Throughout the year, the e-commerce industry experiences two carnivals: the first half of the year's "618" shopping festival and the second half's "Double 11". At these times, keywords such as "Shopping Festival Plus Shopping Guide" and "No-Growing-Commission 618 Shopping List Sharing" always attract a large amount of attention. As an industry with extremely strong sales capabilities, live streaming e-commerce not only allows for a comprehensive display of products and different shopping experiences for users but also shares brand creative concepts with them through live streaming. Anchors communicate daily life with fans, share their favorite items, and also build closer social relationships.
Recently, the live broadcast by Dong Yuhui in the live shopping channel of Oriental selection has gone viral and become a sensation. It has shown people that selling products can be combined with knowledge, making it a 'fresh breeze' in the live streaming industry. During the live broadcast, there are not only 'bilingual' live shopping sessions, where internet jokes are told, but also discussions on art, history, philosophy, etc., using classics to imbue products with meaning. This refreshing approach has changed people's perception of live shopping in the past.
The live e-commerce industry ecosystem is gradually improving, and it has achieved rapid expansion in the past few years.
As of the end of 2020, the cumulative number of registered live e-commerce-related enterprises in China was about 8,800, a 360.8% increase compared to 2019. During the same period, the number of online anchors in the industry had reached 1.234 million.The industry has gradually shifted from a profit model that solely relied on traffic dividends to one that relies on the entire ecosystem dividend. With the continuous increase in the penetration rate of mobile internet in China, online live streaming, especially online live streaming e-commerce platforms, has developed rapidly.
Calculated by transaction volume, the scale of China's live streaming e-commerce platform industry grew from 36.7 billion yuan in 2017 to 1.8829 trillion yuan in 2021. Affected by the pandemic, various industries have gradually introduced 'live streaming + e-commerce' plans, which will further increase the scale of live streaming e-commerce platforms.It is estimated that the scale of China's live streaming e-commerce platform industry will exceed 6 trillion yuan in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate of about 26.6% over the next five years.
Data source: Analysis by Frost & Sullivan
Behind the success of live streaming e-commerce, the supply chain system is indispensable.
Currently, some leading live streaming influencers have strong e-commerce capabilities. Apart from the attractiveness of the anchors themselves, their success is mainly supported by a complete supply chain system.
For example, live streaming clothing sales. In the era of fast-food culture, some clothes become outdated after being worn and photographed, saying 'last year's clothes don't fit me anymore.' Consumers tend to get tired of clothes that have been worn a few times, which places higher demands on merchants' speed of new product launches. Due to the rapid update and iteration of products, from once every month or 2-3 months with dozens of products each time, it has developed into updates every 7-10 days. With hundreds or thousands of clothing styles, if each item is mass-produced, merchants face the risk of inventory accumulation that cannot be handled. Therefore, online influencers mainly use sample clothes provided by factories during live streaming sales, and then mass-produce based on consumer add-ons and orders. This is why some clothing sales pages display 'pre-sale.' Nowadays, many influencers have moved to locations closest to the supply chain to ensure stable supply, such as Hangzhou, which is a city where an MCN agency accounts for more than half of the country's total, gathering a large number of influencers. They select products at bases and establish their own supply bases.
Image source: Internet
Star live streaming e-commerce vs professional live streaming influencers
In addition to inviting professional live streaming internet celebrities, brand owners also invite many stars to live stream and sell products in their live rooms. Nowadays, more and more stars have entered live streaming rooms. For example, Procter & Gamble uses various live streaming methods to fully showcase the brand's charm. In an official live broadcast, Procter & Gamble invited the SNH48 girl group to launch a live event themed 'Fan-led, Star-coordinated'. Each user could vote for their idols by interacting with them or purchasing designated products in the live room, while the brand rewarded viewers with various benefits such as general election tickets. Under Procter & Gamble's SKII brand, they also held a live event themed 'Reclaiming Dreams, Rewriting Fate', inviting popular celebrity guests such as Xue Zhiqian and Ma Siyuan to live stream and talk about their dreams at the Great Wall. The sincere sharing of this live broadcast resonated deeply with many users.
The reasons behind anchor-driven sales and celebrity-driven sales are different. Anchor-driven sales appeal to audiences who value discounts and gifts more, while for celebrity live streams, it is the fans who cheer for their favorite stars, pay for products recommended by their idols, and support them that drives consumer sentiment.Whether domestically or internationally, 'buying the same product as the star' is a powerful driving force for consumption.
"I endorse the products of my province" to promote rural economic development
With the rise of live streaming e-commerce, many provinces have also started a wave of product-selling activities. Many secretaries and county heads have entered live streaming rooms to endorse thousands of specialty agricultural products. For example, the deputy secretary of the Huimin County Party Committee in Shandong has been live streaming for three hours, bringing over 30 kinds of goods and selling more than 39,000 eggs, 7,500 sticks of corn, over 3,000 pounds of garlic, and 26,000 pounds of mushrooms; there was also a live stream by the mayor of Sanya where he sold 60,000 pounds of mangoes, and the vice mayor of Qingyang sold 20,000 pounds of apples. This kind of 'endorsing local products' live streaming has, to some extent, helped boost the sales of high-quality agricultural products, promoted their supply, and also driven the development of rural economies.
