Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is Roundtable.
Hello, welcome to Roundtable where we serve up piping hot debates on the issues that sizzle in China and beyond.
I'm Niu Henlin.
17 years after its debut, Double Eleven Shopping Festival in China no longer thunders with the same frenzy of flashing deals and sleepless nights.
Instead, a quieter revolution is taking place.
E-commerce platforms are turning inward, optimizing supply chains with AI, rethinking delivery with instant retail and looking outward toward overseas markets.
The race is no longer about who shouts the loudest, but who runs furthest.
Did you make your purchase just yet?
Let's discuss on today's show.
For this episode, I'm joined by Xinyu and Steve Hatherly.
Now grab your virtual compass and follow us to the heart of the discussion.
Remember when double 11 meant staying up all night, adding 10 things to your cart and regretting eight of them by morning?
That was 2015.
In 2025, your jacket arrives before breakfast.
Your AI shop assistant actually make sense, and brands compete less for noise, more for loyalty.
The shopping festival has turned into a year-round conversation about efficiency, data and smarter choices.
But I still have to ask the question, did you buy anything just yet?
Yeah, nothing particular, I should say.
I bought some clothes, shoes... daily necessities.
That's already a lot of things.
What is your definition of nothing in particular?
But I feel like, you know, throughout the year, you have a lot of shopping seasons.
So I didn't buy anything particularly for this shopping season, just something that I need.
And yeah, we have sales for this period.
So I bought it.
Yeah, I guess it's one of the downsides.
There are advantages and disadvantages to having a lot of sales days or sales times during the year.
It um, it makes people feel less um, i don't know less anxious about needing to take advantage of a sale at one particular time of year because they know it's another.
But even with that being said um, double 11 is.
Is it the biggest?
I think it's one.
It's the biggest one right of the year in china, and i've been seeing advertisements everywhere, even On my smartphone game that I play.
I opened up the app and this has been true for a couple of weeks now.
But when you open up the app itself, it'll like give a couple of advertisements, and one of them is for double 11.
Yes, and we mentioned this earlier, it was created in 2009 and at that time, i remember very vividly the very first time they said that all of the things you can enjoy a 50 discount for, all the things that were all the shops that are actually participating in this double 11 shopping festival at that time.
Double 11 because of the one one one one, everybody's one and everybody's single.
So it was the singles day, and on the singles day, you should be better for yourself because you're you know, not with anybody, not necessarily a bad thing or something that would make you unhappy.
I think young people might be seeing that as a good thing these days yeah, but at that time, that was the advertisement little gimmick saying that oh, you should be buying things for yourself even if you are single.
But this year, or 17 years later, a lot of things have happened.
And some new phenomenon and new trends are happening in this year's Double Eleven Festival.
Yes.
One particular thing that stood out to me is that I think in the past we had this Double Eleven.
It's just one day shopping frenzy.
Ah, 11th of November.
Yes, on the 11th of November.
But nowadays, it's It has become a marathon.
It has gone from one day to a month.
JDcom.
For instance, it kicked off its double 11 shopping frenzy activities on October the 9th, right after the National Day holiday.
And it lasts until November the 14th.
So the duration changes. can be up to 37 days.
That's the longest in history, isn't it?
Yes, the longest in history.
And also Tmall or Taobao from Alibaba, they launched the pre-sale period from October the 15th.
And the official kicked off the shopping festival at 8 p.m. on October the 20th.
And it will last till November the 14th.
So about a month as well.
The extended period of time, I guess puts a little bit less pressure on everyone involved, because as a customer you don't feel like okay, this is a 24-hour window where I need to buy everything that I might need to before the sales run out.
So you know that you're going to have about a month's time to make these purchases.
But also from the business point of view.
It allows them to manage logistics a little bit better and they don't have to put these flash sales up, which creates a lot of chaos and a lot of logistical nightmares for them.
So it's just more time to prepare and kind of enjoy. the double 11 event.
The funny thing is we definitely still talk about, did you buy something?
This double 11 festival.
We do this not only on the show, but with our friends and sometimes with our colleagues.
And you hear people say, Oh, not a lot, not anything in particular yet.
It feels like people are not viewing this as a golden opportunity for purchase, but that is not what figures are suggesting.
