The coronavirus outbreak pushed many Chinese to buy daily necessities online last year and some have developed the habit of shopping online via watching top live-streamers' market products, famous live-streamer Viya told the Global Times in a recent group interview. Thanks to the robust digital economy, mature logistics and convenient online payments, China's livestream e-commerce industry has taken the lead worldwide, Zhang Yi, CEO of consulting agency iiMedia Research, told the Global Times. Viya, one of China's top live-streamers, realized a sales revenue of CNY300 million in just one day. The popular online influencer now has around 80 million followers on Taobao's livestream platform. Discounts are the biggest attraction during livestreams and gifts distributed are also not available at offline shop, one consumer said. As of April, 90% of consumers are willing to choose wholesale e-commerce, according to iiMedia Research. “Consumers generally believe that the prices of goods on wholesale e-commerce sites are lower and there are more kinds of goods, and 96% of them prefer to shop on livestream e-commerce.”
Livestream e-commerce was born in China. Now, some countries and brands have seen the benefits of this new sales format and are eager to give it a try. Last December, Walmart cooperated with TikTok and initiated its first livestream sales event. Though the company did not reveal the sales results during the one-hour event, it recorded nearly 20,000 views. The discrepancy in the industry between the Chinese and overseas markets is directly related to the number of online buyers, cheaper products and in-depth analysis of user behavior, analysts said. Online shopping requires a sophisticated payments and logistics system in which the U.S. lags behind China. Another factor which may limit foreign companies, like Amazon's livestream sector, is the lack of competitive pricing as most of the products on the platform sold during livestream shows are manufactured in developing countries, meaning consumers are unlikely to snap up goods at significantly cheaper prices, according to Zhang. Last but not least, the convenience and maturity of digital payments facilitate China's livestream e-commerce. “According to our research, scanning to pay improves efficiency threefold compared to using credit cards; and face-scanning payment doubles the efficiency of scanning to pay,” he added.
According to iiMedia Research, the market for livestream e-commerce in China reached CNY961 billion, as China's retail sales dropped 3.9% year-on-year to CNY39.20 trillion in 2020 amid the Covid-19 outbreak. By comparison, data from Coresight, a global advisory and research firm, showed the U.S. livestream market is expected to reach USD11 billion by 2021 and hit USD25 billion by 2023 as it plays catch-up to China, the Global Times reports.
