In the year, China's e-commerce platforms initiated the first Double 11 Shopping Festival, subsequently launching an annual consumer extravaganza. From the initial single-day promotion to the current weeks-long marketing frenzy, Double 11 has now passed its 15th anniversary. However, as consumers have become increasingly rational and "frugal," in recent years, almost every Double 11 has seen questions arise: Can Double 11 still drive sales? Will it be able to maintain its past sales growth?

In fact, from another perspective, it is this return of consumer rationality that has transformed the role of Double, making it more of an opportunity for consumers to carefully select cost-effective products based on real needs and make concentrated purchases throughout the year. Therefore, in response to external speculation and skepticism, Douyin E-commerce's answer is: not only is it selling, but it is also selling out.

The Double 11 campaign has passed the halfway mark, and Douyin E-commerce has delivered an impressive report card, particularly the shelf scene demonstrating strong explosive power. During the "Double 11 Mobilization" live stream held on the [specific date], Douyin E-commerce revealed that from [specific date] to [specific date], the Douyin Mall shelf scene achieved a year-on-year growth of [specific percentage]%, product cards grew by [specific percentage]%, and searches increased by [specific percentage]%. This confirms that the consumer market still has robust vitality, and Double 11 is beginning to enter a new phase focusing on real needs and product value.

Frugal consumers are still willing to pay for value. This year's Double, consumers have shown an unprecedented rational characteristic. Market research data shows that compared to the same period last year, consumers have increased the time spent on shopping decisions by about %. This phenomenon reflects that consumers are more stringent in examining product value and have higher requirements for shopping cost-effectiveness.

In recent years, the trend of rational consumption has become increasingly prominent, but this rationality does not mean a complete weakening of consumption desire. According to the "Golden Brand Company Employee Brand Preference Survey" by CBN Magazine, the proportion of respondents whose consumption desire increased or remained the same compared to the previous year has both risen. 25.6% of respondents saw an increase in consumption desire, and 46.7% of respondents maintained the same level of consumption desire.

In fact, behind rational consumption lies the pursuit of consumers for genuine, rather than artificially created, consumption needs. Consumers are also inclined to concentrate their purchases of necessary goods during major sales events, hoping to make the best shopping choices within this period. Douyin E-commerce has keenly observed this trend and meticulously arranged five categories that best meet consumers' current needs during the Double Category Day: new winter clothing, jewelry and gold, parent-child and pets, sports and outdoor, and food and fresh produce. These categories not only cover the basic needs of consumers but also cater to their pursuit of a quality lifestyle.

TikTok E-commerce revealed during the "Double Mobilization" live broadcast that from the 1st to the 11th, the search volume on the TikTok Shop increased by 159%, with over 1,000 live rooms surpassing 10 million, nearly 1,000 brands seeing a year-on-year increase in transactions of over 100%, and more than 1,000 brands experiencing a doubling in transactions year-on-year, which also proves that the Double 11 still holds immense consumer potential.

On the other hand, consumers are paying more attention to the quality and value of the product itself, rather than being solely driven by price and brand. For example, in the skincare and cosmetics industry, consumers used to focus more on the brand effect, especially international brands. However, with the help of Douyin's e-commerce platform, which leverages content dissemination advantages through short videos and live streaming, consumers are now educated about the various ingredients and their effects in products. This allows them to gain a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of brands and products, enabling them to make more rational decisions.

This year, Douyin E-commerce, in collaboration with multiple domestic cosmetics brands, launched the "Breaking Out: Chinese Ingredients" themed campaign. Leveraging Douyin's ecosystem advantages, the initiative aimed to help skincare brands explore "Chinese ingredients," amplify the advantages of their key ingredients, create core memory points and competitiveness, and drive business breakthroughs for domestic cosmetics brands. During the campaign, domestic cosmetics brands achieved over 10 million RMB in sales for special events, with a brand's year-on-year growth exceeding 100%. This fully demonstrates the role of high-quality content-driven marketing as a booster in the era of rational consumption.

Runbaiyan is a successful representative among them. On the Douyin platform, Runbaiyan leverages various types of influencers, including celebrities, ingredient enthusiasts, and beauty vertical content creators, to cultivate content around ingredients, guide consumers to search and complete transactions, and achieve sales conversion through the shelf market, generating sales exceeding ten thousand. The dual-wheel drive model of Douyin e-commerce not only enhances consumers' awareness of the products but also successfully captures content traffic, effectively promoting the growth of the brand's business.