The online sales cumulative, Cumulatively speaking, as of October 31st, is this a number?
I've never seen this before.
$1,002 billion?
Yes.
Yuan.
I've never seen that number that big before.
That's about $140 billion in 2025.
Tmall leads the way.
Congratulations there.
They're in first place.
And then JD and then Douyin.
Yeah.
And also in the first hour of Tmall's Double Eleven Shopping Festival, which took place on October the 20th, 80 brands saw their transaction value surpass 100 million yuan.
So that's around $14 million.
In the first hour.
Yeah, in the first hour.
And over 30,000 brands saw their sales double year on year.
And also nearly 19000 brands saw their entire sales within just one hour surpassed that of the whole day last year.
Especially in terms of beauty and consumer electronics categories, they stood out in terms of the sales.
And on JDcom, we see that from October 9th to October 20th, over 52000 brands recorded sales growth exceeding 300 year-on-year, while more than 3300 categories doubled their sales.
So even though we say ah, we're not buying anything a lot, or because of this period, people still well, the figures do not lie.
The purchase is there and It has something to do with the fact that this year it's getting a bit easier.
Previously, we talked about doing the math learning, the mechanism rolled out by both the e-commerce platform and the shop owners.
The shop owners would say oh, I'm giving certain electronic red envelope in the means that I'm giving certain subsidies on top of the subsidies provided by the platform.
Yet there are certain calculations to do.
You have to add something, several things, to your cart and then purchase them with one move so that you can enjoy the service, so you can enjoy the discount.
Now that this year, it's not like that anymore.
I remember when we did this particular episode 12 months ago on Roundtable, and that was my first double.
Last year was my first of everything in China, and this year is my second.
So I've experienced this before.
And I remember sitting in this particular chair, having this particular conversation.
And I think it was Fei Fei on the show that day.
And we were discussing how complicated it was.
You have to get the red envelopes, but the timing has to be right.
But then you have to collect them.
And I was like, collect what?
Who?
Where?
I was like, just give me the discount for something.
So this year, it's a little bit more simplified.
Yes.
So that's why last year many consumers they have complained about they had to calculate everything and to reach the highest discounts you have to like check out 10 items and then return six or seven out of them, and that that um cause troubles for merchants as well, because they have to pay for the cost of logistics of returning these products.
But this year um platforms they are offering like larger subsidies and also direct price cuts so you don't have to um bundle lot of items together to reach a certain level for a higher discount.
It's just you have direct price cuts for each item so that somehow can reduce you your time of calculating.
And yeah, just scrolling, scrolling through these all of these items.
Yeah, there was.
There was one example online of a customer who took advantage of the sales this year.
They bought a designer backpack and they bought a pearl necklace.
It's a good day of shopping.
They did that on JD.
And the purchase was for her best friend for her wedding.
But the advantage this time, each item came with its own discount.
And, as you said, that's a big difference from last year, where she put seven items in her cart and then canceled six immediately after paying.
I think I did that too.
Did you really?
To be honest.
Yeah, it's a little bit confusing and I had to read this like two or three times this morning to figure it out.
So if you're going to buy item A, B and C this year, you can get a 10 discount on item A and on item B and on item C.
But last year the way they did it was they said you have to spend, for example, 500 yuan to get a 10 discount on all of your purchases together, not individual ones.
And that's why people would add up all of that money in their cart so that they could qualify for that 10 discount and then return the other things right away.
So this is just a much better system this year.
Definitely.
And that's for the consumers and for the merchants, for the shop owners.
They are welcoming something quite conducive to them as well.
That is Taobao is taking Double Eleven Global for the very first time.
The platform is investing 1 billion yuan that is, approximately 140 million us dollar, in marketing subsidies across more than 20 countries and regions, allowing consumers of different backgrounds and nationalities to join the shopping frenzy, meaning that those shops on the platform who are majorly focusing on overseas or cross-border e-commerce services would be able to join the frenzy as well.
Yeah, and you're capturing a new audience, aren't you new customers when you go overseas with your advertising?
And also you're giving the brands the Chinese brands a global stage, a global audience too.
How about offline?
Are we enjoying anything offline as well?
Can I get a discount if I'm only buying a bottle of water from a supermarket?
Yes, definitely.
