---
title: "Deep Dive: What's the Difference Between Li Jiaqi and the \"Quack Doctors\" of TV Shopping?"
description: "This article compares the current trend of influencer marketing on platforms like Douyin with the historical phenomenon of TV shopping, arguing that both share the same underlying logic of live-stream selling but differ in transaction efficiency. It warns that without proper governance, influencer marketing may repeat the mistakes of TV shopping, leading to false advertising and low-quality products, while emphasizing the importance of top salespeople and the role of intermediaries."
author: "苗庆显"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2019-10-31"
categories: "E-commerce & Instant Retail, Management & Methods"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/deep-dive-what-s-the-difference-between-li-jiaqi-and-the-quack-doctors-o-807477e8/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/deep-dive-what-s-the-difference-between-li-jiaqi-and-the-quack-doctors-o-807477e8.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/MP_FG7k3-tb2KxVTei4-QA"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E6%B7%B1%E5%BA%A6%E8%A7%A3%E6%9E%90-%E6%9D%8E%E4%BD%B3%E7%90%A6%E4%BB%AC%E8%B7%9F%E7%94%B5%E8%A7%86%E8%B4%AD%E7%89%A9%E7%9A%84-%E7%A5%9E%E5%8C%BB-%E5%9D%90%E5%A0%82%E6%9C%89%E4%BB%80%E4%B9%88%E5%8C%BA%E5%88%AB-807477e8.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/deep-dive-what-s-the-difference-between-li-jiaqi-and-the-quack-doctors-o-807477e8/"
citation: "苗庆显. “Deep Dive: What's the Difference Between Li Jiaqi and the \"Quack Doctors\" of TV Shopping?.” New Distribution, 2019-10-31. https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/deep-dive-what-s-the-difference-between-li-jiaqi-and-the-quack-doctors-o-807477e8/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Deep Dive: What's the Difference Between Li Jiaqi and the "Quack Doctors" of TV Shopping?

> This article compares the current trend of influencer marketing on platforms like Douyin with the historical phenomenon of TV shopping, arguing that both share the same underlying logic of live-stream selling but differ in transaction efficiency. It warns that without proper governance, influencer marketing may repeat the mistakes of TV shopping, leading to false advertising and low-quality products, while emphasizing the importance of top salespeople and the role of intermediaries.

**-01-**
A few days ago on the subway, I sat opposite two eye-catching young men. One was very fat, taking up more than two seats, with holes in his jeans that could fit an average person's waist. They looked around seventeen or eighteen to twenty years old, presumably of school age. Based on their dress and demeanor, they seemed to be what people call "town youths" (no offense intended; I myself come from a rural village in a small county, now a middle-aged country bumpkin).
The chubby guy was on the phone: "Help me find some influencers on Douyin who sell products, selling FMCG... FMCG is those little things that sell fast..." Then he spent several minutes explaining what "FMCG" meant, and finally, unable to clarify, he said, "Let your boss talk to me," followed by more requests.
My curiosity was piqued, and I wanted to ask him after his call, but he got off at the next stop while still on the phone. I didn't follow him due to other commitments, which I regretted.
Coincidentally, the next day, Ren Huiyuan, a beautiful senior reporter from *Sino-Foreign Management*, asked me a few questions: 1. Influencer product promotion, 2. Data fraud, 3. Strict regulation. The core was still about influencer product promotion.
This reminded me of a recent call to my elderly mother in a remote rural area of Shandong. Since she got a VIVO smartphone, she often watches online videos, mainly on Kuaishou, watching various oddities and also product sales (she probably hasn't bought anything; she doesn't know how to use mobile payments).
I also chatted with friends in e-commerce operations and training, and their recent focus is also on influencer product promotion.
I realized this is truly significant. From authoritative professional media to frontline practitioners, to town youths and elderly left-behind in remote villages, everyone is paying attention.
In forty years of reform and opening up, and thirty years of market economy, no marketing method has attracted so much attention in such a short time.

