As livestream e-commerce stabilizes, we intuitively feel the industry's in-depth development, and the track is undergoing essential changes: deep media changes influence and shape people's consumption habits, also bringing new growth curves to retail. From the era of telephone, TV, and computer, to the deepening and diversified development of mobile, livestream and short video have risen rapidly, and 'people, goods, and scenes' have undergone profound changes. Online consumption is gradually extending from previous purposeful consumption to scenarios like browsing while buying, and merchants face increasingly complex operational needs. Integrating content e-commerce and shelf e-commerce, from quick purchases triggered by content to long-term repeat purchases brought by search and mall, a big fusion era has arrived, and omni-channel has become the general trend. How to operate omni-channel and extend the full lifecycle of consumers to achieve certain growth in today's uncertain environment? How can new positions, tools, and play methods open new growth space for brands? 01 Look at the essence behind the data: The rise of interest e-commerce The foundation of business is 'people, goods, and scenes'.

People: consumers; Goods: products; Scenes: sales scenarios. Among them, changes in scenes are rapid. In 2021, short video usage time surpassed instant messaging, becoming the industry occupying people's online time for a longer period, with growth momentum still ongoing. Where attention goes, people go. Marshall McLuhan once proposed in 'Understanding Media' that media is like an extension of the human body, such as TV as an extension of the eyes, telephone as an extension of the ears... The extension of tools inevitably leads to changes in lifestyle and consumption habits. We see that traditional e-commerce is essentially a new consumption channel relying on the new medium of the internet. With the maturity of 3G, 4G, 5G, and mobile internet, short video and livestream have become one of the media forms people spend the most time on, occupying more of users' online attention, thus becoming a better way to precisely reach users. How big can a business become depends on whether it can capture new traffic and also make new traffic return to find you again? The attention business is moving from content to the complete consumption chain, i.e., omni-channel. Omni-channel includes the content field composed of short video and livestream, the marketing field composed of advertising scenarios, and the central field composed of mall and search. As shown in the figure above, achieving the combination of 'points, lines, and planes' means that short video in the content field completes deep interest seeding, and livestream rooms efficiently convert; their advantage is 'goods find people'; the mall and search in the central field achieve selection and repurchase through stable traffic and paths; their advantage is 'people find goods'; the marketing field's advantage is expanding consumer reach. The combination of the three fields can more comprehensively meet diverse purchase needs, and together, they improve operational efficiency. E-commerce has reached a convergence, not just a simple 1+1 addition, but a 'chemical change' of omni-channel. Douyin e-commerce is one of the more comprehensive in layout. From proposing 'interest e-commerce' to 'omni-channel interest e-commerce', Douyin e-commerce has gradually evolved from awakening users' attention, deep seeding and efficient transaction, to undertaking various e-commerce behaviors of users, achieving precise matching and repurchase, forming a one-stop e-commerce platform. If the previous launch of shelf e-commerce was just a 'test', then 818 on Douyin e-commerce's main battlefield was 'explosion'. How does omni-channel interest e-commerce, represented by Douyin e-commerce, continue to create growth? What chess is it playing? 02 Look at the changes in media essence: User-centric omni-channel integration E-commerce is based on 'people, goods, and scenes', linked through media, and inevitably follows the evolution of media. From e-commerce to interest e-commerce, and then to omni-channel interest e-commerce, the logic is to follow media changes, while the unchanged center is the user: people. Moving towards interest and omni-channel is to optimize the consumption path around users to a greater extent. Driven by the technology engine, based on deep understanding of the crowd, 'people group by kind', achieving 'things gather by category' under content attributes. On traditional e-commerce platforms, it is still mainly people finding goods, through search, optimizing search, and search-based push to help people better find goods. Users open e-commerce apps because they want to buy something. As users' consumption needs become more diverse, willing to pay for interests, showing personality and improving quality of life through good products, the model of goods finding people has developed, coordinating with the model of people finding goods to serve users' consumption needs. For example, when users want to obtain information, develop interests, or change and improve taste, the interest recommendation system allows different attributes and forms of product content to reach users on a larger scale. Maybe a short video, or a sentence in a livestream, triggers users' resonance. Many influencers and bloggers, from Luo Yonghao to the new 'East Buy', actually illustrate the importance of content and interest. Once people's consumption interest is stimulated, it needs the central field of mall and search to undertake, allowing users to search more and browse stores more immersively. Users with active purchase needs can enter stores or malls through search to find and purchase needed goods. (Image source: '2022 FACT+ Omni-channel Operation Methodology White Paper') The development of Douyin e-commerce is based on user interest, achieving a leap from 'goods find people' to the integration of 'people find goods' and 'goods find people'. In 2021, Douyin e-commerce proposed 'interest e-commerce', which is an e-commerce based on people's yearning for a better life, satisfying users' potential shopping interests, and improving consumers' quality of life. In August 2021, Douyin e-commerce renamed the original 'Douyin Store' secondary entrance under the personal profile introduction to 'Douyin Mall', and successively launched channels such as Billion Subsidy (now upgraded to Super Value Purchase), Brand Pavilion, Low-price Flash Sale, and Livestream Selection. In May this year, Douyin e-commerce President Wei Wenwen proposed 'omni-channel interest e-commerce', with the core purpose of covering all user scenarios based on exploring user interests, meeting full-chain shopping needs, and better undertaking their daily shopping needs. Before 6.18, Douyin platform set up the 'Mall' section at the first-level traffic entrance, and Douyin e-commerce continued to layout scenarios such as Douyin Mall, search, and stores. Behind this gradually mature chain, 'people, goods, and scenes' have formed more complex and multi-directional relationships. 03 Look at the layout of business changes: Omni-field collaborative operation From interest e-commerce to omni-channel interest e-commerce, Douyin e-commerce is creating a more complete omni-channel new ecosystem after deeper understanding of users in its development. In this ecosystem, operators on the Douyin e-commerce platform, such as merchants, influencers, institutions, and service providers, all need to collaborate through content field, central field, and marketing field to improve operational conversion efficiency. In the just-passed 818, based on operators' omni-field operational needs, Douyin e-commerce provided a series of targeted support:

  1. For merchants and e-commerce influencers of different scales, the platform provides diverse methods such as interactive topics, good product livestream rooms, potential influencer support livestream rooms, and tiered task competition incentives to enhance user stickiness, and also provides targeted operational support or product subsidies.