In the era of internet celebrity economy, the booming live streaming e-commerce industry has driven millions of people into employment. As a new social division of labor, live streaming has created a new employment model where everyone can participate.
The new live recruitment model has solved the pain points of traditional recruitment methods and is rapidly gaining public attention in recent years.
In addition to the more well-known form of live streaming for e-commerce, there has recently emerged a very interesting sub-sector in the live streaming industry - 'live streaming job placement'. The emergence of this type of live streaming is mainly due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020. Inspired by live streaming for e-commerce, many provinces have started new attempts at live streaming job placement, which has greatly helped in solving employment issues during the pandemic. Live streaming job placement mainly targets the recruitment of blue-collar workers' positions. Unlike traditional recruitment models, to meet the needs of the blue-collar group, 'live streaming recruitment' only requires leaving contact information and does not require submitting resumes to complete job applications.
In March this year, the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau of Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, jointly held an online special recruitment fair for enterprises titled "Good Years Gather in Fuzhou" 2022 with the human resources and social security departments of six key labor-exporting provinces in central and western China, including Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and Chongqing. This live recruitment brought together nearly 22,000 job openings from nearly 500 key enterprises in Fuzhou, and invited several key enterprises such as Fuguang Co., Ltd. and Feimaoche (Fujian) Electronics Co., Ltd. to introduce job requirements and salary levels in the live broadcast room. During the event, 21 sub-venues within and outside the province attracted 2.455 million online viewers, with 4,531 people expressing employment intentions. In addition to the government's active organized live recruitment, there are also some professional live recruitment platforms in the market, such as "Weizan Live Recruitment," "KuaiZhaong," and "Gangji Direct Recruitment," etc.
The main reason why live job postings have received widespread attention is that they solve the pain point of information asymmetry for traditional blue-collar workers when looking for jobs.Due to the nature of their work, blue-collar workers usually live in factories or temporary dormitories built next to construction sites. Therefore, when looking for a job, blue-collar workers need to consider not only job requirements but also accommodation and dining conditions at the cafeteria. These details are less available on traditional recruitment websites, making it difficult for blue-collar workers to have a comprehensive understanding of factories and industrial parks when job hunting. Although many labor intermediary agencies have solved some of these problems, due to the long recruitment industrial chain in this industry, there are inevitably some unscrupulous intermediaries in the market. Job seekers find it difficult to distinguish the reliability and authenticity of information on their own, greatly increasing the cost of job hunting.
The emergence of live job interviews has effectively solved this pain point. For example, anchor HR can introduce factory environments, dormitory conditions, and cafeteria facilities to job seekers through live broadcasts. This type of live broadcast can comprehensively display daily life and work conditions for job seekers, and it can also answer their questions in real time. When there is no live broadcast, anchors can post videos about factories on the platform to allow job seekers to learn more about the overall situation of the park.From the perspective of protecting the rights and interests of job seekers, live recruitment companies and intermediaries on live streaming platforms must have complete licenses and certifications, including business licenses and human resources service permits. At the same time, the credit endorsement of anchors further guarantees the interests of job seekers. By setting these two thresholds through platforms and anchors, a portion of fake enterprises can be screened out from the job market, significantly improving the efficiency of blue-collar workers in finding employment.
In addition to live job placement, the live streaming industry has recently developed into more and more new directions. For example, it has evolved from traditional brand-driven live shopping broadcasts to overseas consignment live shopping broadcasts where anchors can lead viewers through real-time shopping selections. Additionally, some highly specialized knowledge-based anchors can live stream to answer fans' questions about specific professional fields.
Speaking of professionalism, one cannot help but mention the recently popular live streaming room of Oriental selection under New Oriental Online.From June 10th to 13th, within just four days, the GMV of the Oriental selection live streaming room exceeded 70 million yuan. As of the afternoon of June 16th, the fan base of this live streaming room had exceeded the one million mark. At the same time, affected by the live streaming room, the stock price of New Oriental Online increased by 100%.Teacher Dong Yuhui's sincere and pure emotions touched many netizens. He started by introducing ordinary rice but immersed the audience in the story of 'ten years of life and death, separated by vast distances; after you left, I can no longer eat rice with the same taste as before.' 'As a former teacher and now online seller, I am fortunate, honored, and duty-bound to convey knowledge, make people enjoy reading, and ultimately love life. In this vast sea of people, you are also here.' Whether it's for sentiment, dreams, knowledge, or just products, we probably already have the answer in our hearts at the moment we place an order in the live broadcast room.However, the business model that pays for sentiment is not sustainable. How to continuously and stably produce content, shape value in the later stages, and control product selection after a trend spike are all issues that need to be considered during live streaming sales.
The development of live streaming in niche areas has not only made people's lives, work, leisure, and entertainment more convenient, but it has also shown us new ideas for industrial development in the context of the digital age, as well as another possibility for communication and connection between people.
