The penetration rate of live-streaming sessions in the e-commerce market just hit 4.1 percent last year, according to the report jointly issued by international accounting company KPMG and Alibaba’s research arm Ali-Research, indicating rapid growth in the live-streaming e-commerce sector.
Data from China’s Ministry of Commerce shows that there were over 10 million e-commerce related live-streaming sessions in China, attracting more than 50 billion views and helping sell 20 million products in the first half of the year. That equates to an average of more than 50,000 such sessions and over 260 million views per day.
Merchants are the leading players in e-commerce live-streaming activities, said the report. According to statistics from Alibaba’s live-streaming unit Taobao Live, 90 percent of live-streaming sessions and 70 percent of its transaction volume came from merchants’ live-streaming activities on the platform. During this year’s mid-year online shopping spree, nine of the top 15 live-streaming sessions, with a transaction volume of more than 100 million yuan, were owned by brands and merchants.
On the first day of the shopping spree, the transaction volume of more than 37,000 Chinese brands soared by at least 100 percent year on year, said the report.
For brands and merchants, live-streaming marketing is not only a matter of expediency, as it softens the blow brought by COVID-19, but is also a regular operation strategy.
Over 70 percent of surveyed brands said they boosted sales of products through live-streaming campaigns, while more than 60 percent held that the good reputation enjoyed by their products and services attracted consumers to their live-streaming sessions.
The increasing number of brands looking for live-streaming campaigns have given rise to agencies known as multi-channel networks (MCNs). Taobao’s data reveals that there are 200 MCNs on the platform, compared with none in June 2019.
The live-streaming e-commerce sector has also created jobs in China. According to a study from Renmin University of China, Taobao Live has created more than 1.73 million job opportunities related to live-streaming operations.
Live-streaming marketing will become a new basic requirement for the e-commerce sector, and new infrastructure, including 5G, will make live-streaming application scenarios more diversified, Kang noted, expecting accelerated training of live-streaming talents as well as more professional live-streaming e-commerce.
Source: http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/1022/c90000-9772128.html