Is Chinese live-stream trend a cure for COVID impacted American business?
Do you agree that the store-browsing experience drives your purchase intention?
It is inevitable for me to admit that whenever I go in a store that has great vibes, great products, great music, I ended up buying more than I first expected. However, in this present time of social distancing, all of the stores tend to be closed and even if they are opened, you would not feel safe enough to happily look, try, and feel the products that you want. Shopping in stores became stressful, rather than fun. Moreover, retail shop owners are facing unprecedented decreased in number of sales. Some stores had to be closed down and went out of business.
China started a new trend.
In 2018, a new e-commerce trend emerged as Taobao, Alibaba owned livestream platform received the unprecedented impact of 400% year on year Gross Merchandise Volume and revenue of 100 Billion RMB ( more than 15 Billion USD) with the total 456 million viewers. This growth is supported by the customer experience that live streaming gives, the level of engagement is surprisingly high as it provides interactive and 3 dimensional shopping experience.
This trend is revolutionary, it enhanced e-commerce. On this Taobao platform, viewers can buy the product they see in the live streaming immediately without leaving the show in the same application by only “one click”. Taobao became a destination for Chinese viewers to explore new products from across the world with the opportunity to shop more than 600,000 products every single day via Taobao live.
Consequently, the viewers tend to fear that they would miss out on the chance to purchase great products whenever they miss the live session of their favorite hosts. The live streaming sessions are leading by a great number of KOLs or Key Opinion Leaders and during this pandemic time, the number of live streaming users grew to 560 Million in March, 2020.
Attention from international brand.
As we all know that China is one of the biggest market place in the world that attracted most of the existing international brands. This live streaming trend also began to be recognized on the world stage. As Lancome, one of the well known cosmetics and skincare brands has partnered with one of the most successful live stream host, Viya and featured in her live channel during Chinese International Women’s day in March 2019. The brand was able to generate 10 million RMB revenue from just only 1 live session. Isn’t that impressive?
Kim Kardarshian also made an appearance in Viya’s live channel, aiming to promote her new perfume. The first 15 minutes of the live session had more than 13 Million viewers and led to the inventory sold out of 15,000 bottles of perfume.
Furthermore, Tmall, which is a big e-commerce website in China also organized the live streaming fashion show on Taobao during 11.11 Global shopping festival in November 2019 that led with the campaign “see now, buy now”. It enabled viewers to make a purchase on any items that they saw on the runway, immediately. The brands that were featured are Anna Sui, Clarks, and Guess.
Can the U.S. market do the same?
I admit that America has different kind platforms of content, e-commerce, and payment that are more scattered, in comparison to China where every activity happens in Taopao. However, this trend is too big and impactful for the U.S. to ignore.
Amazon, for example, did not neglect this opportunity. Since they acquired Twitch, which is a live streaming website, leading by gaming years ago. Live streaming has been incorporated in Amazon website, especially in daily cooking, fitness, and make up show.
Facebook also started to promote their live-streaming feature in May, as the medium that will help small businesses to grow during this hard time.
“This is a great opportunity for COVID 19 impacted business to flourish.”
You might be familiar with Viya, the most successful host in Taopao live, who I have mentioned earlier. She became a billionaire after being able to sell EVERYTHING, including cars, perfume, even houses, with her strong fanbase of millions viewers. Specifically, the number of her viewers just reached 37 millions in one single live session. After COVID hit, Viya’s average number of viewers nearly double. Furthermore, the Chinese live-shopping market reported the 205% growth in revenue after February, this year.
Most importantly, live stream selling contributes to the new customer experience. It tends to increase the shopping frequency be providing more product information, comparing to tradition advertisements. Plus, the viewers believe in the products that are being sold as they believe in the host. This activity can engage viewers to watch for hours, especially because they have emotional connection and personal interaction, which plays a crucial role in reinforcing customer loyalty, replacing traditional sell staffs in Brick and Mortar stores.
If you ask me, I see this trend as the way to revive the down falling of American businesses and open the door for the new way of e-commerce practices, which in the future I am pretty sure that will be further developed and follow the successful footsteps of Alibaba’s Taopao, in providing content, commerce, and payment in a seamless SINGLE platform.
