The rumored livestream debut of Liu Qiangdong has finally settled with the appearance of his digital avatar.
At 6:18 pm on April 16th, the "Procurement and Sales Dongge" AI digital person launched its "live broadcast debut" and also appeared in JD Home Appliances and JD Supermarket Procurement and Sales live broadcast rooms.
That night, digital figure Liu Qiangdong was wearing a blue suit, which perfectly matched his usual image and temperament. "Everyone hurry up and get on the car." "Today, let's make a noise and grab high-quality products for a penny.". During the live broadcast, the salesperson skillfully interspersed live language and occasionally made a few exaggerated movements.
After 30 minutes of Liu Qiangdong's appearance, the views in both major live streaming rooms exceeded 10 million, and multiple products in JD Supermarket's live streaming rooms were already showing as sold out.
However, within less than an hour of the appearance of Dongge's sales, it went offline and was continued by live streamers. Subsequently, the growth in viewership in the live broadcast room slowed down.
Time Finance learned from JD.com that the first live broadcast of "Purchasing and Selling Dongge AI Digital People" achieved over 20 million views in less than an hour. Digital humans are self-developed by JD Cloud Yanxi and have been used by over 4000 brands. And this time, it is the first entrepreneur in the industry to live stream and sell products through digital people.
Live streaming is not over yet
JD, which missed out on the e-commerce live streaming trend, has recently made no secret of its desire for top anchors.
Top anchors often represent the benchmark of a platform's live streaming, with their own tens of millions of traffic, a group of high stickiness fans, and the ability to convert fans into a stable audience for the platform.
In the past few years, Li Jiaqi has firmly held the top spot in Taobao's live streaming, repeatedly breaking sales records in the Double 11 promotion; Dong Yuhui, Tiktok's elder brother, and Xiao Yang's elder brother took turns on the stage, sparking a battle over the topic and traffic again and again; Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui, representatives of Xiaohongshu's live streaming, have demonstrated to the market the consumption power of the refined middle class.
JD.com has also put the importance of top anchors on the table. Last year on 618, JD Live recruited Luo Yonghao and achieved its first sales record of 150 million yuan. On Double 11 of the same year, JD's sales live streaming team successfully gained popularity under the banner of "the lowest price on the entire network". Official data shows that the total number of viewers during the Double Eleven period exceeded 380 million.
As JD's sales IP gradually gained popularity, its sales live streaming rooms were subdivided into more than 10 sales live streaming matrix accounts by category, including JD Home Appliances, JD Supermarket, and JD International.
However, JD's live streaming rooms have not yet formed a stable content ecosystem. "Everyone is in a wait-and-see state, and users on the JD platform tend to trade after searching and leave immediately after the transaction is completed. Moreover, the outside world still focuses on JD's 3C products, and live streaming sales have not yet formed a stable audience," said Hua Jie, the e-commerce manager of a certain consumer brand, to Time Finance.
"The concept of Liu Qiangdong as a digital person is good and has also given a gimmick to this live broadcast," an MCN live streaming operator told Times Finance. However, in his opinion, if a top live broadcast is to be launched, it must have iconic characteristics, such as Li Jiaqi being linked to young urban female consumers, and Dong Yuhui being labeled as a knowledge-based cultural anchor.
JD.com returns to combat mode
At the end of 2022, Liu Qiangdong returned strongly to the front line of JD.com and launched a series of bold reforms. In order to prevent Pinduoduo and Tiktok from eroding the basic e-commerce market, JD has taken out two weapons: low price and content.
In order to compete with low prices, JD.com first launched a subsidy of 10 billion yuan, and then opened up POP and self operation, aiming to achieve "traffic equality".
JD.com is also trying to break free from the labels of 3C products and high prices, opening the door to low-priced white label manufacturers. Several top daily consumer goods merchants have informed Time Finance that they are tentatively launching products on JD.com.
JD Retail Group has set three major directions: content ecology, open ecology, and instant retail. The content ecology has been proposed for the first time, and it is also the first time it has been mentioned in such an important position.
In February of this year, JD.com urgently mobilized various departments to develop anchor recruitment plans, requiring regulations that do not assess GMV (commodity transaction volume, a measure of e-commerce platform sales), do not assess gross profit, and only consider popularity.
On April 10th, JD.com publicly announced that it will invest 1 billion in cash and 1 billion in traffic as rewards, and emphasized that there will be no ceiling on incentives. On the one hand, enriching the shopping experience of consumers through high-quality content, and on the other hand, providing more solutions for business performance growth.
It is understood that JD's 1 billion yuan investment is mainly used to compete for anchors and users. In order to compete for anchors, JD.com provides subsidies to experts in 20 fields such as digital 3C, home appliances, and mother and baby, providing more exposure and traffic incentives for high-quality creators.
JD's layout in low prices and content ecology has brought certain benefits. The financial report shows that in 2023, the number of third-party merchants increased by 188% year-on-year, and the number of new merchants added within a year increased by 4.3 times year-on-year; At the same time, JD's active users are also accelerating their growth.
Compared to the past few years, e-commerce and live streaming sales methods have begun to decline. Major head anchors have successively withdrawn from the front line, reducing their appearance time in the live broadcast room. Whether JD.com can rely on top anchors to rise against the trend may depend on whether the purchasing and sales team can attract audience attention again after returning to work.