“Live streaming is a safe and exciting way for us to do that.” Josie Zhang, president of Burberry China, has said. From LV to COACH, luxury brands big and small have never stopped exploring live streaming in the past two years.
Live e-commerce has become a mainstay in China
During the epidemic, China’s live-streaming industry has become an important platform for economic recovery, and the “live-streaming with goods” consumption model has accelerated the transformation of China’s real economy into a digital one.
Data shows that in 2021, the overall size of China’s live e-commerce industry exceeded 1,201.2 billion yuan, and by 2022 the size of China’s online live streaming users will reach 660 million people, covering live games, live shows, live lifestyle, live e-commerce, etc. The size of China’s MCN market has reached 43.2 billion RMB, while the “Netflix economic system” is also increasing significantly, which has driven China to be a global leader in the e-commerce live streaming industry. With the development of China’s e-commerce system mature, the number of netizens and traffic have reached a certain scale, “live broadcast + e-commerce” model and become a major windfall in the Chinese market business development.
The rise of the e-commerce industry in China cannot be separated from the development of online shopping, which has become an important channel of daily consumption for Chinese consumers. The online shopping has become an important channel for Chinese consumers’ daily consumption. The mode of selling products through KOL live online brings consumers a more intuitive and vivid shopping experience. During the “Double 11” period, the short video platform “Jitterbug” e-commerce accumulated 25.46 million hours of live broadcast, the total number of live broadcasts 39.5 billion times, 577 brands turnover exceeded 10 million, 282 live broadcast rooms broke 10 million. There are many other Chinese e-commerce platforms like Douyin, which have a huge user base and have certain user advantages in live streaming with goods.
3 big luxury brands’ attempts
Observe the live broadcast in China’s major platforms, not only can you see the 9.9-yuan package of small goods, but more can also see thousands of dollars of trendy brands. The positioning of luxury goods in everyone’s heart is – high cold, not easy to approach, but in the Chinese market, also opened their own live road.
LV’s live debut in Little Red Book.
In May 2019, LV made its commercial cooperation with Xiaohongshu as the first luxury brand to be stationed there. So far, the search for LV in the Little Red Book station appears 370,000+ notes, and LV’s first cooperation in 2019 #LoveLVChainBags topic has 48 million+ views as of now.
On March 26, 2020, Louis Vuitton offered its commercialized live debut at Little Red Book. The style of the live room is summer beach, all the elements are playing the “LV” logo, the theme of the issue is LV summer collection bags and clothing series goods. Half an hour after the broadcast, Louis Vuitton’s live broadcast room was ranked first on the “Live Hour List” on Xiaohongshu, with a live broadcast room popularity value of over 6 million and an interaction rate of 33% for the entire broadcast. This is the first time since LV entered China that it has used the Internet platform to live-stream the introduction of new products for the new season.
French luxury brand Chloé officially entered Tmall
In May 2020, Chloé, a French fashion brand owned by Richemont, has officially entered Tmall Luxury Pavilion and opened its official T-mall flagship store at the same time.
At the same time, Chloé will also start its first official live broadcast on May 19, 2020 at 8pm in the midst of the domestic live streaming boom. On the eve of 520, Chloé invited astrological expert Uncle Alex to be the guest of the official luxury live broadcast as the host of the first broadcast. “Alex is an uncle” will explain the horoscope of different signs and recommend different items. The model next to him is responsible for showing the effect of the products on the body. The whole live broadcast had more than 20 products on the shelves, including clothing, backpacks, accessories, etc. The number of viewers in the live broadcast reached 62,000, and users could place orders directly through the shopping cart in the live broadcast. In the “post-epidemic era” when luxury goods are accelerating online and ushering in booming development, Cloe has tried just like LV.
COACH officially entered the live e-commerce in KuaiShou
Coach has already had three major live broadcast platforms, Taobao, douyin and kuaishou and the live broadcast during Labor Day 2022 has been throughout the holiday. Coach as a light luxury brand, live positioning has been very pro-people, they will send coupons, lotteries and discounts and giveaways from time to time in the live broadcast to attract traffic.
For international brands, the attractiveness of Kuaishou’s e-commerce is increasing. 2021, Kuaishou’s annual gross e-commerce transaction (GMV) reached 680 billion yuan, up 78.4% year-on-year, ranking at the forefront of the live e-commerce industry.
How to better leverage China’s “Live Streaming with Goods”
For brands, it seems to be important to find the right rhythm for their own live broadcast, so what do you need to do on live broadcast if you want it to be more relevant to Chinese consumers?
- Reasonable use of Little Red Book account
The luxury crowd in China tends to be younger, 40% of luxury consumers are below 30 years old, and this group of them contributes 42% of the luxury consumption amount. As an important platform for Chinese young people’s consumption, Xiaohongshu mainly gathers post-90s and post-95s. Therefore, the Xiaohongshu platform gathers many potential luxury consumption users and could influence users’ decisions.
Louis Vuitton live broadcast in Xiaohongshu (instagram of China) seems to be a good example. another reason for choosing Xiaohongshu is that it is the closest platform to consumption in Xiaohongshu community products, generating more than 7 billion times of notes exposure every day and forming a platform advantage in categories such as beauty and travel. Little red book live, the platform has a large number of high-quality bloggers, they have a large number of fans, fans of the anchor’s high viscosity, the brand joint little red book bloggers way, can better absorb only private domain traffic. So from the characteristics of the live broadcast, the little red book in the customer unit price, conversion rate, there are obvious advantages.
- Focus on Chinese e-commerce platforms – T-mall and Taobao
Why your brand must pay attention to T-mall luxury and Taobao online stores, because Taobao is the originator of China’s e-commerce industry
It is the largest e-commerce platform in China. Tmall Luxury is the key service that combines live streaming trends and user engagement. Chinese consumers love live streaming services, and they can buy your products directly on the e-commerce platform. The path to purchase is simpler and more convenient.Having a T-mall Chinese page better enhances Chinese consumers’ trust and awareness of the products. Coupled with the fact that it is cheaper to buy products live, it also further promotes the consumer’s desire to buy and better boosts the conversion rate of live streaming as well as the frequency of viewers’ purchases.
- Build your E-reputation in China
E-reputation is the perceived quality and status of a brand or company on Chinese social media and online channels/platforms, which is important for companies doing business in China. Many consumers in China rely on online reviews and word-of-mouth when making purchase decisions, so your reputation on the Internet can go a long way in influencing Chinese people’s decisions. You will then need to build your own Chinese page on Baidu before you enter the Chinese market, create communities on platforms such as Post, Zhihu, etc., post interesting content to generate discussion and organize online collaborative events to accelerate interaction that can effectively promote your brand and drive Baidu rankings so that more people can search for your brand keywords.
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With the digitization of Chinese society and the constant updating of new marketing tools, live e-commerce is an emerging thing that increasingly meets the needs of young consumers in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, with a greater focus on consumer upgrades in lower tier cities.
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