从“抢流量”到“拼供给” 618增长逻辑变了

This article outlines the core shift behind this year's 618 e-commerce shopping festival: instead of the old growth model of competing for traffic, brands and sellers are now competing based on full-spectrum supply capacity. Amid China's new era of rational consumption growth, general readers can take away the following key takeaways:

1. Shifting consumer trends: For two consecutive years, China Consumers Association surveys show that more than 75% of respondents now make more rational purchasing decisions. Consumers no longer prioritize low prices alone, but instead value a full-spectrum experience spanning basic product quality, in-store shopping service, brand cultural connotation and design aesthetics. They prioritize buying "well" rather than buying more or buying cheap.

2. Improved promotional shopping experience: This year's Douyin 618 prioritizes support for sellers that offer high-quality goods and reliable service. It is now much easier for ordinary consumers to find products that match their expectations across quality, price and service, while enjoying additional perks such as platform coupons, shipping insurance for after-sales claims and other benefits that deliver a better overall shopping experience.

This article summarizes new trends in the current consumer market and the updated growth logic for the 618 shopping festival, offering actionable insights for brands planning for promotional events and long-term online growth:

1. Consumer trend insight: More than 75% of consumers now spend more rationally, and expect higher quality across the entire consumer journey. They are no longer satisfied with low prices alone, so brands must align both soft experience and hard product quality to win consumer recognition.

2. Adjust promotional operation strategies: Brands need to shift from the old playbook of chasing traffic and competing on price to building three core supply capabilities: content, product assortment, and service and pricing. On the content side, brands should create lifestyle-focused discovery content that gives users a compelling reason to purchase. Delman's approach of embedding standardized content snippets across the entire customer journey is a proven framework for building hit products.

3. Keys to long-term growth: On the product side, brands should develop differentiated SKUs exclusive to specific channels to avoid price competition. On the service side, brands need to deliver end-to-end service, leverage platform tools to optimize pricing, build repeat customer bases, and achieve sustainable long-term growth.

This article breaks down industry changes for the 618 shopping festival, and provides clear opportunity alerts and actionable, implementable takeaways for sellers:

1. Risk warning: Sellers that stick to the old playbook of chasing traffic and competing purely on price will fail to meet new consumer demand, easily hit growth ceilings, and miss out on promotional sales growth. They need to adjust their business direction promptly.

2. New policies and opportunities: This year, Douyin 618's incentive policies clearly prioritize high-quality goods and operationally focused sellers. The platform has launched a tiered supply support resource system: sellers that participate in official events gain access to traffic and subsidy support, with a flexible registration mechanism that allows entire store inventory to participate. Additional support includes shipping insurance subsidies, free intelligent customer service, and dynamic pricing tools.

3. Actionable best practices: Sellers can develop exclusive SKUs and new products tailored for Douyin users to escape homogenized price competition, adjust their product assortments to align with platform search trends to capture free, high-intent traffic, and deliver strong discovery content and customer service to drive growth.

This article sorts out new changes on the consumer side and in the e-commerce industry, offering actionable insights for factories undergoing digital transformation and expanding their e-commerce business:

1. Shifts in product design and production demand: Consumers now shop more rationally, no longer prioritize low prices, and demand higher standards for product quality, design aesthetics and end-to-end service. Factories building their own e-commerce businesses can no longer compete purely on low cost and low prices, and need to upgrade product quality and design to meet new consumer demand.

2. New business opportunities: The 618 growth model now revolves around competition on supply capability. Factories already hold an inherent advantage in production capacity, making them more competitive than pure traffic-driven sellers. Factories can leverage this advantage to develop differentiated, exclusive products for platform users, and tap into new dedicated growth markets by making use of platform incentive policies.

3. Lessons for digital e-commerce operations: Factories can learn digital operation best practices from mature sellers, such as building standardized content production systems, and leveraging platform search data and AI tools to adjust product assortments and ad targeting, improve operational efficiency, and build hit products at low cost.

This article summarizes the latest development trends of China's e-commerce industry and the core pain points merchants are facing, providing reference for service providers looking to tap into new business opportunities:

1. New industry development trends: The growth logic for 618 and other major e-commerce promotions has shifted from platform-controlled traffic distribution to merchants competing on end-to-end supply capacity. Merchants also now prioritize long-term sustainable growth over short-term promotional spikes, leading to surging demand for refined operation services and supporting tools.

2. Core merchant pain points: The traditional growth model of chasing traffic and competing on price is no longer effective, and most merchants face three core pain points: First, they lack the capability to produce high-quality discovery content that resonates with consumers. Second, severe product homogenization has locked merchants into self-defeating price competition that compresses profit margins. Third, they lack the capability for refined product assortment management, pricing and service, leading to low conversion rates and low repeat purchase rates.

3. New business direction reference: Service providers can build solutions targeting these pain points, developing standardized content production tools, product assortment iteration analysis tools, and intelligent pricing tools to help merchants upgrade their content supply, plan differentiated product lines, and improve end-to-end service. This allows merchants to adapt to the new growth logic and capture promotional sales growth.

Using Douyin Mall's 618 practices as a case study, this article summarizes new operational lessons for major e-commerce promotions, providing reference for platform operators to adjust their own strategies:

1. Shifts in core merchant demands from platforms: Merchants no longer only need traffic from platforms. They now prioritize platforms that build fair support systems, simplify operational processes, and provide practical tools and policy support to help high-quality sellers achieve growth, while eliminating cutthroat low-price competition.

2. Proven new practices to adopt: Douyin Mall's 618 operational framework offers a clear blueprint: Build a complete tiered resource support system for promotional supply, so that high-quality products at every tier can access matching traffic and subsidy resources; set experience score thresholds to incentivize sellers to improve service; and roll out additional support including shipping insurance subsidies, free intelligent customer service, dynamic pricing tools and AI-powered ad tools.

3. Strategic direction hint: Platforms need to shift their core focus from traffic distribution to supporting high-quality supply, and use platform rules to guide sellers to improve their full-spectrum operational capabilities. This not only meets upgraded consumer demand, but also drives overall platform growth. Data shows this model delivers strong results: the number of brands breaking RMB 100 million in sales in the first three days of Douyin 618 grew 89% year-over-year.

This article documents the latest changes in China's e-commerce industry, providing original first-hand insights for research on e-commerce industry development:

1. New industry trends: China's domestic consumer market has now entered a stage of rational growth, and the growth logic for major e-commerce promotions has completed an iterative upgrade. It has shifted from merchants competing for and capturing platform-allocated traffic to merchants proactively competing on full-spectrum supply, generating new growth through improved supply. Douyin Mall's full-domain supply model has already been validated and delivered strong results.

2. New emerging industry problems: The traditional growth model of competing on traffic and price can no longer meet current consumer demand, and the sector now faces new structural problems: Severe homogenized competition among sellers has locked many into meaningless price wars that compress profit margins; many sellers' service capabilities cannot keep up with their sales scale, leading to high return rates, low repeat purchases and underperformance on conversion.

3. Summary of the new business model: The e-commerce industry has now formed a three-in-one closed growth loop integrating content, product assortment, and service and pricing. Platforms use tiered incentives to support high-quality supply and guide merchants to focus on long-term sustainable operations. This model meets the rising expectations of increasingly rational consumers, while helping merchants achieve both short-term promotional growth and long-term stable development, offering a new growth direction for the entire e-commerce industry.