**-02-**
To talk about influencer product promotion, we must start with live-stream selling.
About twenty years ago, a brother in the health products industry would get up at five in the morning, ride his bike to the radio station in winter winds and summer rains, to do live broadcasts. Starting at six, he would give a twenty-minute lecture, then take listener calls for ten minutes.
There, he was a professional and caring "doctor."
He sold a Class II medical device. Each broadcast sold a few units, sometimes dozens, and more during promotions. It was said that in a Xinjiang event, thousands were sold at once.
Nationwide, the company had hundreds of such radio "doctors" (broadcasters), and with them, the therapeutic device once achieved annual sales of over a billion yuan (the company's financials were not public; sales figures are industry rumors, possibly understated or vastly overstated, but the device was famous at the time).
In 1998 (my memory is fuzzy), Guo Liwen of Haci created a new marketing method: buying a ten-minute TV ad slot (sometimes longer) to promote the Haci Five-Element Needle. This ten-minute segment resembled a video lecture: "experts" explained the product's principles and usage, did live demonstrations, and users testified.
A brand-new concept, product, and idea—what many marketers now call "consumer education"—was hit on the head by Haci. With the success of the Five-Element Needle, Haci went public and later launched V26, becoming a star company.
After Haci, this ad format evolved into TV shopping. Products expanded beyond health products to cosmetics, jewelry, phones, clothing, furniture, home textiles, even stamps, books, collectibles, and educational products.
Last year's hot tea brand Xiaoguancha owner Du Guoying and the controversial Hongmao medicinal liquor owner Bao Hongsheng both started with TV shopping products like Back-Back-Jia and Tingmei underwear.
TV shopping also produced giants like Oak and Seven Star. The "Eight Hearts, Eight Arrows" Hou, and "Dr. Liu" who was both Mongolian and Miao doctor, treating rheumatism, diabetes, and everything else, were also TV shopping products.
Although TV shopping was pre-recorded, it gave viewers a "live" feel, using extensive product demos and testimonials to compensate for the lack of experience in regular ads.
Besides TV and radio, there was newspaper shopping. The *Yangtze Evening News* had a "Yangtze Health House" supplement that sold "big health" products and was once very popular.

**-03-**
**Let's look at two aspects: why was media shopping so popular back then, and why did it decline?**
We often say traditional media is like a loudspeaker, centralized, lacking interaction, and the shopping channel and information channel are separate. You see an ad and feel moved, but by the time you go to buy, the impulse is gone.
Media live shopping was the first to solve this problem.
Both radio and TV shopping solved the deep product experience issue, made users feel involved, and allowed them to order quickly while emotions were high, thus connecting information dissemination and transaction. From this perspective, **traditional media live shopping was true "new retail," reorganizing the traditional field, goods, and people into people, field, and goods.** But why did traditional media shopping fail? Data suggests TV shopping companies dropped from thousands to just over three hundred. TV shopping never reached even 1% of total retail sales before hitting consecutive limit-downs, while in some developed countries, TV shopping accounts for about 10% of retail sales, sometimes exceeding e-commerce. Media shopping is also an intermediary or an intermediary platform.
**Let's return to what Professor Kotler said: the eight functions of intermediaries: information, negotiation, promotion, ordering, payment, financing, physical possession, and title transfer.**
We've discussed that the advantage of traditional media shopping was connecting information to transaction, but the disadvantage was clear: **low transaction efficiency.** Users had to call in, clarify details (high customer loss rate), then remit money, and TV shopping would ship (mostly via post when express delivery was underdeveloped).
Pay-first caused distrust from users, ship-first caused distrust from sellers (this is why Alipay is great).
Efficiency issues could be solved with technological progress, but trust issues from vicious games were hard to reverse. First, look at media platforms: most media lacked commercial genes and were institutional, viewing from an ad slot perspective: "How much can I earn from ads in this half-hour? A TV shopping program must not make me less than ads, or I can't report."
Also, the time slot is limited; whoever pays more gets on.
Bidding always accompanies sin. Media shoppers weren't stupid; they chose the path of "short, flat, fast" and "low risk." Short, flat, fast meant selling products with strong concepts and high profits, focusing all efforts on concept packaging, i.e., hype and exaggerated claims.
TV shopping operators often bought goods at about 10% of retail price or less. With such margins, what good products could there be? Besides producing various quack doctors and hype, product quality deteriorated, and TV shopping became synonymous with fake products and exaggerated advertising.
TV shopping hosts, scripts, video production, and call centers formed a professional industry, and outsiders couldn't understand the tricks (it's said most have now moved to Douyin live selling). The so-called low risk meant constantly switching products, registering new companies, getting shut down and starting anew, with one reputation ruined and another starting fresh.
When regulators cracked down, TV stations suffered first.
**For effective management, large TV shopping companies today are either media-owned or media-incorporated. For example, the still-influential Oriental Shopping, CCTV Shopping, Happy Go, and Haoxiang Go. This industry has lost its original vitality.**

