E-commerce has so many advantages. It has no opening and closing times, no waiting lines or the pressure of those waiting for you to finish. You can look calmly, compare, change your mind a hundred times, put in and remove from the cart and browse again, add and change quantities without anyone seeing you. Sometimes, however, you can feel a little abandoned: chats and bots can help you, but the feeling of being alone, rather than free, can become heavy for many people.
Will we be forever shopping alone like this? Of course not, on the contrary, this has not been the case for a while in China. Live shopping in China was born in 2016 and has evolved through the interaction and participation of millions of users. Basically, we are talking about a live broadcast with functions that allow shopping and interactive chat – one of the many sales methods that have become even more popular during the pandemic. Like many solutions born in a time of crisis, it seems to be here to stay and could become the new dimension of e-commerce.
A less static e-commerce
Today in China, buying online has become pure entertainment. E-commerce as we know it with product pages and photo galleries is already considered a static model in the country as it does not offer any experience accompanying sales.
In 2020, live shopping sales generated €115 billion in turnover in China and now account for more than 10% of the volume of all e-commerce transactions in this market.
In the Live section of Taobao, the most popular e-commerce platform in China with 800 million active users every month, you can find everything from the sale of animals and puppies to the farmer who sells you the orange by picking it from the tree or to the fisherman who shows you how he catches fish in real time. But the categories for which live shopping works best are food & beverage, cosmetics, jewelry, clothing and accessories – including luxury. It is no coincidence these are the sectors in which consultancy or chat with the salesperson can make a significant difference.
Live shopping examples to inspire your own
Walmart
In December 2020, when consumers were hesitant to go to stores, the brand tested Live shopping on TikTok. Fashion items sold at Walmart were featured in content from ten TikTok creators, led by mega influencer Michael Le, whose dances on TikTok have earned him more than 43 million fans.
After the success of this first manoeuvre, Walmart continued to experiment with live shopping on other platforms. Last year, the company became the first retailer to test Twitter’s Live shopping feature as well.
Moving further into live shopping, the American retail giant announced in February that it has expanded its partnership with the live-shopping platform Talkshoplive and that regularly scheduled content will be available on its live shopping site: Walmart Live.
The Laundress x John Mayer
Last year, The Laundress hosted a live shopping event with John Mayer. The Instagram livestream featured a conversation between one of The Laundress’s CEOs and John Mayer, while also showing a laundry detergent associated with John Mayer’s name.
Li Jiaqi
As the biggest beauty influencer in China, Li Jiaqi has a great power among his millions of followers. According to TechNode China, in one of his streams he sold 5,000 translucent powders in just 1 second. 30 million people watched the show, and all of the products sold out in 30 seconds, thus setting a new record.
Maybelline x Angelbaby
Cosmetics brand Maybelline decided to launch a new lipstick in China with live shopping on the Taobao mobile shopping platform. During the live broadcast they introduced their new representative, Angelbaby. The audience could purchase the product with just one click. Nearly 6 million people watched the event live and Maybelline broke its sales record on Taobao.
Live shopping has met the ever-increasing need to shop in peace and enjoy the moment – without having to carefully go through product descriptions and static photos for hours, especially in times of coronavirus. But even without the restrictions of the pandemic, the numbers show that live shopping continues to lead to far more sales than traditional e-commerce.
With the increasing number of e-commerce software, live shopping is expected to become increasingly relevant for almost any brand or retailer. In most cases, additional features are easy to integrate if you already have social media pages and an online store. And if you’re starting e-commerce from scratch, it’s good to start thinking about live shopping as part of your e-commerce strategy right away.
Will you follow these examples to sell big in 2022 and beyond? If you have read this far, do not forget to leave your comment below telling us what you think!