Strong sales for high quality livestreaming

Li Jiaqi promotes products during a livestream session. (Gao Erqiang/China Daily)

Top-tier livestreaming sales host Li Jiaqi notched sales champion for the presale session of China's "Double Eleven" online shopping frenzy, which falls on Nov. 11.

The value of consumer purchases made through his livestreaming sessions jumped by over 20 percent year-on-year, indicating an increasing enthusiasm to spend.

The eye-catching online sales transactions are a reflection of a growing willingness of Chinese consumers to make the most of promotions, further strengthening their online shopping habits, experts observed.

Together with other presenters, Li began his livestreaming sessions for the presale of the Double Eleven shopping extravaganza on Oct 14, and sales through his livestreaming sessions exceeded over 100 million yuan ($14 million) within an hour.

The growing confidence of Chinese consumers is reflected in the latest figures. In the first three quarters of the year, total retail sales in the country amounted to 35.36 trillion yuan, up 3.3 percent year-on-year. Retail sales of merchandise stood at 31.41 trillion yuan, up 3 percent on a yearly basis, the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday.

Over the same period, online retail sales in China totaled 10.89 trillion yuan, up 8.6 percent year-on-year. Of that amount, online retail sales of physical goods reached 9.07 trillion yuan, accounting for 25.7 percent of total retail sales, up 7.9 percent year-on-year, the NBS added.

"Online consumption has maintained a good growth momentum, and its growth rate has been faster than the overall retail sales growth, indicating that online shopping has increasingly become a mainstream for consumers," said Fu Yifu, a researcher at the Star Atlas Institute of Finance. "The government has continuously introduced favorable fiscal and monetary policies since late September, which are expected to promote sustained economic recovery. Besides, a good recent performance of the capital market also helped consumers with income growth and further stimulated their consumption willingness."

Those favorable factors are expected to help contribute to a strong rebound of spending for the Double Eleven this year, Fu added.

On Oct 14 and 15, the livestreaming sessions of Li distributed a total of 500 million yuan of red envelopes, significantly driving the purchasing desire of consumers. Sending red envelopes during livestreaming sessions has been a common marketing tactic to attract new customers. Larger amounts of red envelopes and more discounts usually encourage consumers to buy more, industry insiders observed.

Other top livestreaming hosts also managed to achieve sales transactions of over 100 million yuan within an hour, and the sales speed and value both surpassed that of last year, according to Taobao, an online marketplace of Alibaba Group.

"An overwhelmingly high presale transaction for the Double Eleven signifies that e-commerce sales through livestreaming sessions have entered a new stage of high-quality growth, instead of a business model supported by influencers," said Yuan Yuan, general manager of store marketing and livestreaming at Taobao Live. "A quality livestreaming business model that combines professional anchors and high-quality platform service has become the mainstream of the sector."