**-04-**
The essence of Taobao and Douyin influencer product promotion is live-stream selling, which is consistent with traditional media live shopping at the fundamental level, though its scale and influence are far from reaching the heights of TV shopping.
Compared to traditional media live shopping, influencer product promotion has greatly improved transaction efficiency: you see it, you like it, you order immediately, and it ships immediately, making up for past shortcomings.
But the contradictions and games among platforms, suppliers, and operators (the influencers themselves) are no different from before.
The design of rights and responsibilities and the professionalism of manufacturers (suppliers), distributors (influencers), and platforms (Taobao, Douyin, Kuaishou) are a continuation of the past, so they will still follow the old path of TV shopping, perhaps even worse, becoming new hubs for false advertising and concept products.
It's just that before, female hosts shouted "Oh my god!" on TV; now male hosts coo "Oh, My God" online.
Currently, the most welcomed by platforms and influencers are low prices, lower prices, lowest prices, and concepts, concepts, concepts.
The recent "Zhang Yuhan incident" exposing Weibo traffic fraud involved a "high-tech" product with a magical concept.
And before this year's Double 11, Li Jiaqi, known as the "No.1 product promoter," performed a "non-stick pan that stuck" live, a direct failure.

**-05-**
Those who are anxious about "thousands of orders in a minute" or "sold out in ten seconds" and those idealists who think good content alone can make Douyin selling work have yet to understand three things.
**First, Li Jiaqi and his ilk are not replicable. They are products of channel dividends and survivors of a massive selection process.** Platforms gave them traffic support in the early days, which you won't get.
If you use them to promote your products, the traffic is in their hands, the influence is in their hands, and consumers buy based on their influence, not your product. That means they create the value, so they should take all the profits, and you get nothing.
**Second, good content builds relationships but doesn't directly drive sales; otherwise, Tencent would easily crush Alibaba.**
Just as early Taobao stores needed Taoke to succeed, Douyin selling now requires Douke. Of course, even with Douke, you might not succeed; you might just encounter fake orders, but without it, you definitely won't.
On Douyin, besides top influencers, we often see accounts with few followers but strong selling power; these are usually operated by Douke.
From traditional offline wholesale, distribution, agency, and retail, to online Taoke, WeChat business, Douke, influencer product promoters, Xiaohongshu community experts, and now community group buying "leaders," these are essentially the "intermediaries" that have been said to be eliminated for years. They lack professionalism and often end up as leeks, but they are the most important force driving commercial development.
As Professor Kotler said, **"Intermediaries are the main source of commercial power."**
**Third, influencers can sell because of their sales ability, not their traffic.** Lu Han selling online would definitely not outsell Li Jiaqi; Li Xiang, who charges 800,000 for five minutes, sold zero products.
I often emphasize that sales requires talent; most people are not suited for it, including myself. An ordinary person can become a decent salesperson through hard training, but true sales masters are several times, dozens of times better than ordinary people, and when amplified online, the difference can be tens of thousands of times.

