Only half of the products are at their lowest prices throughout the year! The reason why this year’s “Double Eleven” was deserted was found

Baidu Index shows that the popularity of "Double Eleven" is getting worse every year. Its search volume peaked in 2017 and has declined year by year since then.

This year can be called a "freezing point". The peak search volume dropped by 60% compared with the same period last year, and it is far from the peak level of attention.

In 2019, the average duration of "Double Eleven" related topics on Weibo's hot search list reached 464 minutes, which is nearly 8 hours.

This year, it dropped sharply to half, with the average duration being less than 3 hours.

Moreover, the hottest topic is "Is it unsaleable on Double Eleven?" 63% of netizens even believe that "Double Eleven has no need to exist and has lost its original meaning."

Why is “Double Eleven” becoming more and more deserted? We captured relevant discussions on Weibo topics, with a total of more than 2,800 comments, and found the following reasons.

Discount promotions are everywhere throughout the year, desensitizing consumers to Double Eleven.

In the captured Weibo discussions, words related to desensitization such as "boring", "every year", "every day", etc. were mentioned repeatedly. This shows that in the face of "Double Eleven", consumers' mentality is becoming more and more negative, and they are less susceptible to the influence of platform marketing and make impulsive consumption behaviors.

The most typical one is like the netizen "Sparrow Flying to the Flagpole". He said, "Now there are activities every day. There are anniversary festivals, pet festivals, snack festivals, and other festivals that you can't think of. There is no festival that they can't make."

The reporter made statistics on the 2023 discount arrangements on the Tmall platform and found that almost two-thirds of the days were included in various shopping festivals. In addition to the most typical "Double Eleven" and "618", various seasonal swaps and holiday specials fill daily life.

Moreover, in addition to full-site promotions, there are also many discounts for specific vertical categories during specific periods. For example, in March, the Tmall platform had promotions almost every day. In addition to the 3.8 Renewal Week, there are also promotions for food, sports, digital home appliances, home decoration, beauty, clothing and other single categories. Promotions include half price for the second item, official instant discounts, 30 off for every 300 spent, etc.

In addition to the ubiquitous discounts, live streaming sales have also reduced the appeal of "Double Eleven" to a certain extent.

Netizen "Huahua Sanmi" said, "Watching the live broadcast every day, there are discounts, and I bought everything I needed to buy. It is no different from Double Eleven."

Judging from the data, live streaming has indeed attracted more and more people.

According to data from the "Dianshubao" e-commerce large database, the live broadcast market is growing in size and the number of participants is increasing.

The live broadcast e-commerce market size this year is expected to reach 4,565.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 30.44%. Compared with 2017, the market size has expanded by 232.47 times. The number of users also reached 540 million this year, a year-on-year increase of 14.16%.

It is expected that the per capita consumption of consumers on e-commerce platforms will reach 8,660 yuan this year, a year-on-year increase of 17.03%, almost 29 times that of 2018.

The reason why "Double Eleven" was highly discussed in the early days was mostly due to its scarcity. But when discounts and promotions became routine, consumers no longer looked forward to it. As netizen Mr. Huang said, "If you miss Double Eleven, there is Double Twelve. You can also buy it on New Year's Day, you can also buy it on 618, there are various 520s on weekdays, and there are even activities on Qingming Festival. There is no shortage of this shopping festival."

This year, the main focus of major e-commerce platforms is "low prices."

JD.com has set the theme of the Double 11 promotion as “really cheap”, while Tmall has set the theme as “the lowest price on the entire network”. And compared with the previous two years, this year’s “Double Eleven” preferential policies have been streamlined a lot. There is no need to stay up late to grab coupons, and there are not many hazy rules.

Among the more than 3,000 comments captured, 30% of netizens are still complaining about the current preferential measures. Keywords such as "troublesome", "unwanted", routine, and complicated appear in the discussion.

They complained that “it’s too troublesome to collect orders with full discounts”, that “there are too many routines and they are too lazy to calculate”, or that “it is too troublesome to stay in the live broadcast room and pay the deposit and balance in batches”.

Netizen "Luluu" complained, "Who still remembers that Double Eleven originally offered half-price formal wear? It's simple and saves money. Nowadays, there are no discounts for the thousand-layered routine."

So, does the platform really achieve the “lowest price” as they say?

The reporter selected 225 "Double 11" best-selling products from the three major comprehensive e-commerce platforms of Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo in 24 major product categories, and compared the prices of the products with the historical price inquiry platform "Slowly Buy". All time low price.

Data shows that the prices of many commodities are indeed lower than the lowest price in history. Among them, Tmall’s low-price products accounted for the largest proportion, reaching 53%.

Judging from the 225 hot-selling products sampled, discounts on luggage, furniture and equipment products are relatively large. On all three platforms, the prices of “Double Eleven” products were lower than or equal to the previous historical lowest prices.

But there are still nearly half of the products left, and the discounts are actually limited.

For example, a "butt basin" for babies with a large sales volume, using the data of lazy price comparison, it can be found that the current price is 25 yuan, but in August this year, this product only cost 4.5 yuan.

Finally, among the captured messages and comments, “no money” was the most popular one. Almost a quarter of the content is about this.

On the topic "Is it impossible to sell on Double Eleven?", the comment with the highest number of likes was the comment from netizen "I didn't say anything about you" and "I don't have money, I don't want to buy it, I can save it and still use it." This comment It was recognized by more than 8,000 other netizens.

From a more macro perspective, according to the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, although the total retail sales of consumer goods continue to recover, there is still the problem of insufficient demand.

Especially for products such as furniture, construction and decoration, affected by factors such as the property market, the year-on-year growth rate of retail sales of products by enterprises above designated size is still negative.

The overall lack of consumption power will certainly affect the "Double Eleven". But on the other hand, online consumption is actually considered the “eldest son among the dwarfs”.

According to monitoring data from the State Post Bureau, from November 1st to 4th, the cumulative collection volume across the country was 2.027 billion items, a year-on-year increase of 16.1%, setting another record high.

Preliminary calculations show that the average daily collection volume from November 1 to 4 was 507 million, compared with only 388 million last year and 425 million in 2021, both lower than this year's situation.

On the other hand, is the recovery of online retail sales.

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, as of September this year, the cumulative online retail sales of physical goods reached 9,043.5 billion yuan, a cumulative increase of 8.9% year-on-year.

The growth rate has been significantly improved compared to last year. The growth rate in the same period last year was only 6.1%.

Among them, consumers are more willing to spend money on food. The "eating" category saw a larger increase, with a year-on-year increase of 10.4%, while the "use" category saw a limited increase, at 8.5%.

Therefore, although this "Double Eleven" seems deserted, the data of postal express delivery and online retail sales of physical goods have increased.

The fact that the discussion is not very popular is not because consumers are unwilling to consume, but because they have more considerations about "joining in the fun".

In short, in the 15th year of the "Double Eleven" promotion node, how to maintain its appeal to consumers is a question that major e-commerce platforms need to think about, and they also need to rely on the general environment.