It has been proven that in the era of rational consumption, high-quality brands and products that meet consumer needs will still be favored and lead during double activity periods. During the pre-festival frenzy of the "Douyin Mall Double Good Goods Festival," brands such as Apple, Huawei, L'Oreal, Shiseido, Yaya, and Nike all achieved transaction volumes exceeding 100 million yuan, showcasing their strong brand appeal.

From Traffic to Sales: How Merchants Can Break the Deadlock. With consumers returning to rationality, price is no longer the sole competitive point for merchants. They are transitioning from price competition to value competition. How to highlight product advantages and complete business conversion through innovative content marketing has become a new battlefield for merchants to compete.

For businesses, content scenarios are not only key touchpoints to attract consumers but also crucial avenues for building brand recognition and user trust. Through innovative content marketing strategies, businesses can showcase product features, enabling consumers to deepen their understanding of products on both emotional and rational levels.

As an e-commerce platform that has grown based on content platforms, Douyin E-commerce has natural advantages in integrating content marketing resources. To help merchants seize opportunities better, Douyin E-commerce has also launched a series of innovative marketing activities tailored to different categories this year, aiming to assist corresponding merchants in achieving sales growth.

For instance, in the clothing category, high-quality content has the first-mover advantage in leading trends. After the official launch of Douyin's dual-cycle e-commerce, the platform introduced the "Top 100 Influencers Launch New Products" campaign, collaborating with over a hundred influencer stores to debut more than a thousand new products, creating a trend in fashion. At the same time, celebrity influencers were invited to participate, jointly producing a large number of themed videos, with the topic page receiving over 100 million views in a single day.

During this period, some merchants have already taken the lead and experienced a surge in business during the first two waves of the Double event. The women's clothing brand Zhizhi has always been at the forefront of content innovation, using rich and textured content to convey the brand's heritage of Eastern aesthetics. This year, Zhizhi closely followed the marketing rhythm of Douyin E-commerce, launching new products in stages to continuously attract new customers' attention to the brand and meet the expectations of existing customers for the products.

Another example is the growing popularity of cute pets as a content category in recent years. During the category day, Douyin E-commerce also followed the trend by launching the "Top 100 Pet Masters Competition," inviting pet influencers and celebrities to live-stream with their pets for product sales. While maximizing emotional value, the event also attracted attention with rich content such as pet care knowledge and pet education, further increasing conversions. During the event, the search exposure of the "Pet Masters' Good Finds" product cards increased by %, and the live-streams of the Top 100 Pet Masters doubled, with a total of [number] live-streams surpassing one million yuan in transactions.

The content is about the advantages of Douyin e-commerce. Against the backdrop of consumers increasingly seeking product cost-effectiveness, Douyin e-commerce also strongly encourages merchants to highlight the core advantages of their products through high-quality content, enhance brand texture and recognition, and establish deeper connections with consumers. For high-quality innovative content, Douyin e-commerce will provide more traffic incentives.

At the same time, for merchants, what is more important is how to capture the traffic from content platforms and convert it into actual sales. Coordinating shelves, content, and search is an effective way for merchants to achieve business transformation. Data shows that the daily page views for e-commerce intent searches are approximately one billion, and the daily unique visitors to Douyin Mall reach . billion. This provides merchants with growth opportunities and is also the key for merchants to excel in content marketing and business transformation.

On the basis of content field advantages, Douyin's e-commerce search, shopping mall, and other diverse shelf scenarios can further facilitate traffic conversion, helping merchants achieve dual explosive growth in both traffic and sales. The "Top 100 Influencers Launch New Products" campaign not only brought traffic to merchants but also actual sales and business. During the event, the overall year-on-year growth rate for related merchants was %, the shelf field grew by %, the cumulative live broadcast duration increased by nearly double, and there were live broadcasts with transactions exceeding ten million yuan.

It is noteworthy that this year, Douyin E-commerce has also introduced favorable policies for different merchants, further lowering the barriers and burdens for merchants to participate in the promotion. For example, new merchants can receive commission rebates and traffic support, which represents the most significant support Douyin E-commerce has ever offered to new businesses. Additionally, all merchants can enjoy reduced shipping fees and commission rates. Whether they are large brands or small and medium-sized merchants, new businesses or mature vendors, all have the opportunity to stand on the same starting line, leveraging the combined advantages of Douyin E-commerce's content and shelf markets, to seize more business opportunities.

The double "marathon" is just past the halfway point, and the competition in the second half will be even more intense, marking the final sprint for businesses. Under the general trend of rational consumption, Douyin E-commerce has demonstrated that this year's double still has strong consumer growth momentum. In this new consumer market landscape, those who can better understand and meet the real needs of consumers, and who can better seize the opportunities in the closed loop from content marketing to business conversion, will gain the upper hand in this double competition.