Recently, the Infinite team held a webinar on "Boost your Black Friday sales with Live Commerce". However, with this tool, you can increase sales before and during any other holidays: Halloween, New Year and Christmas, Easter, and Valentine's Day. Now, this topic is especially relevant, because the hot sales period is coming.
We thank all participants for being with us live! The event was held not only with benefits, and a lot of valuable insights, but also in an atmosphere of lightness and inspiration! We decided to prepare a detailed summary of the webinar for you so that you can return to it anytime.
You can also watch the recorded broadcast via the link on Youtube or the Infinite website.
Live shopping is a combination of live events and e-commerce. The format allows sellers to present their products and services live during video broadcasts, with the possibility of purchasing on their platforms. Viewers can watch streams from any device in real-time, chat with hosts, send emoji reactions, receive personalized product recommendations and easily make purchases during the broadcast.
It's like a TV store 2.0 online, but much better!
What is the value of live shopping for e-commerce?
First, live online sales are now the closest to replicating the experience of shopping in physical stores.
Secondly, as opposed to face-to-face communication in physical stores or online platforms, live commerce allows you to reach more potential customers while maintaining a personalized approach.
Thirdly, the format is relevant for younger generations of consumers for whom online streams, social networks, and influencer content are commonplace.
We conclude that the rise of live commerce is the future of online sales. It is not a matter of probability but of time.
What is the connection between Live Shopping and holiday sales?
Live shopping originated in 2015-2016 in China and then spread around the world from Southeast Asia to the United States and Europe. Now, shopping festivals are becoming extremely popular in China. The main one is 11.11 or, as it is also called, Singles' Day, Bachelors' Day.
Initially, the festival was celebrated by students at Nanjing University. But in 2009, Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang took the concept as a basis and held a 24-hour shopping festival.
Today it is the largest shopping festival in the world. Here are some brief statistics:
- in 2021, during Singles' Day, Alibaba Group companies alone sold $84.5 billion worth of goods. For comparison, this figure is commensurate with the pre-war budget of Ukraine.
- Another major e-commerce platform, JD sold goods worth a combined $54.5 billion.
- $2.86 billion was earned by Douyin, the Chinese twin brother of TikTok.
In total, more than 100,00 brands broadcast on the streaming platform from Alibaba — Taobao. 43 brands sold goods worth more than 100 million yuan ($15.8 million). For example, during Singles' Day, one of the most popular influencers Austin Li sold $1.7 billion worth of cosmetics on live stream during a 12-hour stream.
Chinese people love live broadcasts because it is fun and interactive; their favorite stars are often present at such events, and they can communicate with the audience; there are many discounts and promo codes; they can see the product immediately. Preparation for the festival takes 20 days and more, depending on the platform. The main products that are usually sold on Taobao live streams are clothes, cosmetics, electronics, food, jewelry, etc.
And how does Live Shopping sell in the West?
As we have already mentioned above, live shopping in China appeared at the turn of 2015-2016. Immediately after that, it began spreading across Southeast Asia — Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan. However, it was almost unheard of in the Western market. Everything changed with the spread of COVID-19. Since 2020, live shopping has been massively gaining popularity in the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Among the leaders are Amazon (which launched the Amazon Live live shopping platform), Walmart Live, Pinterest TV, and Whatnot, a unicorn startup from California, which is called eBay's main competitor in the United States. eBay itself also created its live shopping platform in July 2022.
Individual brands and retailers did not stand aside and implemented live shopping broadcasts on their platforms. For instance, in Germany, this was done by Douglas, Lidl, Media Markt, Peek&Cloppenburg, OTTO, and BILD. In France — by Carrefour, Sephora, Auchan, FNAC, Pimkie. In the United Kingdom — by Charlotte Tilbury, Tommy Hilfiger, Bobbi Brown, and in the United States by Who What Wear, The Fresh Market, QVC, and Adore me. Many other e-commerce platforms of different sizes have also experimented with the format.
How brands in different countries use live streaming for shopping festivals
Some brands have decided to scale their live broadcasts and organize festivals. Below we share the cases of the most interesting events in this format.
Amazon Prime Day (USA)
Amazon Prime Day is an annual shopping festival from Amazon, which takes place on July 12-13 in the United States, exclusively for Amazon Prime subscribers. In 2022, the festival was based on live shopping. Various brands that cooperate with Amazon had the opportunity to broadcast and tell the festival participants about themselves, offering discounts on goods. The broadcasts were posted on the main Amazon page and a specially created event page. Influencers were also actively involved in the streaming.
In total, 100M views were collected during the live broadcast of the festival, and the most popular event was watched simultaneously by 57K people. 91% of purchases were made by users who first learned about the brand (new-to-brand customers).
Carrefour (France)
Carrefour held a live shopping broadcast in 2021 in France, during which it was possible to buy PlayStation 5 at a discount. They involved influencers: actor and stand-up comedian Kev Adams, gamer Doigby, actress and presenter Valérie Bègue, and blogger Julien Cocktail. They were also assisted in their preparation by online media — Le Kaba. The event was broadcast on Le Kaba, YouTube, and the Twitch channel of one of the influencers — Kev Adams. During the broadcast, there was such a stream of people willing to buy PlayStation 5 that the website overloaded. The recording collected 119K views on YouTube.
How to make a successful Live Shopping event for holiday sales?
In short, the path to a successful broadcast looks like this:
- Come up with an idea to share with the audience.
- Prepare discounts, promo codes, and make them into promotions.
- Find a solution that can implement all your whims.
- Good promotion is the final part of the work.
Live shopping is an effective tool for increasing sales and customer engagement. And the cases of world-famous brands listed in the material above confirm this.
More details and our emotions are in the webinar recording. You can watch it on Youtube or the Infinite website. We invite you to watch!
Information about upcoming events you can find on our Telegram channel. Join us to keep up to date with the news.
