The booming live streaming e-commerce in China

 

Nowadays, live streaming is a most powerful and cost-effective way to enter China’s massive market as it can help brands connect with their audience in new and innovative ways.

With a real-time connection, customers can learn about the function of products directly from experts. Most importantly, they can ask questions and receive explanations instantly, giving customers just a taste of shopping with brands in the real world, which will certainly bring credibility to brands, traffics to their websites and drive more sales. The entertaining and immersive shopping features lure viewers to spend more time on shopping unconsciously.  Thus it win against traditional shopping model that people simply  browsing  shopping websites online as sometimes their consuming impulsion are frustrated by the boring shopping experience. More consumers switched to this new shopping model. Live streaming is becoming mainstream.

China’s Live streaming e-commerce industry is developing rapidly and has enormous potential to become the norm for Chinese e-commerce. The following bar graph depicts the consistently growing live streaming e commerce sales in China from 2019 to 2023.

What is sold on livestreams ?

According to a McKinsey analysis, apparel and fashion is the leading item in livestream platforms, which is followed by cosmetic and beauty, food products and electronics showed in the following chart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Everbright Securities, iResearch, McKinsey analysis

New trend in livestream-content is the key!

 

In June 2022, Dong Yuhui, a New Oriental teacher ,soared to popularity in social media as he introducing steaks in both Chinese and English, which was different from other livestreammers that simply yelling how low the price of the product is. He charmed audiences with his broad knowledge base in Engligh, literature, philosophy etc., and greatly drive sales. He notched up a record sale of daily revenue of RMB 69.85 million (US$ 10.29 million) in June 2022.Since then, “content and knowledge-based” livestreams became the main direction of effort for brands.

 

Choose the right live streaming platform for your brand

Three leading platform for live streaming in China are Kuaishou, Douyin, and Bilibili.

 

Douyin live-streaming app that conquered China

Known as TikTok outside of China, Douyin has been one of the hottest short-video apps in China this year. According to Statista,  in 2022, Douyin reported having 86.8% of its users streaming live content in China, whom spend at least 89 minutes watching videos on the platform per day. Many top brands around the world such as Dior, Gucci, LV, Balenciaga are capitalizing this trend by opening official brand accounts, cooperating with Douyin influencers, and expanded their brands and sales vigorously.

 

Kuaishou: the king of live-streaming in China?

 

With 300 million daily active users, Kuaishou is certainly the biggest competitor of Douyin. It depicts the everyday lives of its users, especially rural app users.

In contrast to Douyin ,the majority of its user base consists of people living in third or fourth-tier cities, which is suitable to business that target at ordinary users who create original videos. Kuaishou’s live-streaming e-commerce business is around 1 year behind the same function on Taobao in size, making the platform the most promising marketing channels.

Bilibili: China’s fastest growing live-streaming

 

Bilibili started as a video service for anime fans is increasingly being described as China’s closest equivalent to YouTube. Currently, with the 130.3 million monthly active users and 8.8 million paid subscribers, it’s one of the fastest-growing social platforms in China, with a vibrating community among China’s Generation Z which brands can’t afford to ignore.

Please visit our website www.domatters.com and contact us to get professional tips on how to launch effective live streaming campaigns in China.