---
title: "What is Interest E-commerce: A False Proposition or a New Trend?"
description: "On April 8, Douyin E-commerce held its annual ecosystem conference, officially announcing its direction and introducing the concept of 'interest e-commerce' by its president, Kang Zeyu. This concept refers to an e-commerce model based on people's aspirations for a better life, satisfying users' potential shopping interests and enhancing their quality of life. The article explores whether interest e-commerce is a trend, Douyin's advantages in this field, and its value to the market."
author: "秦淮"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
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published: "2021-04-11"
language: "en"
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# What is Interest E-commerce: A False Proposition or a New Trend?

> On April 8, Douyin E-commerce held its annual ecosystem conference, officially announcing its direction and introducing the concept of 'interest e-commerce' by its president, Kang Zeyu. This concept refers to an e-commerce model based on people's aspirations for a better life, satisfying users' potential shopping interests and enhancing their quality of life. The article explores whether interest e-commerce is a trend, Douyin's advantages in this field, and its value to the market.

On April 8, Douyin E-commerce held its annual ecosystem conference. This was Douyin E-commerce's official public statement, clarifying its specific direction.
At the meeting, Douyin E-commerce President Kang Zeyu proposed the concept of "interest e-commerce" and defined it as: **an e-commerce model based on people's aspirations for a better life, satisfying users' potential shopping interests, and enhancing consumers' quality of life.**
Kang Zeyu explained interest e-commerce with his own experience: "I'm a person who loves traveling. I've always had a problem: the electric kettles in hotels never feel quite hygienic, and I can't bring my own kettle when I go out.
Later, I saw a review of a portable kettle on Douyin—it was exquisite, compact, and easy to store. After watching the video, I immediately placed an order. Without interest e-commerce, I might have missed out on this joy in life." This is what Douyin calls interest e-commerce: **the precise matching of interest and demand, allowing users to complete a delightful shopping experience.** Of course, before Douyin E-commerce, traditional e-commerce and social e-commerce already had mature recommendation mechanisms for "matching people and products." So, is interest e-commerce just a false proposition or a new trend? What are Douyin's advantages in interest e-commerce?

**-01- Is Interest E-commerce a Trend?**
To answer this question, we must not simply seek answers from the definition itself or by dissecting the words, but rather look at the underlying logic from the evolution of overall business and changes in demand.
Looking back, we can roughly divide "market dominance" into four stages: **factory dominance, brand dominance, channel dominance, and consumer dominance.**
Factory dominance, roughly after the reform and opening-up, was a period of material scarcity with limited supply. At that time, as long as there was a product, it sufficed. The large number of products that emerged mainly met basic needs, and the demands for products were simple: availability, durability, and price.
After 2000, we entered the era of brand dominance. The supply of goods gradually became abundant, and people's demands shifted from basic needs to functional satisfaction. Beyond functional attributes, design, and safety, the brand's image value, the culture and trust it represented, and even the image of endorsers became key factors in consumer choices.
By 2010, the retail industry began to develop in multiple lines, typically including offline chain hypermarkets, standalone supermarkets, convenience store chains, and online e-commerce platforms. Products were no longer the issue; the problem was how to efficiently bring products to consumers and reach them.
Therefore, the richness of retail formats is actually helping consumers make choices. **Whether offline stores or online e-commerce, they are not offering consumers unlimited choices but helping them filter options.** When users have an active need or target product, they go to a mall or e-commerce platform and choose based on their own judgment.
Today, after 2020, there are many good products and many channels to obtain them. Consumers have everything they need. What's next?
Returning to the source of demand, consumers' pursuit of a better, more beautiful, and more enjoyable life is endless. Everyone wants to improve their life, which aligns with the highest level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs—self-actualization.
Returning to Douyin's "interest e-commerce," which is based on people's aspirations for a better life, satisfying users' potential shopping interests, and improving quality of life, this coincides with the current consumer market and mindset.
In recent years, we have been talking about consumption upgrading. **What is consumption upgrading? We believe it is not uniformly high-priced, high-quality, or high-end, nor is it blindly pursuing low prices or shrinking consumption.** Rather, it is about various groups of people with different needs, in various scenarios, being able to obtain better products, better services, and more enjoyable experiences.
Of course, the four dominant forms are not completely replaced or substituted; in fact, the boundaries are not so clear. Especially in the latter three eras, the combination and reasonable balance of brand dominance, channel dominance, and consumer dominance may be the direction for "upgrading" interest e-commerce.
But we can be sure that **in the era of consumer dominance, consumers stand at the center for the first time, discovering the beauty of life based on their aspirations, using products as a carrier to improve quality of life, or rather, to enhance the experience of the shopping process itself.** This is the significance of interest e-commerce.

