Have you seen the movie Cats & Dogs? This fight also took place in the Chinese mid-year big promotion for real! The 6.18 shopping festival takes place each year at this time in China and has become the most significant development not only for the Chinese market but also for foreign brands. 6.18 The Shopping Festival takes its name from the date of June 18, the day of the establishment of the second e-commerce company in China after Alibaba, JD.com. The most interesting thing is that the logo of Tmall is a cat, and the symbol of JD is a dog, so today's Chinese e-commerce market competition is very similar to the movie Cats & Dogs.
Retail sales have risen significantly since the pandemic outbreak and 6.18 sales outpaced the previous year. Starting with the bell at midnight on May 24th, the 6.18 shopping festival in 2021 began with both of Tmall and JD issuing coupons and pay deposits. The impact of COVID-19 has subsided and the dust on the anti-monopoly investigation has settled, making the mid-year promotion in 2021 quite interesting.
So far, the total turnover of Alibaba’s Tmall has reached RMB 698.2 billion from June 1st to June 18th, an increase of 27.7% over 2020; JD.com reached around RMB 343.8 billion from June 1st to June 18th, 3 times its sales in 2020. A total of 1700 international brands reached transaction volumes over RMB 1billion in past 25 days, including La Mer, Esata Lauder, Nike, Huawei, Apple, IKEA, Walmart, Sam’ s Club etc.
Both the ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ adopted another strategy to reviving its economy, planting digital coupons with purchasers to encourage spending on everything from shopping to luxury merchandise. For coupons, Tmall's 10 billion coupons and customer appropriations will boost purchaser eagerness for shopping. As a competitor, JD also released 5 billion digital coupons for consumers. For brands and merchants, it is the best chance to enhance their reputations and gain sales in the principal half of the year.
Different Strategies of ‘Cats’ & ‘Dogs’
Tmall (‘Cats’): Maintain a high brand tone, focusing on luxury goods and new brands
Tmall’s 618 shopping festival this year continued the practice of last year’s 11.11 shopping festival. The pre-sale period will be advanced. The first wave of pre-pay started on the evening of May 24. The final payment started from June 1 to June 6th. The cycle extended to 25 days.
JD (‘Dogs’): Continue omni-channel strategy
The 618 shopping festival for JD.com’s keywords were user experience, partner growth, social value, and slogans such as "over 90% of hot-selling products enjoy price protection services", offered to help 120,000 small and medium-sized brands in sales. The goal of doubling the growth and surpassing RMB 100 million in sales of 230 brands.
JD.com announced that it will create a new content eco-system with live streaming, short videos, and image-text. This means that in addition to continuing to focus on live streaming and infographics, short videos have also become a form of communication for JD.com's key layout.
The winning sales strategy in China - Live Streaming
According to the the results of live Streaming, the total amount of living sale during the 618 shipping festival in 2021 is as high as 64.5 billion RMB.
Tmall Live is the lead live streaming channel of Alibaba Group and has seen its gross product volume develop by 150%. This accomplishment can be credited to the way that Tmall Live has a dedicated portal for matching brands with livestream anchors such as KOLs to promote products.
During the 618 shopping festival of 2021, brands have stepped up the use of new retail technologies to improve the shopping experience, including live streaming. More than 15,000 physical stores and 60,000 retailers joined to livestream on Alibaba’s TaoBao and Tmall so far.
JD.com partnered with popular short-video platform Kuaishou to enhance its livestreaming capacity. Around 100 well-known Chinese KOLS promoted JD.com products on Kuaishou. Audiences on Kuaishou could purchase JD.com’s products directly through the Kuaishou app, as well as enjoy quick delivery and after-sales services provided by JD.com.
The 6.18 shopping festival this year is continuing
The biggest feature of 6.18 shopping festival in 2021 is that it will be continued till June 20th. Besides, there are still more shopping festivals in the second half of year.
818 Fever shopping festival on August 18th-
Back-to-school sales campaigns & member-exclusive discounts
9.9 Wine Festival from September 1st to 11th
The number “9” has the same pronunciation as wine in Mandarin. In this festival, e- commerce offers deals for Chinese Baijiu, and other wine.
Singles’ Day/Double Eleven on November 11th
November 11th is the date for Alibaba’s annual mega sale, which has now become the largest shopping festival around the world.
'Red Friday' - Black Friday in the US
Chinese shoppers get used to buy discounted foreign products from Xiaohongshu (“Little Red Book”), Kaola, Tmall global and JD Global.
Power Your Brand in China
Chinese consumers typically spend lots of their time for online shopping and during these shopping festivals. That is why the e-commerce market in China provides abundant business opportunities. However, the competition of Chinese e-commerce is stiff, it will be difficult for new brands to launch. The cross-board companies should learn some Chinese marketing strategies to be well developed. SODA Global Marketing provides one station marketing and sales service, which includes China company registration，Chinese social media marketing, Chinese Press Release and Public Relations, and Chinese E-commerce listing and distribution. If you want to learn more about e-commerce marketing in China, please visit our website at www.soda-global.com, and contact us at sales@soda-global.com for consultation.
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