  2. This 'Douyin 818 Discovery of Good Things Festival' launched play methods such as deposit expansion, Douyin Mall cross-store full reduction, Douyin Mall Super Value Purchase subsidy, and Douyin Mall low-price flash sale, increasing central traffic to help merchants stabilize orders and boost sales.
  3. Douyin e-commerce relies on video platforms like Douyin and Xigua Video to complete the leap of livestream e-commerce, and uses advertising platforms like Juchuan Qianchuan for real-time traffic monitoring and allocation, strengthening advertising marketing efficiency, improving user experience, and achieving effective matching of diverse needs and resources on both demand and supply sides. Different operational positions have different focuses and advantages. To do well in the 'content field', merchants need to comprehensively build the 'FACT' operation matrix composed of Field self-operation, Alliance of influencers, Campaign activities, and Top-KOL, so that daily sales and explosive content complement each other. To do well in the 'central field' and 'marketing field', they need to understand the platform's support policies, do well in product stratification and crowd operation. Let's take Ecovacs as an example to see how the brand used content field + central field + marketing field to create a hit product with 818. In the content field, Ecovacs has long-term layout in Douyin e-commerce, targeting active users, establishing multiple brand matrix accounts, mainly self-broadcasting, supplemented by influencer带货. During 818, Ecovacs continued the model of self-broadcast + influencer broadcast, with the new product T10 OMNI as the core, with 3 online livestream rooms, 40 offline livestream rooms, and multiple influencer livestreams going hand in hand to create hit products, with sales contribution rate of 80%+. Its sub-brand Tineco created a dual hit product model, mainly promoting Tineco 3.0 and 2.0 LED, with self-broadcast GMV (Gross Merchandise Volume) as high as 95%+. In the central field, Ecovacs made efforts in search brand specialty and mall sections, running through the pan-mall logic. In terms of search brand specialty, Ecovacs laid out the brand specialty before the promotion to undertake search traffic. In the mall section, Ecovacs' hit robot vacuum T10 OMNI & Tineco Floor One 3.0 participated in Super Value Purchase activities, with official subsidies reducing prices to seize user mindshare, achieving explosive sales growth. In the marketing field, Ecovacs fully utilized internal and external platform resources, with official brand Weibo and Douyin Blue V joint promotion, cooperating with hashtags like '#抖音818发现好物节' and dozens of influencer videos to drive traffic, amplifying business value. With the enthusiasm of brands and users, Douyin e-commerce's 818 performance this year is also impressive. Platform battle report shows that in this 818, there were 3,894 livestream rooms with transaction volume exceeding one million, 16.21 million short video posts with shopping carts, 5,560 brands with transaction volume exceeding one million, and more than 400 single products with transaction volume exceeding one million in the pan-mall. 04 The new e-commerce era: User-centric, the big fusion era of people, goods, and scenes Under diversified and segmented consumption demands, brands have realized the need to intensively cultivate traffic, but returning to the essence, we need to see that the unchanged center is to pay more attention to user value. What is forming based on interest content is a new lifestyle service consumption: interactive, real-time, and scenario-based. The center of these new lifestyle services is real and changing users. While being attracted by content, users are also unlocking new knowledge they are interested in or curious about, even cultivating new life skills or lifestyles. Whether learning various recipes on Douyin during the pandemic, or following bloggers to experience various foods and scenery, different scenarios all lead to actively trying new experiences or products. The 'surge' of Douyin e-commerce lies in the new fusion: the reconstruction of people, goods, and scenes is a new era that no brand can miss. The continuous upgrade of media makes omni-channel a new hot topic. It can be foreseen that more brands will invest in omni-channel operation in the future, get closer to users, and do well in the business of omni-channel interest e-commerce. *The article represents the author's independent views and does not represent the position of New Distribution. Source: Notesman (ID: Notesman) Author: Zhou Luqi