Citizens' boosted confidence in consumption brought the food streets in Chongqing's city proper back to life. Benefiting from the vouchers issued at the Chongqing's "66" Digital Consumption Festival, shopping malls such as Shin Kong Place and Metropolitan Oriental Plaza saw a surge in consumer flow over last weekend.
Issuing vouchers is just one way to promote online consumption for shopping malls. To stimulate consumption as much as possible, traditional shopping malls seek to attract consumers across the board through live streaming, cloud malls, etc.
The accelerating integration of online/offline consumption has become inevitable.
Vouchers, live streaming, cloud malls: tools for shopping malls to attract consumers
Over the past three months, Tencent has provided "cloud live streaming" services to more than 50 Chongqing-based companies, mainly shopping malls and general department stores. "We cooperated with Starlight Place to sell Lancome products though live streaming, achieving a sales volume of over 300,000 yuan in two hours, which is equivalent to one-day sales of the mall", said Cui Yan, Tencent's retail director.
"Cloud mall can provide shopping malls with effective business opportunities online, and even help them realize consumption transformation online," Cui said, cloud mall is often bound to an enterprise's official WeChat account, helping the enterprise to achieve self-management of goods, the connectivity among products, employees and customers, as well as efficient membership operation and management.
By the end of May, Tencent had provided services related to cloud malls to more than 20 Chongqing-based enterprises, including WFC, High Wave Sports, Mercury Home Textile, and Far Eastern Department Stores.
Online application innovation provides convenience to consumers
Credibility is the innovation of the business model. "Different from a simple online shop, cloud mall focuses more on helping retail businesses to establish a 'private flow pool,' so that consumers in the flow pool can build trust with each other," Cui said.
Taking Kidswant's store in Aegean Shopping Mall as an example, shopping guides often set up multiple customer WeChat groups, in which consumers and shopping guides interact and discuss, increasing the stickiness and awareness of brands.
In addition to credibility, discount and convenience are also important factors to attract consumers. "We provide discount prices as well as vouchers and gifts in our live streaming, which are more cost-effective than normal offline consumption," said Zou Jie, a relevant person in charge of Alibaba Local Life Service.
Accelerating integration is an inevitable trend
Behind the popularity of vouchers, live streaming, and cloud malls are the accelerating integration of online consumption and offline consumption.
Shen Hongbing, a professor at Chongqing Technology and Business University, pointed out that the integration of online consumption and offline consumption at shopping malls has become an inevitable trend. Live streaming features its visibility, instantaneity, interactivity, and authenticity, which can truly achieve "cloud shopping," bringing even more substantial shopping experience than traditional offline shopping. "Jumping out of the time limit and space limitations of traditional shopping, cloud mall gives consumers more choices and more opportunities to know about brand stories, thus improving the shopping efficiency," Shen said.
However, some links need to be improved for shops trying online selling for the first time, such as goods delivery. How to unblock goods circulation to deliver goods to consumers more quickly? It's a question worth exploring. Regarding this question, Alibaba Local Life Service will cooperate with Cainiao Network to seek solutions, according to Zou Jie.