Financial Association News | Xin Consumer Daily October 10th News, (Researcher Liang Youyun) This year's november 11, e-commerce platforms seem more anxious.

During the National Day holiday just ended, major platforms took swift actions. On October 10th, WeChat has opened the direct payment of internal Taobao product pages in the app, without the need to switch to the Taobao app. PDD Holdings announced that starting from October 8th, the first round of subsidies for this year's november 11 shopping festival has been launched; JD.com also announced the launch of limited-time and limited-quantity product price reduction activities on October 8th. It is also reported that PDD Holdings will follow up with low-price subsidies, and it is expected that the "Buy Expensive and Get Refunded" activity will start in mid-October. In addition, TikTok announced the presale of this year's november 11 shopping festival starting from October 8th.

This year's e-commerce november 11 shopping festival, with the blessing of e-commerce platform "interconnection", has ushered in new changes and increments. It not only breaks barriers to payment and logistics access but also begins to work hard to please merchants, seeking stable growth in the november 11 "battle".

In the race to kick off the november 11 shopping festival, there is not the earliest, only the earlier.

Reporters noticed that on the eve of the National Day holiday, mainstream e-commerce platforms such as Taobao Tmall, JD.com, PDD Holdings, TikTok, and Kuaishou all launched november 11 promotional activities with merchant discounts. However, what's different this year is that major e-commerce platforms are more eager in promoting the opening of this year's november 11 shopping festival, generally significantly advancing the start of this year's major promotional sales and presale time.

Among them, the first to announce the early start of the november 11 shopping festival was Kuaishou E-commerce. At the Merchants Meeting on September 19th, Kuaishou E-commerce announced that the platform will enter the november 11 preheating period on October 16th, and will officially start sales on October 18th. Compared to last year, Kuaishou's november 11 presale and official sales started only 3 days earlier.

At the subsequent JD.com Merchants Meeting, JD.com changed its delayed sales strategy from 2023, significantly advancing the start of the november 11 immediate sales to October 17th, with the official promotion starting on October 31st, one week earlier than last year.

Meanwhile, Taobao has changed its previous strategy, and since the beginning of this year, optimizing the business environment has become an important development focus for Taobao and Tmall. Leading up to November 11 shopping festival, Taobao has already introduced a series of measures to reduce merchants' operating costs. On August 9, they took the first step in relaxing the strict "refund only" policy, officially launching the optimized "refund only" strategy for all merchants.

Data obtained by reporters shows that two months after the new strategy was implemented, Taobao intercepted over 0.4 million unreasonable "refund only" requests per day on average, effectively curbing this behavior on the platform.

At the end of September, Taobao and Tmall announced at a trade fair that this year's November 11 shopping festival will start on October 14. It is reported that this year's event will have three major stages: the first round is the pre-sale, with the first round final payment expected to end by the end of October, and the second and third rounds are expected to be similar to previous years, with targeted promotions for different product categories and a grand promotion across all categories in the final round.

As for Douyin, although its November 11 trade fair started later, its major promotion began "far ahead of time".

According to promotional materials, in 2024, Douyin's "November 11 Goodies Festival" will enter the early promotion phase on October 8 and officially start the promotion on October 18. In comparison, in the lead-up to November 11, 2023, Douyin's pre-sale started on October 15.

It is worth mentioning that PDD Holdings did not actively promote its investment incentives for November 11, but there have been no shortages of promotional activities. As early as a month ago, PDD Holdings introduced the "Billion Reduction Plan" for merchants and recently expanded the subsidy scope from participating platform promotional activities to most merchants.

After the sudden announcement of the official start of the November 11 shopping festival, PDD Holdings revealed that in the coming days, the platform will launch activities like "double subsidy" and "compensation for overpriced purchases" on top of the first round of "billion subsidies".

Looking at the trend of competing for the start time of November 11, compared to previous years' decline in the appeal of large promotions, there is a more apparent anxiety about performance from all sides in the 2024 November 11 shopping festival.

