China Marketing Insights Monthly Newsletter [Mar 2020]
Hello,
Welcome to our March newsletter.
In this issue we bring you positive updates from China – increasing travel sentiment; live streaming becomes central as the most population have stayed indoor; we at OctoPlus Media has done 6 live-streaming events in the past 2 months and almost 4 every coming month to help e-commerce/education/real estate/government client find another business boom through live-streaming.
We look at key insights report from Xungfei about the impact of the virus on various industries, JD.com report on Girl Power – female consumption power in 2020. Finally, in our App of the month, we take a closer look at Himalaya – China’s largest online audio platform with over 600 Million users.
Lastly to all our international readers please take abundant precautions, maintain social distance and help flatten the curve – we can beat the pandemic together!
Sincerely,
Mia C. Chen
CEO & Co-Founder of OctoPlus Media
1. CONFIDENCE RAISING IN CHINA’S EPIDEMIC-HIT TOURISM
In order to promote tourism consumption, Ctrip recently announced 1 Billion yuan plan to revive travel booking on platform. The plan will invove destination government authorities, airlines, hotels, travel agencies and tourist attraction operators. Ctrip also proposed active investment subsidies for the recovery of the tourism economy, including digital marketing, financial assistance and other goals. They highly recommend that tourist attraction operators should be cooperation with advantageous social platforms and the entire industry chain. The initiative has received responses from hundreds of destinations. Some overseas regions have reached intent to cooperate with destinations such as Singapore, Israel, Australia, Indonesia and Thailand, they are launching specific measures to revitalize the tourism economy.
Ctrip Founder Jianzhang Liang
Ctrip is confident in the recovery of tourism after the epidemic. First of all, from historical experience, Ctrip flight booking saw over 200% increase in sales Y-o-Y for July 2003 and over 82% increase month on month. They also saw a major uplift in flights booking Y-o-Y for 2003 Gloden Week and 2004 CNY saw a similar travel surge compared to 2003.
Secondly, the situation is still precarious in China & around the world, the sentiment within China is turning positive – No new local cases outside of Hubei; Wuhan closes all 16 temporary hospitals; President Xi visit Wuhan. Chinese consumers are feeling more relaxed and are more receptive to seeing general advertising message now without feeling that the brands are being insensitive. The China Toursim Academy reported that 71.5% of respondents would travel after outbreak ends and everything stabilises for a while, and 20.7% would go traveling as soon as possible after the epidemic.
2. FLIGGY LIVE STREAMING FOR HOME STAY –
Fliggy, the Alibaba’s comprehensive tourism service platform, it ranks the top 3 mobile terminals in the tourism market. It is backed by the Ali Group ecosystem and has nearly 700 million monthly mobile active users, also successfully attracted many international travel enterprises. Recently, Fliggy launched a new reform, that is a live streaming channel for members of the homestay owner. It’s the ” cloud resumption” way for homestay industry, setting up exclusive channels for the homestay owner, entering the “fans raising” stage in advance. Fliggy will invest million of traffic to support the homestay industry to resume production, and help reduce the industry impact caused of the virus.
In order to attract the consumers in advice, the live streaming content is intergrated with local characteristic culture to show the beautiful environment and living facilities of homestay. The homestay owner hope to add to their wish lists for consumers who stay at home. There have been hundreds of live-broadcast each day, covering more than 30 countries and regions around the world since the live streaming platform was launched, with up to 7.5 million online viewres tuned in for a single show. This new travel way (Travel using clound service) will help businessbuild brand, attract user, accumulate the number of fans, and lay the foundation for the subsequent demand.
Ctrip-Live Streaming
Hotel operators believe that the live streaming is the best way for hotel and travel industry to cultivate internak skills, establish brands, and accumulate fans. The new way can let customers travel using clound services and help homestay owner to build their own brands and customer base so that they can lock purchase intention in advance, and embrace the burst of sales once the virus is over.
3. ALIPAY FULL LIFE STYLE
AliPay, one of the China largest thire-party payment platform, it backed by the Alibaba group, with 1.2billion users. It’s also the industry of digital payment most trusted partner. Recently Alipay announces the plan to support the digital strategy upgrade in China. Alipay has evolved from digital wallet to a lifestyle enabler, the function will be fully opened to business, means user can directly expreience the different merchants such as hail a taxi, book a hotel, buy movie ticket, make appointment with doctors, etc. It more like Meituan and Wechat.
In the next three years, AliPay will cooperate with 50k service providers to help 40 million servixe providers complete digital upgrade.
Alipay logo
Hotel operators believe that the live streaming is the best way for hotel and travel industry to cultivate internak skills, establish brands, and accumulate fans. The new way can let customers travel using clound services and help homestay owner to build their own brands and customer base so that they can lock purchase intention in advance, and embrace the burst of sales once the virus is over.
1. BIG DATA AND CHINA INSIGHTS
Where do Chinese people want to travel after outbreak is over? Japan is the 1st choice, next is Thailand and South Korea.
iScope Travel Insight
In the face of the virus on the impact of different industries, Xunfei AI officially released the report, focusing on the eight industries include tourism, finance, automobile, electricity, fresh food, games, education and health, in-depth observation to interpret user behavior under the virus and grasp the development trend of the industry after the outbreak.
