Can the Douyin 818 Shopping Festival Convince Consumers to Shop on Douyin?
ByteDance, the parent company of short video platform Douyin, has great ambitions to develop Douyin’s role in China’s e-commerce industry. It launched flagship stores on the platform earlier this year and went all in for this year’s 618 shopping festival.
To drive even more consumption on the platform, Douyin has created its own shopping festival: 818 (August 18). It is sandwiched between China’s two major shopping festivals, 618 and Double 11. The first-ever 818 shopping festival was last year, right after Douyin launched e-commerce features on the platform. So this was Douyin 818’s second year.
How Did the Douyin 818 Shopping Festival Perform This Year?
The 818 Shopping Festival on Douyin lasted from August 1 to August 18. Its main format was e-commerce livestreaming. Throughout the course of the festival, there were a total of 23 million hours of live streams, among which 11 million hours were from brand-run livestreams.
177 livestreams surpassed 10 million RMB in sales and 8 of them made it to 100 million RMB. Together, the total sales from the Top 100 livestreams during 818 reached 9.1 billion RMB in sales.
Compared with last year, where the total sales for the entire festival were 8 billion RMB, Douyin 818 has made great progress this year!
Top Live Streamers
Who was the live streamer that achieved the best result during 818? No surprise here. It was Luo Yonghao (罗永浩), founder of Smartisan, a technology company. Luo was one of the first celebrities/CEOs to do e-commerce live streaming on Douyin and he drew a lot of attention in his debut stream when he achieved 110 million RMB in sales. Sine then, he has become a popular streamer on the platform.
Following Luo, the next two top streamers were two male celebrities: Zhu Zixiao (朱梓骁) and Jia Nailiang (贾乃亮).
New Changes for This Year’s Douyin 818
Below are new changes in the event’s format as summarized by Today (今日网红), a livestream monitoring platform.
Change No.1: Prices are lower than Taobao
Main types of discounts during the 818 shopping festival were fan coupons, flash sales, and bonuses for newcomers. Adding these discounts, prices could be way lower.
For example, Ulike’s hair removal tool, with the original price of 2,499 RMB, was only 1,599 RMB in the livestream during 818. Its usual price on livestream was 1,769 RMB. That’s a good deal to buy it on 818.
Another type of hair removal tool whose original price was 2,499 RMB, was sold at 1,699 RMB on 818, which was the same price as on two top live streamers Austin Li and Viya’s livestreams. Usually Austin Li and Viya claim to have the lowest prices.
Other stores, such as apparel brand EGGKA, which requires Taobao users to pay 8 RMB shipping fee doesn’t ask the same thing for Douyin users during 818.
Changes No.2: Live performance by celebrities
To create buzz and grab as much as attention as possible for the 818 shopping festival, Douyin spent a large amount of budget to create a concert for its users (kind of like Alibaba’s 11.11 gala). Many top celebrities were invited, together with video calls with several Tokyo Olympic champions.
Other than the entertainment part of the gala, there were live streams with celebrities going on. In total, the gala has over 80 million viewers that night.
Changes No.3: 10 billion RMB in subsidies
This is very similar to Pinduoduo, an e-commerce platform known for its extremely low prices. By clicking “My Orders” (我的订单), users can see a page with lists of products that are subsidized with discounts from Douyin. Many of them were food & beverage, digital products, and books.
Will Douyin’s 818 Become the Next Double 11 Or 618?
It may. But there are already many e-commerce shopping festivals filling up the year, it is challenging for Douyin to create buzz and achieve the same scale that either 618 or Double 11 does.
And it seems like at the moment the goal of 818 is really to drive consumers to develop the habit of shopping on Douyin, not to create a shopping festival that will rival the big ones. The subsidies and discounts may convince consumers to make their first purchase on Douyin, or to buy more expensive items on Douyin for the first time, but will consumers continue purchasing on the platform after the festival is over? And besides that, what did Douyin do differently in this festival that makes it stand out from the other major shopping festivals? There wasn’t much innovation when it came to the festival content or shopping experience.
Read more: 亲测，抖音818真的会比淘宝双11便宜吗？