Although this year, many e-commerce platforms have indicated that they will not concentrate their efforts on pursuing the lowest stock price across the entire network, the trend of focusing on cost-effectiveness and high-quality goods continues to be the main focus during major promotions, with the true "major battle" for consumers and merchants still centered around pricing power.

E-commerce logistics extends to non-free shipping areas.

While announcing the promotion in advance, the "logistics" support is also progressing in sync. Around the National Day holiday, multiple e-commerce platforms have successively announced upgrades and increased logistics investment, expanding the logistics coverage.

Leading the way in occupying the "non-free shipping areas" is pdd holdings. In early September, pdd holdings announced that it would offer logistics transfer fee reductions for orders transferred to remote areas, with the platform bearing all logistics transfer fees incurred by merchants delivering goods in remote areas such as xinjiang, tibet, gansu, ningxia, and inner mongolia. This logistics discount, combined with the reduction in platform merchant service fees, has garnered considerable attention and positive feedback from merchants.

In the mature mainland market, the logistics cooperation between jd.com and pdd holdings has moved towards reconciliation. It is reported that in early October, Taobao Tianmao is expected to officially join jd.com's logistics system, providing convenience for platform merchants in logistics choice and inventory management. At the same time, JD Express can access the Cainiao Express system, and settling in Cainiao stations will serve as collection points.

It is worth noting that in the Hong Kong market where e-commerce penetration is low and logistics infrastructure is still being improved, the competition between the two remains fierce.

At the end of September, Taobao and jd.com successively announced plans to enhance the logistics distribution services in the Hong Kong region.

Specifically, starting from October 1st, Alibaba plans to invest 1 billion yuan to provide a three-month "free shipping for orders over 99 yuan" service to the Hong Kong area, expanding from fashion to most small and light items. It is reported that for the headache of Hong Kong consumers being unable to return mainland goods, Taobao will mark items that are returnable and actively negotiate reductions in taxes and postage. Although most e-commerce products currently do not support returns from Hong Kong, this has to some extent addressed the after-sales pain points for certain products.

On the one hand, attracting Hong Kong consumers to download and use Taobao for shopping to provide new volume to the platform; on the other hand, the automatic pickup cabinets and pickup points behind the free shipping activities also lay the foundation for the platform to deepen into the Hong Kong market and increase the area's e-commerce consumption penetration rate. Data shows that the number of Cainiao self-pickup points and self-pickup cabinets in Hong Kong has increased to 800, doubling from before, and it is expected that the total number of pickup points and cabinets will exceed 1,000 by the end of the year.

Compared to Alibaba's gradual progress, JD Express is moving faster. JD.com is expected to invest 1.5 billion yuan to enhance its layout in the Hong Kong market, while also investing in product price subsidies, logistics subsidies, and service optimization.

In the lead-up to the 2023 november 11 shopping festival-related, JD Logistics Hong Kong and Macau Logistics Centers have been officially put into use, enabling full local handling of logistics transportation, sorting, and distribution processes, serving both local home delivery and cross-border customs logistics. During this year's 618 shopping festival, the first supply chain industrial base of JD Logistics Hong Kong was completed, expanding more complex and diverse storage areas to meet various logistics storage needs. With logistics support, JD's sales volume in the Hong Kong and Macau region increased by 300% during this year's 618 shopping festival.

Facing the upcoming november 11 shopping festival, JD will launch a self-operated product in Hong Kong with free delivery service for orders over 299 yuan (free shipping for 10KG), and eligible orders can achieve next-day delivery as soon as possible.

Whether it's the large-scale advance marketing campaigns, enhanced logistics services, or the upcoming payment interoperability and channel interoperability, the prelude to the november 11 shopping festival-related has already heated up with the "silent battle" behind the scenes in areas that consumers are not yet aware of.