I think double 11 shopping festival has not just happening online, it has moved to offline as well.
And over the years, we have seen an integration of online and offline shopping activities.
So the boundary of online offline has I have to say.
Yeah, you can find supermarket tie-ins and QR linked receipts and pop-up experiences.
And those convert the offline shoppers into online participants.
So I guess there's a bit of a strategy there.
But yeah, they do work kind of hand in hand.
The advertisement of Double Eleven.
Discounts happen everywhere, not only online, but when you walk into different shops as well.
And do you remember several years ago when we do the Double Eleven purchase?
At that time the festival has already been prolonged because the logistics could be a problem at that time already.
And they do not want to have all of this stuff stocks and all of the warehouses having too much product or too many types of product to waiting to be delivered by those who, the delivery guys.
And I remember at that time I see so many, so many delivering boxes in my, in the entry of my residential building and they were just piled up and it was a chaos.
But that situation has gradually been changed and already last year i remember when i did certain purchases at the night of the double 11 or one night before the double 11 festival i can see my delivery.
I'm at my doorstep the next day, just overnight delivery.
Yeah.
JD, they integrated its instant delivery and hotel and travel units into a new services group.
And this year, over 3 million local merchants, and they're working under JD's ecosystem.
They're participating in this festival for the first time.
And JD's instant delivery offers 50 discount promotions to attract on-demand customers, shoppers.
Yeah, so we, as humans, have gotten really impatient, really to the point where we don't want to.
You know, even you know, remember 24.
Four hour delivery?
No, not good enough.
I want a half a day delivery.
Exactly, because we get spoiled, right?
Remember, you know, 3G comes out and we're like, ooh, wow, 3G, that's amazing.
And then we got bored of that and then it gets faster.
And we expect better quality.
And it's the same thing for delivery.
You know, 24 hours was the standard before.
That's fantastic.
But still, now people want it faster.
Yeah, but I also feel that there's some sort of competition going on among these companies, three e-commerce giants in China, which is Alibaba, JD and Meituan.
They have all brought their instant retail businesses into full play during this year's Double Eleven Shopping Festival.
And Steve, you mentioned JD, but also Meituan.
It launched its brand flagship warehouse program this September, which is a hybrid model combining pre-positioned warehouses with brand flagship stores.
So basically, in some of the cities of China Meituan has established warehouses and by inviting and collaborating with flagship brands they are able to you know when some users they place an order and you can directly send the items to the user by shipping from the local stores placed in the city.
So that means faster delivery, and also for Alibaba too.
They have launched this Taobao Instant Sale in Chinese, Taobao Shan Gou.
I'm pretty familiar with this because I have been trying this for the past few weeks.
And the app's daily active users have increased by over 50 million in average per month.
Yeah Alibaba, now they can promise half-day delivery and also hour-level H-O-U-R hour-level fulfillment.
It's crazy.
It is.
It's like...
You press order on your smartphone, like you go click and then delivery.
It's like it's here already when you press the button.
And there's one element that's also speeding up the service and also improving the service.
That would be the artificial intelligence.
We know that with artificial intelligence in place, they can do the calculation a bit faster, making sure that they find what you need the order you just placed from the nearest warehouse, allowing you to get your product within that one hour, like Steve has just described very vividly.
But it's more than just that.
We see artificial intelligence helping from how coupons are distributed, to which products are shown to which users, to how warehouses route packages.
And the thing is that We didn't mention this earlier.
But I did compare notes with my friends and I realized that the different types of discount and coupons presented to me and to her actually different.
For very loyal buyers of certain shops.
You do not get a larger discount, but you do get a larger threshold of the discount, meaning that we talked about every item gets a 10 discount, yet you can use that discount for, for example, 1000 yuan worth of product, whereas newcomers get that discount for, for example, 500 yuan worth of product.
They would push the kind of discount or the kind of coupons to different users based on the calculation of the artificial intelligence algorithms.
And that's not just it.
There are more examples of AI helping the industry develop.
Yeah Kuaishou, they have their e-commerce with a built-in AI-powered what they call a product ranking list, and that helps merchants to really take a good look at the consumer search intent and it allows them to refine their product keywords for better visibility.
So, based on what people are searching for, they can update their lists and people will see those products more efficiently faster, I guess.