**-02- Why Can Douyin Do Interest E-commerce?**
After understanding the evolution of business and changes in demand, we can be confident that interest e-commerce represents a new trend and direction. Now let's look back and see why Douyin can do interest e-commerce. What are Douyin's advantages?
Simply summarize four reasons: **First, people; second, content; third, technology; fourth, strategy.**

**1. People**
It is understood that as of August 2020, including Douyin Huoshan, Douyin's daily active users exceeded 600 million. **The deep user base has made the awareness of video and live streaming formats increasingly widespread.**

**2. Content**
Since Douyin launched in 2016, after four years of aggregation and accumulation, the platform has a vast number of excellent content creators. **The excellent ecosystem for content creation also allows a large number of high-quality products to be displayed through better content formats. Merchants can also reach more consumers through these creators.**

**3. Technology**
**Interest-based recommendation technology is becoming increasingly mature, and personalized recommendation based on interest has become a market standard.** Obviously, Douyin's technology is unquestionable.

**4. Strategy**
After discussing interest e-commerce, Kang Zeyu also mentioned the attitude towards interest e-commerce: **For Douyin E-commerce at this stage, GMV is not the primary indicator; quality GMV is the core indicator.** Improving the platform's basic service capabilities for merchants, providing users with extreme purchase protection, and customer service experience are the top priorities for Douyin E-commerce at this stage.
Not long ago, Douyin E-commerce released the "2020 Douyin E-commerce Consumer Rights Protection Annual Report." From last year to now, through technical means, it identified over 40,000 store violations, intercepted over 300,000 prohibited products before listing, and cumulatively removed over one million prohibited products.
At the strategic level, Douyin E-commerce Vice President Mu Qing provided a methodology for driving long-term business growth for merchants—the "FACT Operation Matrix." F, A, C, and T respectively represent: merchant self-broadcasting (the basic plate for daily sales), influencer matrix (the amplifier for business growth), marketing campaigns (the explosion field for scale sales), and top KOLs (the promotion ground for both brand and sales). All four are indispensable, representing a balance of merchant operational methods.
Based on this business growth methodology, Douyin E-commerce announced its latest support plan, providing support for merchants and influencers from multiple aspects, including special support, service provider systems, and multi-dimensional training.
For merchants, it will help 1,000 merchants achieve annual sales exceeding 100 million yuan, including 100 emerging brands; for influencers, it will help 100,000 quality influencers achieve annual sales of 100,000 yuan, including 10,000 influencers with annual sales exceeding 10 million yuan; for products, it will help 100 quality products achieve annual sales exceeding 100 million yuan.
According to third-party estimates, the GMV of interest e-commerce will exceed 9.5 trillion yuan by 2023. This is not only an opportunity for the entire e-commerce industry but also for Douyin E-commerce.

**-03- Douyin E-commerce's Value to the Market**
**Currently, a large part of the increment in online retail comes from interest e-commerce, because the deterministic demand behind traditional e-commerce is basically stable. In the future, tapping into consumers' hidden potential demand will be key.**
Behind this, I think there are implications for brand owners. When meeting existing rigid demand has peaked, how to tap into potential demand increments may be the key for brand owners in the era of consumer dominance.
It is no longer about simply giving them more product choices, but rather using short videos as a carrier, overlaying life scenarios, and conveying the life experience brought by products. With more complete information delivery efficiency, focusing on scenario experience, integrating products into life, and into KOLs' "real" recommendations.
Of course, for brand owners, in addition to gaining business increments, they can also directly connect with consumers through Douyin E-commerce, understand their interests and hobbies, and adapt different products accordingly.
Of course, Douyin E-commerce not only brings actual business growth to various mainstream brand manufacturers but also has "diverse" social value.
For example, through Douyin, merchants gain opportunities to reach new customers more broadly. Many traditional craftsmen have discovered new customers through Douyin E-commerce. Products like oil-paper umbrellas, pottery, and leather carving, which were originally traditional niche crafts, have reached users nationwide through Douyin E-commerce, expanding sales channels and finding their consumer groups in the mobile internet era.
Furthermore, relying on precise information distribution, it has opened new sales channels for agricultural products and activated social philanthropy and responsibility awareness. Returning migrants and incumbent officials use Douyin short videos and live streaming to bring more high-quality agricultural products out of the mountains, making them known and purchased by more users, and spreading across the country.
In February 2020, Douyin launched the "County Mayor Live" campaign, inviting city mayors and county magistrates to help agricultural products with blocked sales quickly find channels through Douyin live streaming. During the campaign, 110 city mayors and county magistrates entered the "County Mayor Live" live rooms, helping sell 123 million yuan of agricultural products, of which 68.19 million yuan came from poverty-stricken counties. In 2020, 42,779 Hubei merchants sold goods on Douyin, with sales reaching 4.1 billion yuan.
This is the inspiration Douyin E-commerce brings to brand owners' businesses and the value it brings to society. It is a trend and an opportunity.
As Kang Zeyu said at the end, Douyin E-commerce's story is just beginning. In the e-commerce field, Douyin is also ready to start running.


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