The travel desire of consumers was low during the virous — the whole family stay at home and fight against the virus, the travel plan was forced to be cancelled meanwhile, travel industry has been affected seriously. The report data show that the mentions of “tourism”, “air ticket”, “hotel”, the three major tourism keywords are significantly reduced, tourism attention in a short period of sharp decline.
Scope Travel Insight
It is predicted that the travel industry will see a retaliatory increase after the outbreak ends — the focus on the recent holiday keyword “Qing Ming” during the virous period decreased by 20.8% year on year, but users’ enthusiasm for such holidays as “May Day”, “Dragon Boat Festival” and “National Day” is significantly higher than 2019, the number of mentions of “May Day” increased by 41.1% year on year. Thus, Chinese users can’t wait to travel during the May Day holiday. If the global outbreak improves, the travel industry is expected to attract an outbreak of Chinese tourists during the May Day holiday.
2. JD DATA: GIRL POWER
Female are always as an important role in the consumption upgrade process, and they have also become the leader of high-quality consumption. According to the “2020 Female’s Consumption Trend Report” released by JD Big Data Research Institute, 2019 females consume more 3C and home appliances. Sports health has become their new focus. According to the 2019 sports classification report, barbells have become female’s first choice of home appliances, the business volume increased by 292% Y-o-Y on the JD platform, it ranks first in sports classification. From the region of consumption, the comsumption level of female in the tier 1 market is high. The top 5 provinces and cities for female’s consumption are Beijing, Liaoning, Tianjin, Heilongjiang, and Jilin. The top 5 provinces and cities for female’s consumption growth are: Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Guangdong, Jilin and Inner Mongolia. Nine of the ten cities are in the north, and 6 in Northeast China.
JD 2020 Female Consumer Trend
In the high proportion of traditional industries, such as beauty makeup and maternal and child products, the products with more vertical and segmentation functions will further attract female groups, such product consumption will continue to rise. A more diversified and personalized new generation of female will soon become the main force of consumption, and the potential of female consumption in sinking markets (3rd tier cities) will continue to increase.
1. LIVE-STREAMING ON WECHAT
WeChat just launched the live streaming function, the major brands are rushing to enter the market. Through WeChat live streaming, users can watch the live streaming and buy products; Participate in interactive activities such as likes, comments, lucky draw, coupon, etc. Users also can directly share the mini program live to WeChat friends or WeChat group chat, it will further increase user number. For brands, WeChat mini program live streaming can increase the traffic entrance, directly bring users to the live steraming e-commerce to promote sales transformation, conversion rate will be high; For consumers, since all visits, interactions, and tyransactions are all happened in Wechat, there is no need to jump to other platforms, it seamlessly provide a smoother shopping experience.
On International Women’s Day, there are nearly a thousand Chinese brands in WeChat mini program for the first show of the festival live streming. Shopping guide, Influencer, KOL, designer, model, CEO, have become the anchors of the live studio host. The highest unit price of live streaming reached 5300RMB, and the transformation of female fans was obvious. For brand Ochirly +, on March 8, GMV(Gross Merchandise Volume) increased by 180%, and orders increased by 12 times during the live streaming.
Tencent Live
2. DOUYIN IS BETA TESTING "AUDIO LIVESTREAMING".
Douyin will launch an audio broadcasting function, the feature allows a host to set up a public live voice chatroom, where up to 8 listeners can join and broadcast at the same time. This new feature is expected to enhance the social attributes of Douyin and make communication between users closer. And Douyin’s strong competitors “Kuaishou (China’s well-known short video platform)” launched the “Kuaishou Chat Room” as early as October 2019, it support multiple listener to simultaneously voice online. With the rise of the “audio economic”, Internet radio, voice live broadcast and other forms have developed rapidly, not only “watching”, but the “audio” function has gradually been applied to life and social scenes.
Live Chating
Live Chat - Kuaishou
HIMALAYA（XIMALAYA.COM）
Himalaya (ximalaya.com) is China’s largest online audio platform, designed to share a variety of aduio content, including Internet radio, audiobooks, comedies (talk shows and cross talks, etc.). It currently has more than 600 million users, with 135 million monthly active users and 75% of market share, it ranks first in the industry. In 2020, Himaraya launched brand enhanced content marketing, used 1 million + We-media KOL, 500+ celebrities to create content. It create audio IP programs, and used the celebrities power to create a new audio IP economy and achieve strong brand exposure and effect conversion.
The marketing methods that Himaraya cooperates with brands include brand radio, audio IP, funny dubbing and other content marketing. With content as the core, it accurately reaches the target audiences and connects the brand with consumers. In addition, it also provides a variety of advertising formats such as open-screen advertising, radio broadcasts, sound streaming, and search advertising to meet the needs of different types of customers. Advertising traffic covers all users and enhances brand exposure.
-End of the Newsletter-
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