Tmall as well.
They have an upgraded computing power that has improved the purchase conversion rates from product recommendations by 25.
That's a pretty significant jump.
Um also, its algorithms can process the number of user behavioral data by 100 000 times.
That's an increase from 1 000 times uh, the last time around.
The conversion rate is when you get the from the cart, uh to being paid for.
And Because I am a pet owner, I have a lovely black cat and I buy feed and also buy different well, cat scent for him all the time.
And I encountered this fun story that is for a lot of shop owners out there, especially those who are selling pet product.
Double Eleven Festival for them is also quite a stressful period of time because they have to work out stocking plans, calculate budgets, decoding platform policies so they can push forward the advertisement for the right product customers and also find the right customers to make the purchase.
It has been a problem for many, many shops, especially pet product shops.
And they realized that one shop owner said that the homepage recommendation click-through rate hovered at around 3 for them, even though they put a lot of money in putting their advertisement on the homepage of certain e-commerce platforms.
And they say that people who did click through ask weird questions like if I do not feed my cat, will he die?
They are not real customers.
Eventually, I can answer that.
I'm not even a veterinarian.
They're not genuine customers trying to buy the cat food.
Trolling almost.
Yeah, they're just having a little bit fun with people.
I don't know why.
But then, just before this year's Double Eleven, they used or they have included AI kind of assistant and algorithm.
And they figured that the system started to behave like a search engine and more like a tireless industry resource.
The researcher read all of the kind of reports as well as different types of papers, and they relabeled many of their products.
Before their products are labeled as cat food, which is accurate but not very precise.
Now they are labeled grain free, hypoallergenic kind of food, or one to four months kitten formula kitchen flavor food, and the richness of the product information shot up by the thirty four percent and For the first time his shop felt like someone had really really found him, the targeted audience for his shop.
The double 11th, his products finally landed in front of people who actually needed them.
And the homepage recommendation revenue surged 40% year on year.
New consumer conversion rose, conversion rate rose by 25%.
And the best thing is because he's using AI Assistant to help those who are asking questions and asking for the best deal.
His consumer service staff even felt like wow, this year it's easier for them while reaching a better result.
It makes things easier for your chatbot too, to answer questions, because if you just say cat food well, a customer is going to have a list of questions about that cat food.
But if you have hypoallergenic grain, whatever you said, then it answers a lot of questions already.
So that's just more efficient.
But overall, these e-commerce platforms, in the past, they had to rely on separate tools.
You'd have tools for promotion.
You'd have tools for financial services and other operations.
And that would require separate business teams to operate all of those things.
Precisely um the models.
Now they can handle things all at the same time.
They're universal tools and that just makes things a lot, lot better.
It's better for the businesses, but it's better for the customers too.
Yeah, it is better for the customers.
So i feel like this year's double 11 shopping festival, you know, with all of these ai technologies being used, i feel like it's not a test of um, who sells the most, but who operates the smartest.
Have you ever used a ai assistant to help you purchase?
Not exactly, i had.
Yeah, i had, and it was a fun experience, because i don't know how you purchase.
But when i have a product in mind, i don't exactly know what i want.
But i have criterias.
For example, i want the kind of, let's say, jeans that is for those who are um, you know petite friendly, those who are not very high or tall in height, and i want something, for example um, it can be better for, look better or make me look slimmer.
And also I want it for winter time so that it's not that cold when I'm walking outside.
When I put in those keywords, sometimes I would see the search results showing the kind of jeans that were either too long or too leaned.
And it would force me to see a lot, a lot of different examples and wear different products.
And I tried the AI assistant once.
I told the AI assistant what I'm looking for.
I want the clothes to look slimmer on me and And I told him my weight and my height.
And I also said my budget is around 300 yuan, less than 300 yuan for a pair of pants.
And not only did it give me a really good recommendation of the products that I really need, it even gave me a recommendation of which pair of shoes would go well with that.
Seriously.
Don't talk to that AI assistant anymore.
I did. buy a pair of shoes.
That's called upselling.
That's the trap.
But it's really smart.
It's smarter than just a search with the search engine provided by the platform.
Of course it's better for business.
It's like when you go to a restaurant.
Better experience.
