerce is more prominent, but it has not met market expectations," Wang Ying told the Securities Times reporter. Since this year, brand merchants have shifted from traditional e-commerce platforms to live streaming channels, and some white-label products and agricultural and sideline products that were previously restricted on comprehensive e-commerce platforms have promoted the growth of live streaming e-commerce. However, this has also brought some problems, such as irregular management of live streaming stores. Against this backdrop, the number of live streaming stores that Douyin and Kuaishou have shut down has increased, indicating that live streaming e-commerce needs to further regulate store management to ensure the healthy development of the market.
This year's "6·18" saw traditional veteran e-commerce platform JD.com continuing to increase investment in live streaming e-commerce. It launched a digital president and a digital AI avatar live streaming to boost sales volume.
Data shows that during JD.com's "6·18" period, the volume of live streaming orders increased by more than 200% year-on-year. Hundreds of brand presidents landed in JD.com's live streaming rooms. Related live streaming rooms showed a significant increase in sales. At the same time, more than 18 brand founders and CEOs transformed into AI digital people using JD.com's cloud technology to go live on JD's platform. JD's digital person went live in more than 5,000 brand live streaming rooms. The accumulated time of digital person live streaming is over 400,000 hours, with a total view count over 100 million and an interaction frequency over 5 million.
"AI and digital human technology have become a trend in the e-commerce field, especially during the '6·18' and other major promotional periods. These technology applications help reduce labor costs and operating expenses and are expected to become the direction of industry development." In Wang Ying's view, with the advancement of technology and the improvement of cost-effectiveness, AI and digital human technology will become important marketing tools. Platforms will promote these technologies to more store live streaming rooms by opening permissions or providing technical support, thereby improving user engagement and conversion rates.
"AI technology will definitely become popular in live streaming sales. In the long run, generative AI will become the absolute foundation of the content industry." Well-known economist Pan Helin also told reporters that live streaming sales' user growth has slowed down, and the industry has tended to mature. The user traffic of live streaming sales in the future will be a stock competition. Live streaming sales practitioners will improve their competitiveness by reducing costs and increasing efficiency. Generative AI is an important technology for practitioners to enhance competitiveness.
Deeply involved in instant retail
This year's "6·18" e-commerce festival, instant retail platforms were deeply involved, providing full category goods, while improving delivery efficiency. The integration of online and offline has become another feature.
Before "6·18," JD.com announced that its instant retail business, JD Instant Delivery, has completed a comprehensive upgrade and proposes a shopping experience that delivers within 9 minutes, which has also been regarded as a major action by JD.com. JD Instant Delivery currently covers more than 2,300 counties and cities nationwide, with over 500,000 cooperative stores and coverage of all categories of goods.
The latest data shows that during JD.com's "6·18" period this year, the average delivery time for orders increased by 19% year-on-year. Nighttime orders after 8 pm increased by 56% year-on-year. The order volume of 3C accessories ordered through JD Instant Delivery increased by 177% year-on-year, sports and outdoor supplies increased by 166% year-on-year, and office supplies increased by 219% year-on-year.
Technology-oriented retail platform Meituan also continued to increase investment in "6·18" promotion. Recently, Meituan launched the "6·18" year-end celebration, offering a series of discounts, including big brands at 50% off and maximum discounts of 2,200 yuan, involving its Meituan takeaway, Elephant Supermarket, and Meituan Buy Medicines and other instant delivery business entities. On June 7th, Meituan Flash Purchase and Suning.com issued a joint statement, announcing the launch of the "fastest delivery and installation of air conditioners within 2 hours" service. The first batch of services will land in 98 stores.
Previously, Meituan's data showed that this year, offline stores in many industries such as digital home appliances, beauty, personal care, daily necessities, clothing, shoes, bags, pet supplies, and maternal and child toys in various regions of the country participated in the "6·18" activity through instant retail. From June 8th to June 10th, daily average transaction volume of digital home appliances merchants on the platform increased by 135% year-on-year, daily average transaction volume of daily necessities and clothing merchants increased by 95% year-on-year, and daily average transaction volume of pet supplies merchants increased by 85% year-on-year.
Industry insiders believe that the instant retail model has provided assistance for merchants to expand their business scale and improve operating efficiency. It has also stimulated the advantages of physical stores in service capabilities, performance certainty, and other aspects. Looking to the future, physical merchants will utilize digital tools such as instant retail to continuously reduce costs and improve efficiency. Their good operational performance during the "6·18" period will also extend to daily life.
In fact, the broad development prospects of instant retail have become a consensus. The "2023 Instant Retail Development Trend White Paper" shows that instant retail is a new blue ocean in the online and offline markets. It is expected that the market size of instant retail will have an annual compound growth rate of 25% from 2023 to 2030. It is expected to increase to 3.6 trillion yuan by 2030, accounting for 6% of the total retail sales of social consumer goods during the same period.
Many platforms have witnessed significant growth in relevant orders. Taking Meituan as an example, on June 6, the company released its Q1 report, showing that the core local commercial business of Meituan realized revenue of 54.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 27%. Among them, the number of instant delivery orders on the platform increased by 28% year-on-year to 5.46 billion in the first quarter; Meituan Flash Purchase maintains a high-speed development trend. The daily average order volume in the first quarter reached 8.4 million, and annual active users and transaction frequency both achieved strong growth.
"Instant retail has deeply participated in the '6·18' promotion this year. Its performance growth is mainly due to the large-scale expansion of stores and distribution networks in second-tier and new first-tier cities. This is also a miniature of the normal development of the retail industry. During the whole year, instant retail and other new retail formats are expected to maintain steady growth. Overall, the growth of instant retail is seen as the foundation of a stable development of the industry. It, as a supplement to physical retail, provides consumers with more choices and convenience," said Wang Ying to the Securities Times reporter.
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