Source | Bohu Finance (bohuFN)

The National Day holiday has just ended, and the bugle call for Double 11 has already sounded.

On October 12, JD.com kicked off Double 11 with immediate sales of products across all categories. Taobao and Tmall started their pre-sales on the 15th, with the Spot period (spot sales period) running from October 20 to November 13. Douyin's Double 11 Goods Festival also launched on October 15, featuring 'official discounts and direct price reductions on single items.'

Double 11 starts earlier and lasts longer each year, a trend that has become standard in recent years. This year, however, platforms like Taobao and Douyin have weakened or even eliminated traditional cross-store discounts, replacing them with simpler rules such as official discounts and direct price reductions.

This is an interesting shift.

The significance of cross-store discounts lies not only in increasing average order value but also in encouraging group purchase (bundling purchases), boosting conversion rates and time spent on the platform. Despite negative feedback from users, platforms benefited from higher click-through rates, add-to-cart rates, cross-category purchases, and GMV. Against the backdrop of a K-shaped consumption recovery, both supply and demand are undergoing profound changes, and the 18-year-old e-commerce promotion is gradually losing its original festive atmosphere.

This increasingly tests platforms' ability to adjust policies and tools to retain merchants and consumers.

01 Simplified Rules

In 2009, Taobao launched the first Double 11: 29 brands participated, offering 50% off across the board, limited to November 11 only. By this standard, this year's Double 11 marks a 'Renaissance.'

JD.com was the first to launch Double 11 promotions, emphasizing direct price reductions without bundling.

Taobao and Tmall made official discounts the core promotion this year, allowing consumers to enjoy discounts on single items participating in the event.

Douyin launched the 'Douyin Mall Double 11 Goods Festival,' promoting discounts, direct price reductions, coupons, and hundreds of millions in cash subsidies.

While the rhythm (pace) varies, all platforms aim to simplify rules and offer discounts on single items.

In the past, users criticized the complex discount mechanisms of promotions, but platforms hesitated to change them to push up average order value and GMV. This year's adjustments largely stem from changes in the broader environment.

On one hand, e-commerce promotions once relied on discounts to drive impulsive buying, but this year, 'cost-consciousness' is becoming the mainstream.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, from January to August, total retail sales of consumer goods reached 32,756.9 billion yuan, up 1.1% year-on-year. In August, retail sales totaled 3,982.4 billion yuan, up 0.4% year-on-year. In other words, consumers now consider not how much they save but whether a purchase is worthwhile.

With consumption growth under pressure, platforms need to reduce consumer decision-making costs.

On the other hand, consumption remains sharply divided by category. From January to August, retail sales of automobiles, furniture, and home appliances and audio-visual equipment fell by 13.9%, 4.9%, and 5.6%, respectively, while communications equipment rose by 16.3% and cosmetics by 6.1%. These merchants have the hope and ability to turn things around during promotions.

At the same time, years of e-commerce price wars have left merchants and consumers in a 'lose-lose' situation: prices keep falling, profits shrink, merchants complain about shrinking margins, and consumers, though seemingly getting deals, struggle to find genuine, high-quality products. According to a survey by Paidai.com of a thousand merchants, over 30% were operating at a loss in 2025, and another 30% had profit margins between 0% and 5%.

Over time, consumer enthusiasm for promotions has waned, and brands are unwilling to invest endlessly for sales.

02 Divergent Strategies

While platforms have opted for straightforward discounts, their traffic operation strategies show clear divergence.

According to consistent industry insights from previous exchanges, Taobao and Tmall focus on 88VIP and brand merchants: Tmall prioritizes high-value user traffic, such as 88VIP members, to quality brand flagship stores, increasing subsidies by nearly 10 billion yuan, with Alibaba covering about 40% of the increase.

We observed that before the promotion, Taobao and Tmall introduced subsidies for 88VIP users, launching the 'Super 88' event and various large coupons. For example, this year's 88VIP coupons introduced a new mechanism: 'inflation.' After claiming a basic coupon, users can click to 'inflate' it into a higher-tier coupon—e.g., a '480 minus 60' coupon can become '600 minus 75.'

This has been a key point of Taobao and Tmall's external messaging in recent years—the platform has accumulated a group of the most affluent consumers brands most want to reach. Last year, Chu Duan, then-president of Taobao Platform under Alibaba's China E-commerce Business Group, stated that 88VIP members spend nine times more annually than non-members and contribute over 55% of sales for some top brands. By this year, 88VIP has surpassed 64 million members, with annual spending 11 times that of non-88VIP users.