Well, when you go to a restaurant and you're almost finished with your meal and the server says are you thinking about some dessert today?
It's suggestive, right?
And it's very smart from a business point of view.
But before you get to that point though you know, with the ai assistant failing essentially failing the last time around by showing you a list of items that wasn't really specific.
That was not the ai assistant, that was just the search engine in the platform well, the search engine showing you a list of things that you weren't really interested in.
That increases the likelihood that you will leave that website, and it also increases the likelihood that you will never return to that website Again.
So when you have the AI assistant that shows you exactly what you're looking for then yeah, it makes you happier.
And I guess it makes it more likely that you'll get some shoes to match with your wintertime slimming jeans.
And my feeling is that the AI assistant now is much smarter than it was, like half a year or a year ago.
But we need to be fair.
Not all the AI replacement, replacing human assistant or human model or human, for example, live streaming anchors are very well received.
Maybe some.
There are still some improvements If we are allowed to say that people are not very 100 percent happy with all of the at least AI live streaming anchors out there just yet.
Well, yeah, I guess particularly with clothing, they want to see a real person try it on.
Because it shows how they move.
How they fit.
And how it fits and where it stretches and where it doesn't stretch and things like that.
Yeah.
So we have seen some of the complaints from netizens, especially in women's apparel sector.
So during the live streams many complained that the anchor, the AI anchor, cannot genuinely respond to some of the nuanced viewer questions.
Will this color make me look better or less?
Will this color make me look darker?
And also some of the AI anchors.
They cannot provide genuine experiential feedbacks on these texture, comfort or fit of these clothes.
From the business side, definitely these AI models.
They lower the cost and they also they can run for hours without rest.
So the longer live stream hours can make the business better.
But from consumer's perspective, they want human temperature.
They want human connectivity.
I say give them three months or so.
Maybe they can be really good.
Yeah.
I mean they're getting better, because the Well.
First of all, the AI anchors are remarkably lifelike now.
They can go through the motions, right?
Trying on clothes and showing side angles and back views, and they can make small gestures and things like that.
But I think the weakness there is that even through home shopping, on television or through live streams e-commerce, which has become a big thing around the world it feels like to the consumer that they're having a store-type experience, when there's a person there trying on the clothes and giving the explanations and things like that.
When it's known that it's an AI avatar.
It takes away from the reality of the situation for some customers.
And that's something that has to be worked on.
Unless in the future they can show up in the shape and figure, and even face, of the targeted consumer.
Here's exactly what you will look like.
Yes.
And would you like some shoes with that?
Okay, last question.
We see the upgrading of the service, of the platform, helping not only the consumers but also the shop owners.
Yet These kind of upgrading is happening not only for the Double Eleven Festival, it's happening for the entire industry.
So do you think there is still the need of having a shopping festival in general?
Or as long as we're having all these upgraded services, we do not really need a shopping festival.
We can just make the purchase as long as there is something that we desire.
Interesting question.
I don't think we need shopping festivals anymore, because I feel like every day is a shopping festival or every month there is a shopping festival.
So we don't need more.
But for some people, I think they are waiting for this particular shopping festival to buy something electronic devices or something that require a higher amount of money that you are not, You don't think you want to buy, or you you want to wait for a time when the price gets lower.
Yeah, i think there's a lot that goes into this and i'm sure they've done numerous studies on this, but one thing that's quite simple is that it provides people something to look forward to.
You know, in the west um, christmas is a big season there, so black friday, end of november, that'll kick off the spending and it's just something that people talk about, they plan for, they'll save for it um, so it gives customers something to look forward to, but it just provides a little jolt to consumer spending as well, because it it works.
I mean providing these big discounts, making things logistically easy for the businesses as it's getting better.
It's just a kind of a fun win-win.
Yeah, I agree, I don't know if we really need it, but I do not think define need.
Yes, I do not think it will disappear.
It's kind of like a tradition already.
That's what I mean.
Yeah, for a lot of people it becomes part of culture.
Part of culture, something you can participate, something holds a little significance that makes you feel like your life is a little special.
On that period of time you talk with your friends.
It's kind of like you can watch a horror film anytime you want, but if it's Halloween it's just a little more fun.
And if you make the purchase on double 11 shopping festival, it's just a little more fun.
