Tmall unveils new killer move for Double 11

15 years ago, Tmall launched its first promotion on Singles' Day, which was highly sought after by young people. Over the past 15 years, Singles' Day has become the grandest online shopping festival of the year, and Tmall's promotional strategies have become the benchmark for the e-commerce industry.

On October 20th, the Tmall Double 11 Global Shopping Festival press conference released the most important signal. As the first Double 11 after the establishment of Taotian Group, low prices will still be the core focus of this year's promotion.

It is understood that this year's Tmall Double 11 will introduce official discounts on top of the existing "spend 300 get 50 off" promotion. Over 80 million popular products will be priced at their lowest of the year, and the "buy expensive, get compensation" guarantee will be offered for billions of subsidized products.

Not only is Tmall investing unprecedentedly, but it also regards the lowest price across the entire network as the core KPI, which means that low prices are the standard for the implementation of its strategic system.

Regarding how to ensure the lowest price across the entire network, Tmall told Wall Street News that when consumers place orders, they just need to look for the very prominent "lowest price across the entire network" lightning symbol to purchase the product at the lowest price across the entire network.

In other words, products with the "lightning symbol" will undergo real-time dynamic price comparison across the entire network to ensure that Tmall's prices are the lowest during the same period.

Behind the low prices, Taotian is facing an increasingly competitive e-commerce market. With the emergence of more e-commerce players such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, this year's Double 11 may become the most competitive in history.

In this situation, Taotian Group needs to make more innovations and changes. In fact, Taotian Group has already taken action.

At the end of May, Jack Ma pointed out three directions for Taotian Group: returning to Taobao, returning to users, and returning to the Internet. In the same month, Taotian Group CEO, Dai Shan, announced the three major strategies of users, ecology, and technology.

At the press conference, Dai Shan explained the considerations behind the three major strategies of "user-first, technology-driven, and prosperous ecology".

For example, on the user side, Dai Shan believes that there is a huge opportunity in the consumer market, but at the same time, the consumer groups are highly diversified. "User-first" aims to meet diverse needs and capture the widest range of people.

On the merchant side, Dai Shan believes that the diversification of user demands determines that the platform ecology must be diversified. Both the platform and the merchants need to shift from previous traffic operations to diversified user asset operations.

On the technology side, Dai Shan believes that the new technological revolution represented by AI and GC has arrived, and e-commerce will be changed by AI. "Taotian will make long-term investments in AI upgrades for merchant tools, user encyclopedias, and content creation."

This also means that Tmall Double 11 will not only revolve around prices but can even be said that prices are just a reflection of the entire ecosystem of Taotian Group.

To a certain extent, whether Tmall can achieve more innovations during the major promotion on its home ground will be the factor that profoundly affects the evolution of the e-commerce landscape. And this point still requires more time to observe.