**-06-**
What does a truly top-notch salesperson look like? In over twenty years of marketing, I've encountered few.
In cosmetics companies, sales associates are called BAs. Previously, BAs were usually young women, but in recent years, they've mostly become handsome young men. The best BA at one cosmetics company was a retired doctor surnamed Pan, a killer-level ace.
Where others closed a dozen deals a day, Dr. Pan would close at least a hundred. Previously, when the company recruited new distributors, after a month, they'd send Dr. Pan to do events, and sales would soar, boosting distributor confidence.
The most amazing thing was that a franchise store with serious location issues had Dr. Pan do an event; not a single customer entered the store all day, but she managed to sell to the surrounding shop owners.
I personally witnessed that after an event, we went to dinner, and while waiting for the dishes, she sold two products to the waiter.
Yes, Li Jiaqi and his ilk are such salespeople; they are Dr. Pan put online. I've carefully observed Li Jiaqi's videos from a sales technique perspective, and they are truly impeccable—rhythm, timing, emotion, urgency, affinity, judgment, and technique application are all excellent.
In the past, even the best salesperson could only reach a limited number of customers a day, but live-stream selling online infinitely amplifies their abilities.
So, whether you plan to run Douyin selling yourself or find influencers to promote your products, remember: **it's not the influencer selling, but a top salesperson selling, a top salesperson using online traffic to live-stream sell.**

**-07-**
**Conclusions and Outlook:**
1. The underlying logic of influencer product promotion is not traffic logic but top salesperson live-stream selling. It needs to be understood from two aspects: live-streaming and top salesmanship.
2. Media live shopping has existed for a long time. Its advantage is directly connecting information delivery and purchase. Its flaws were low transaction efficiency (now solved) and the tendency for suppliers, platforms, and operators (influencers) to engage in vicious games, turning live-stream platforms into hubs for low-quality products and exaggerated claims. Currently, there is still widespread fake ordering and data fraud.
3. Top salespeople's impact is amplified online. As intermediaries, their core function of "promotion" is established. Top salesperson influencers may evolve into personal IP-based distributors. In the future, it will definitely become more professional and institutionalized, becoming a true IP channel brand.
4. Current influencer product promotion looks lively but is actually small in scale, mainly low-price sales, with average reputation, mostly unbranded products, similar to early Taobao shops, which were later overtaken by branded products.
5. For influencer product promotion operations, emphasize content creation but also value the role of Douke; "intermediaries are the main source of commercial power."
6. Chasing so-called channel dividends with a selling mindset is a form of "commercial banditry" (a concept proposed by Mr. Chen Minying). If you rely on others for value, you won't have profits; you'll just create excitement and then be harvested by platforms and big brands, making wedding dresses for others.
For suppliers, creating product value and brand value is your top priority. Products without value won't sell elsewhere, and they won't sell with short videos either. If you can't swim, changing pools won't save you from drowning.
7. For influencer product promoters, moving toward IP-based new-style distributors is the development direction. As natural top salespeople, they have strong competitiveness in the core function of promotion, but how they choose products, judge market trends, continuously build personal IP brands, and determine cooperation relationships with platforms and suppliers are key indicators of their sustainable development.

Source: Laomiao Marketing Button (ID: yiheyingxiao)
Tips will be paid 400-2000 yuan upon adoption.
**China FMCG + Internet Professional New Media**
**Dedicated to FMCG manufacturer transformation and channel digital solutions**
**Copyright | Business Cooperation | Project Consulting | Reader Submissions**


---

## Citation metadata

- Publisher: New Distribution
- Author: 苗庆显
- Published: 2019-10-31
- Canonical: https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/deep-dive-what-s-the-difference-between-li-jiaqi-and-the-quack-doctors-o-807477e8/
- Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/MP_FG7k3-tb2KxVTei4-QA

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671