The Surge of E-Commerce Sales in Live-Streaming Era

SHANGHAI, June 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- O'Ratings, a 3rd party company, focuses on providing live-streaming measurement SaaS. It is the innovative industry standard for live-streaming measurement, which provides a comprehensive view of an audience across multi platforms. On June 8, 2020, O'Ratings launched its first weekly ranking list.

Live-streaming in China is reshaping e-commerce

In China, the live-streaming industry is experiencing an unprecedented change, and it is reshaping e-commerce in China. While most live-streaming platforms (such as YouTube, Amazon Life, twitch) in western countries are focusing on gaming and entertainment, live-streaming platforms in China are embracing e-commerce to leverage its market value. Those platforms are providing Chinese customers with a new channel to get new products and promotions.

In early 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 created the opportunity for live-streaming to reshape e-commerce in China. China's Ministry of Commerce posted that there were over 4 million live-streaming shows in the first quarter of 2020.

Massive Opportunities for Everyone

Live-streaming shopping is evolved from television shopping with more engagement. The live-streamers sell products, give suggestions, and do promotions during the show. The audience can communicate and interact with the live-streamers, and can buy products immediately with discounts that are attractive enough. Although the purchasing power was negatively influenced by COVID-19, the live-streaming industry stimulated the first quarter consumption in China. The online shopping market, especially the live-streaming shopping again became the spotlight.

Live-streaming has also become the mainstream for shopping in China. Live-streamers perform live-streaming shows to attract their audience, who are later converted to their customers. The conversion rate of live-streaming is much higher than that of offline channels. Due to the high attention of the market, there is a trend that people from various fields participate in live-streaming shows, such as CEOs, movie stars, TV hosts, government officers, athletes, etc. For example, in November 2019, Kim Kardashian met Chinese top live-streamer Viya in her live-streaming show, introducing her products to the Chinese audience.

Intense Market Competition

The live-streaming brings opportunities to not only companies but also individuals. In this case, more and more people become engaged in this industry, and this makes intense competition in the Chinese market. In terms of live-streaming platforms, major players like Alibaba, Tencent, TikTok, Kwai, compete for audiences' time and spending. For brands, they need to offer great discounts to gain more consumers and increase exposure. For the live-streamers, they need to make their live-streaming show interesting and give a better discount than others. They also need to compete with celebrities who already had a solid fan base and are relatively more competitive and famous than a live-streamer.

Celebrities have a strong bargaining power to ask brands for an exclusive discount. They can easily convert their audience or at least their fans to consumers. According to O'Ratings's ranking list from last week, the top one live-streaming show winner was "Ting Zhang's Live-streaming Show". The live-streamer of that show is an actress. The peak viewers of her show reach to 0.5 million. Among the top 5 live-streamers, 3 of them are not traditional live-streamers, but actress, singer, and former CEO.

(Source: O'Ratings Weekly Ranking <June 8^th, 2020 ~ June 14^th, 2020>)

The participation of celebrities accelerates the live-streaming market. Companies from various industries, such as tourism, retail, clothing, and restaurant industries, start to use live-streaming to leverage market changes and capture the new opportunities in this industry.

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SOURCE O'Ratings