Against a backdrop of a maturing consumer base and shifting consumption structures, Taobao and Tmall aim to use membership as a breakthrough to connect affluent consumers with brands more precisely.

In contrast, Douyin took a different approach. According to meeting notes, Douyin re-prioritized influencer live-streaming and short-video-linked shopping as the most important traffic drivers for Double 11.

Previously, the industry judged that influencer live-streaming had high fees, squeezed brand profits, and left merchants to bear refund and after-sales costs. During this year's 618 promotion, Douyin's algorithm clearly favored store live-streaming, allocating more traffic to high-quality short videos and brand store streams to expand shelf e-commerce. Many merchants adopted a 'store live-streaming first, influencer live-streaming second' strategy.

However, results showed that Douyin's traffic shift to store live-streaming during 618 fell short of expectations. On one hand, influencers' lifespans were longer than estimated, and influencer and store live-streaming are complementary, not opposing. On the other hand, brands' ability to host live-streaming could not quickly fill the GMV gap left by reduced influencer live-streaming. During promotions requiring explosive growth, Douyin needed influencer live-streaming to drive platform-wide momentum.

Another notable development is Douyin's leveraging of traffic within its group.

This Double 11, Douyin expanded platform coupon collection to multiple ByteDance apps. During the promotion, users can claim coupons on Doubao, Hongguo Short Drama, Toutiao, Douyin Lite, Fanqie Novel, Fanqie Changting, Fanqie Music, and more.

According to Letter List, Doubao recently added a live-streaming recommendation feature. When users request product recommendations on Doubao, it suggests matching live streams currently airing. Users can watch live streams, claim coupons, and place orders directly on Doubao without switching to Douyin.

According to Quest Mobile, as of July 2026, ByteDance held five of the top 20 apps in China by monthly average usage time: Douyin, Douyin Lite, Hongguo Short Drama, Toutiao, and Fanqie Novel, capturing 35% of Chinese internet users' time. In comparison, Tencent's share was 24%.

If ByteDance's entire content ecosystem becomes Douyin E-commerce's user pool, it can leverage content advantages to capture consumer attention on a broader scale.

03 E-commerce No Longer Just Sells Goods

Data from Xingtu shows that in 2019, 2020, and 2021, GMV growth rates for Double 11 across platforms were 51.8%, 43.3%, and 12.2%, respectively, with 2021 marking the slowest growth in 12 years.

Since then, e-commerce platforms have tacitly stopped updating battle reports. By 2025, Xingtu data showed that total Double 11 e-commerce sales across platforms grew 14.2% year-on-year, with comprehensive e-commerce sales up 12.3% and instant retail sales surging 138.4%.

The boundaries between far-, mid-, and near-field e-commerce are blurring further. Xingtu data shows that during Double 11 in 2025, instant retail reached 67 billion yuan, up 138.4% year-on-year, the fastest growth among all segments.

Meituan Flash Sales set new records in transaction volume, unique buyers, and average spending, with nearly 400 categories seeing over 100% year-on-year sales growth. Taobao Flash Sales fully participated in Double 11 for the first time, with new customer orders exceeding 100 million. JD.com incorporated 'instant delivery' into Double 11 promotions, offering 50% discounts, with 3C digital instant retail transaction users up 350% year-on-year.

This shows that instant retail, once a 'supporting actor' in retail, has joined the main battlefield, reshaping the 'people-goods-place' relationship.

Thus, beyond just offering goods, member value, product services, and after-sales guarantees have become increasingly important in consumer decision-making, but these values must grow within a complete e-commerce ecosystem.

E-commerce platforms' tasks are shifting from merely creating promotional excitement to stimulating and fulfilling demand while converting it into transactions more efficiently. This has spurred changes beyond transactions.

For example, Double 11 in 2026 may mark when AI truly begins to move from a 'marketing tool' to e-commerce infrastructure. Alibaba deeply integrated Qianwen into Taobao and launched an e-commerce version of Qianwen Office before the promotion. Douyin E-commerce emphasized strengthening AI operation capabilities, aiming to reduce supply costs in the influencer ecosystem through AI scripting, content generation, live-streaming clips, and operation analysis. JD.com further integrated AI into logistics and physical infrastructure to strengthen its fulfillment moat.

The tide has turned, and a new challenge for platforms has emerged: how to better connect consumers and merchants.

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