Why is the festive atmosphere of the Chinese New Year fading? Going home for the Spring Festival and reuniting with family is the most ritualistic scene in every Chinese person's heart. The Chinese Spring Festival spans from the twelfth lunar month to the first month of the new year. During this period, people enjoy various foods and fun activities, visit relatives and friends, and reward themselves after a year of hard work. The Spring Festival customs, passed down for thousands of years, are a sentiment flowing in the blood of Chinese people. After the reform and opening-up, due to the large number of people working away from home, we even created the world's unique "Spring Festival travel rush" because of this festival. Before New Year's Eve, it's the warm-up phase for the Spring Festival, with the biggest highlight being "preparing New Year goods." According to statistics, a Chinese person's spending during the Spring Festival accounts for about one-quarter of their annual consumption. However, in recent years, the festive atmosphere seems to be fading, and people have lower expectations for the New Year shopping festival. Is it because Chinese people's longing for home and desire for reunion have diminished? Obviously not. The core reason is that China's economic activities are becoming increasingly modernized, leading to conflicts with traditional ways of celebrating the New Year that are hard to reconcile. First, most working people only have a 7-day holiday for the Spring Festival. Young people don't have much time to prepare New Year goods before the festival. Second, as China's economy develops, most goods are readily available in daily life. During the New Year shopping festival, if there is a lack of products that are both festive and eye-catching, users naturally have lower expectations and enthusiasm. Every Chinese person has an indelible attachment to the traditional Spring Festival, but modern economic activities make it difficult to celebrate in traditional ways. How can we rekindle users' enthusiasm and expectations for the New Year, especially the New Year shopping festival? How can we let users experience the charm and joy of the traditional Spring Festival in modern and diverse ways? This is a common call from society and users' hearts. The 2022 Douyin E-commerce New Year Shopping Festival is a practice that stands out. From January 1 to January 16, the entire festival connected merchants and users through multiple innovations, becoming a new model for e-commerce New Year shopping festivals in recent years. From Activities to Products: Recreating a Festive Online New Year Market What are users' deepest memories of the New Year from childhood? Going to the market, wearing new clothes, pockets full of candies and snacks, eyes wandering over various local snack stalls; returning home to the aroma of mother's home-cooked dishes, grandparents' kind smiles; running around with friends, setting off fireworks and firecrackers, and receiving small red envelopes from adults... To touch people's hearts, a New Year shopping festival must have the ability to "transcend time and space," bringing users back to that simplest, most festive era. In this regard, the design of the Douyin E-commerce New Year Shopping Festival shows great effort. During the entire festival, the major activity sections include "Hometown New Year Goods," "Ace Live Streams," "Top 100 Brands," "Good Products Live Streams," and "Ranking Competitions." Just from the dazzling array of activities, it gives a sense of being overwhelmed, like in the past when visiting a market to prepare New Year goods. First, starting from "festive flavor," they made it fully festive. The most important thing for New Year goods is the festive flavor; only with hometown flavor can it be called the New Year. Douyin E-commerce made "Hometown New Year Goods" a key section, cooperating with commerce and agriculture departments in various regions to create special "Hometown New Year Goods Festival" sessions. Using authentic hometown New Year goods, they instantly evoked users' emotions. Not only that, to provide users with a more realistic immersive experience, Douyin E-commerce invited the most representative local influencers in different regions to interact with users in live streams and recommend local good products. When users enter their hometown's live stream, hearing familiar local accents and seeing familiar hometown products, their memories of home are evoked both visually and audibly, bringing back the carefree and joyful feeling of celebrating the New Year. For those who cannot return home for various reasons, it is a great emotional comfort: tasting hometown flavors makes it feel like the New Year no matter where you are. During this festival, the composition of festive goods was comprehensive, including local mountain products, dried goods, specialties, ingredients, local snacks, and even fresh produce. Second, starting from "tradition," they delved deep into tradition. The Spring Festival is China's most traditional festival, and Douyin E-commerce went deep and thorough in this dimension. Among the festival's products, not only were there edible New Year goods, but also numerous intangible cultural heritage inheritors and their products, time-honored brand specialty foods, and handicrafts, all invited to the live streams. Users wandering through could truly feel as if they had traveled back home, experiencing it firsthand. Third, in terms of interaction, they designed many interactive activities full of festive flavor. Users could, while browsing the festival, trigger surprises like "setting off firecrackers" and "grabbing red envelopes" in various live streams and activity sections, and even invite friends and family to participate through "sending greeting cards," as if celebrating the traditional Spring Festival in a parallel world. Data shows that during the festival from January 1 to January 16, the cumulative live stream duration on Douyin E-commerce reached 31.71 million hours, with cumulative views of 42.4 billion. The hashtag #抖音好物年货节# (Douyin Good Products New Year Festival) had 44.5 billion views. Swipe left or right to view images. Among these, Douyin E-commerce cooperated with 23 provinces (autonomous regions, municipalities) nationwide, driving sales of 3.019 million orders of local good products. During the festival, 319,000 seasonal agricultural products were launched, with sales of fresh agricultural specialties increasing by 420% year-on-year. Clearly, through the most festive products and activity designs, Douyin E-commerce successfully created a touching and unique online New Year shopping festival. Why Can Douyin E-commerce Create a Touching New Year Shopping Festival? Why can Douyin E-commerce create a New Year shopping festival that touches people's hearts? First, use passion to create a touching New Year shopping festival. Why have previous festivals become increasingly bland? Because users have lost expectations and passion. In traditional shopping methods, whether online or offline, the New Year shopping festival uses product prices as the selling point. As is well known, Douyin E-commerce's DNA is based on "interest." Interest represents passion; it is proactive and a warm emotion. The act of preparing New Year goods is clearly driven by strong emotions, not price benefits. Therefore, with interest as the core and driven by intense passion, this is one of the reasons the Douyin E-commerce New Year Shopping Festival deeply moves consumers. And interactive activities full of festive flavor and warmth, such as setting off firecrackers, grabbing red envelopes, and sending greeting cards, give users an immersive New Year experience, achieving the goal of touching hearts. Second, only by truly finding the New Year goods users need can we truly touch their hearts. In the Douyin E-commerce New Year Shopping Festival, we can see tens of thousands of products, all centered around the core point of "celebrating the Spring Festival." Chinese people's Spring Festival has many similarities, but New Year goods show significant regional characteristics and differences. So, from the user's perspective, Douyin E-commerce chose the harder path: searching nationwide to find and build regionally distinctive products. From finding specialty products, connecting with local departments, finding scattered influencers, and establishing clear quality and service standards, every step is complex. Judging from the results, Douyin E-commerce's efforts were clearly worthwhile. Third, comprehensive "Worry-Free Shopping" guarantees are the most critical firewall for the festival. For users, the entire shopping process before, during, and after the festival needs to exceed expectations, which is the core condition for whether they place orders and make repeat purchases. In the entire business ecosystem, the platform is often the last line of defense for user rights protection. In terms of rights protection, Douyin E-commerce provides users with 16 "Worry-Free Shopping" services, including "7-day no-reason return," "shipping insurance," "price protection," "authenticity guarantee," "compensation for late delivery," and "real treasure." Only passion can create passion. Without passion, there is no craftsmanship, and no touching good products can be created; without passion, users will not give creators more recognition and support, and creators cannot survive; without passion... The 2022 Douyin E-commerce New Year Shopping Festival was a touching festival created with passion by the supply side, demand side, and platform together. Are you "watching" me?