How Powerful Is the Purchasing Power of Chinese Consumers?
There are still three more weeks before China’s annual mega Singles’ Day shopping event on November 11, but one of China’s top live streamers has already made a sales of $1.7 billion US dollar in a promotion this Wednesday as a warm-up for the event.
Austin Li (李佳琦), widely known as China’s “King of Lipstick” in China, sold over 10.65 billion yuan worth of goods during a 12-hour, 26-minute livestream on the Taobao Live platform on Oct 20. Products sold range from Shiseido skincare to Apple’s AirPods. Li’s sales sets a record for any show livestreamed on Alibaba’s Taobao online marketplace according to Bloomberg.
Sales of another popular live streamer Viya’s (薇娅) live broadcast on the same day also reached 8.25 billion yuan at her 14-hour marathon. The two sold an amazing total of 18.9 billion yuan even before the actual Singles’ Day kicks off. The result has gone viral on Chinese social media.
Participation sitewide was so enthusiastic that Alibaba’s Taobao shopping app crashed temporarily during the nationwide pre-order event.
“Shopping Livestreaming” is a combination of variety show, infomercial, and group chat — a format pioneered in China that’s grown more popular since the pandemic started.
In the same period last year, the transaction volume of Austin Li’s & Viya’s live broadcast were 3.521 billion yuan and 3.329 billion yuan respectively. The surge has reflected that Chinese consumer’s spending enthusiasm for Double 11 has highly increased.
Beauty and Skin Care Products Is The Best-Selling Category
“Normally we have about 20 million views a show daily, but we got 250 million today, all the girls, where are you emerging from?” Li said in a Weibo post.
According to Taobao live broadcast data, on the evening of October 20th, Austin Li’s live broadcast room had a total of 439 products on the shelves.
The category sold best was beauty and skin care products (total sales volume of 7.224 billion yuan). The second-best selling category was cosmetics/perfume/beauty tools (total sales volume of 1.044 billion yuan). Third on the list was home cleaning / personal hygiene products (total sales volume of 399 million yuan).
That’s why a lot of global brands are leveraging the vibe of Double 11 to market to the Chinese consumers especially the lady’s segment.
Has Your Brand Taken Advantage of this Big Marketing Opportunity?
Singles’ Day for Chinese is comparable to Black Friday in North America. Despite the pandemic, China’s shopping platforms racked up record-breaking sales of $115 billion on Single’s Day last year, far exceeding Amazon’s $4.8 billion in sales from 2020’s Black Friday through Cyber Monday. This is not only big inside Mainland China but also one of the biggest shopping events for overseas Chinese.
Eastward Media helps different brands put together the most effective Chinese digital marketing strategies to create special connections with this group of powerful consumers. Double 11 is one of those best timings when their buying intent is the highest. Contact us to find out how.
Also stay tuned to our next blog on more about Double 11!
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