It’s another year of “618” e-commerce mid-year promotion.
A prominent feature of this year’s “618” is the comprehensive empowerment of artificial intelligence (AI), which is considered by the industry to be the first “AI-native” e-commerce promotion.
Experts say that AI applications are no longer embellishments or show-offs, but have penetrated into e-commerce product selection, marketing, customer service, logistics, after-sales and other aspects. The implementation scenarios cover the entire consumption chain and are reconstructing the underlying logic of the e-commerce industry.
The underlying rules change
This year’s JD.com “618” will open at 20:00 on May 30.
Cao Peng, chairman of JD Group’s technical committee and president of JD Cloud, said that this year’s “618” is the first time JD has integrated AI into all scenarios and industries.
52 hours after the launch of the promotion, the “AI home scene product group” equipped with JoyInside was unveiled for the first time, and the transaction volume of new AI home appliances and home products connected to JoyInside increased by 200% month-on-month.
On May 11, Qianwen and Taobao were fully integrated.
Users can talk to AI on Qianwen App to complete product selection, comparison and order purchase on Taobao; open Taobao App and click “Qianwen AI Shopping Assistant” to start AI shopping, using AI try-on, AI calculation of discounts, AI low-price help and other functions.
Zhu Keli, founding director of the Guoyan New Economic Research Institute, said that AI has penetrated the entire chain of this year’s “618”.
For ordinary consumers, AI smart shopping guides replace traditional keyword searches. They can match products through dialogue and automatically calculate all subsidies and platform discounts, eliminating the tedious process of price comparison.
For merchants, AI takes over tasks such as intelligent delivery, intelligent customer service, inventory prediction, and copywriting generation, greatly reducing the operating costs of large-scale promotions for small and medium-sized merchants.
On the supply chain side, AI relies on consumption data to predict sales, allocate warehousing goods in advance, optimize logistics distribution efficiency, and alleviate problems such as warehouse explosions and delayed distribution during major promotions.
Zhao Gang, director of Saizhi Industrial Research Institute, analyzed that during this year’s “618”, AI has restructured the shopping entrance and consumer decision-making path.
Platform companies connect large AI models with e-commerce platforms, and users can directly select products, compare prices and even place orders through AI.
AI is becoming the “first entrance” to shopping. In the future, e-commerce traffic will no longer be search keywords, but AI’s precise intent recognition.
Zhu Keli said that in previous years during “618”, AI was only used sparsely in individual marketing links. This year, the underlying architecture of major platforms has adapted to AI. Traffic distribution, transaction links, and discount calculation all rely on large models to operate. The consumption logic has changed from people actively looking for products to AI matching products on demand. The underlying rules of e-commerce have undergone fundamental changes.
Consumption becomes more rational
This year’s “618”, marketing methods are more pragmatic.
Taotian implements “official instant discounts” and “direct discounts for one item”, and uses tens of billions of subsidies and 88VIP consumer coupons to make profits.
JD.com focuses on “official direct discounts, as low as 50% off”, and upgrades to “buy more expensive and get double compensation” and superimpose trade-in subsidies.
Vipshop’s “618” discount rule is still an instant discount for one item, no need to put together an order, meeting the needs of consumers to directly enjoy the big promotion discounts without doing arithmetic.
“This year’s ‘618’ breaks away from old routines such as full discounts, etc. The preferential rules are greatly simplified, complex order calculations are cancelled, the platform is directly reduced and national replacement subsidies are added, and price transparency has become a consensus, saying goodbye to raising prices first and then discounting.” Zhu Keli said.
Li Mingtao, an expert from the National E-commerce Demonstration City Expert Committee, believes that this reflects the more obvious characteristics of rational consumption.
It is difficult to really impress consumers with all kinds of full discounts. More consumers tend to shop on demand and choose the most suitable products. This is why the platform simplifies promotion rules.
Zhao Gang analyzed that the pragmatic management of merchants is the inevitable result of the transformation of e-commerce platforms from “traffic thinking” to “user thinking”.
Consumers have returned from the carnival-style emotional shopping of previous big promotions to value-based experiential shopping.
In this case, the service quality of merchants has become a new focus of competition.
Zhu Keli analyzed that mass consumption has turned to be rational and pragmatic, and consumption upgrades have focused on the three major directions of green, smart, and domestic products. Consumers are more willing to pay for product quality and practical functions.
At the same time, the trade-in of old appliances drives the upgrading of existing home appliances, and consumption gradually shifts from incremental purchases to inventory replacement. The overall trend is from extensive hoarding consumption to a new stage of refined quality consumption.
Returning to a better experience
As of 23:59 on June 1, the number of users placing orders on JD.com’s “618” reached a new high, and the number of JD.com Supermarket users achieved double-digit year-on-year growth.
Tmall data shows that as of May 31, the transaction volume of more than 40,000 brands has doubled, and the live broadcast room with a volume of 100 million yuan and maintaining double-digit growth has increased by 50% year-on-year.
Zhu Keli believes that the mid-year sales are still a key window period for the launch of new products and brand customer expansion throughout the year. A large number of domestic products have used “618” to complete the launch of new products and market popularization, indirectly driving upstream and downstream manufacturing, logistics, and service industries to increase income, and the driving role is still outstanding.
Li Mingtao analyzed that “618” is one of the most important promotional activities in the e-commerce field. Platform companies will inevitably invest a lot of resources, such as focusing on launching new brands and new products.
As consumers become more rational in their decision-making, “618” will return to the value of a promotional carrier with more products, better experiences, greater benefits and more intelligence as its core.
As for the future direction of “618”, Zhao Gang suggested highlighting “value + experience driven”.
Major platforms need to invest their energy in how to use AI to provide personalized solutions, improve after-sales service systems, and break down online and offline instant retail barriers.
At the same time, AI is promoted to reconstruct the connection between people and goods.
Zhao Gang believes that the next decade of e-commerce belongs to “intelligent entities”.
Platforms and merchants should completely change their thinking from studying “keyword ranking” to studying “semantic understanding and scene matching”.
Whoever can make AI understand users better can find structural increments in the existing market.
In addition, policy coordination needs to be strengthened.
Zhao Gang believes that the “old for new” policy should be normalized and connected with the platform’s membership system and points system to strengthen support for new consumption such as AI consumption and cultivate new growth points.
