FashionRetail Trends

Live shopping: considering a new channel for 2022?

2 min read

Viya and Austin Li Jiaqi are the most popular influencers in China. Together they accumulated sales in China in 2020 worth $8.2 billion. In 2020, total live shopping sales in the country reached about $198 billion, accounting for about 10% of annual online sales in the country.

What is live shopping?

Live shopping is a new method of selling online that consists of generating sales in real time among a determined audience, usually attracted by having the participation of an influencer.

Nowadays it is also classified within the concept of shoppertainment, which combines the concept of shopping with that of entertainment.

Origin in China

Live shopping originated just five years ago with Alibaba, which began testing it as a marketing tool.

Its success, driven by millennials, quickly led to the participation of a large number of brands, especially those related to the world of beauty, cosmetics and personal care. Thus, thanks to the success of platforms such as Taobao, Douyin or Kuaishou, the number of Chinese visitors to live streams reached 616 million in 2020.

In China, despite this clearly being a growing trend, the government’s interest in establishing policies for greater control of influencers may put a brake on this format.

Which products work best?

The best products are those that we can classify as compulsive purchases and those for which it is easier to show their benefits during the session itself. This is why beauty, personal care or makeup products are among the most successful. Austin, one of the Chinese influencers we were talking about before, managed in one of his sessions to sell 15,000 lipsticks in 5 minutes.

But if that sounds impressive to you, you won’t believe this other case.

In 2017 Chinese influencer Becky Li managed to sell 100 vehicles of a limited edition Mini Cooper in four minutes using her WeChat account with more than 1.6 million followers.

Growing interest in Europe

These numbers have been arousing the interest of retailers outside China as a way to expand their sales to a larger audience, especially young users of social networks such as TikTok, Twitch, Facebook or Instagram. According to a study conducted by Forrester and AliExpress in February this year, 70% of European consumers are interested in shoppertainment, a figure that grows to 78% in the Spanish case.

In Spain we can name the case of Protein Gastronomy, or Carolina Herrera and its collaboration with the influencer Alexandra Pereira, whose video you can see here.

We are seeing the emergence of a new sales channel, one which , at the very least, is worth keeping an eye on as it fits perfectly with the buying habits of the new generations of shoppers and, therefore, it is to be expected that many retailers will give it attention from 2022 onwards. Are you one of them? Let us know by adding your comments below.

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