Data is here丨A study on the consumption behavior of Douyin and Kuaishou users during the Spring Festival

During the epidemic, for friends who stay at home, in addition to playing games, browsing Moments and Weibo, the most important online entertainment behavior should be watching short video apps.

As short videos/live streaming become popular, let’s take a look with Mars Marketing Research Institute at what idle mobile netizens bought through short videos/live streaming on Douyin and Kuaishou throughout the Spring Festival (January 24th - February 2nd). What is so special about products that have high views and sales?

What insights can it provide for brands’ product promotion in 2020?

Analysis of the top 100 products sold on Douyin and Kuaishou during the Spring Festival

Douyin has become an important channel for users to purchase supplies to fight the epidemic.

Throughout the Spring Festival, as the epidemic continued to ferment, daily necessities/household cleaning products mainly for sterilization and disinfection became hot commodities. Among the Douyin Spring Festival sales top 100 products, there were 34 daily necessities/household cleaning products on the list. Among them, masks, refill bottles and disinfectant tissues/cotton pads are the most typical daily necessities; while disinfectant water/liquid, hand sanitizer, etc. are the most common household cleaning products. Among the brands consumed by users, Dettol appeared the most, accounting for 5 seats out of 34 products. In addition, brands such as Dettol and Plant Protection also appeared frequently. It can be seen that in the disinfection and protection against the epidemic, Douyin users have a stronger trust in professional brands.

It is worth mentioning that in the mother and baby/children category, cleaning and care products for infants and young children are also frequently on the list, and some daily/household cleaning products are also specially marked as suitable for infants and young children. In the face of the epidemic, parents not only take good care of themselves, but also pay special attention to the health of their babies, and related products also have extremely precise control over the needs of special groups.

Among the Douyin Spring Festival sales TOP100 collected by Kas Data, in addition to daily necessities/household cleaning products, perfumes, cosmetics, and personal care products also appear in large numbers, which is not unrelated to the Douyin user structure: more women. It also shows that loving beauty and shopping is a girl’s nature. Even if they stay at home in pajamas every day, they will not forget to go shopping at any time . The distance between short video exposure and conversion is shortening, the value of short video empowerment and drainage is increasing, and users’ consumption habits are being formed.

Judging from the average price of the 11 product categories on the list, high-end women's clothing has the highest price and is the only product with a unit price of over 100 yuan, with sales exceeding 30,000 units. Except for women's clothing products, the average price of other commodities is less than 100 yuan, which shows that low price is still an important part of high product sales.

According to our analysis of the average sales growth of the TOP 100 products in 10 days, daily necessities/household cleaning products ranked second, with the average sales growth of 34 products reaching more than 27,000 orders in 10 days. In order to fight the epidemic, users have spared no effort in investing in such products.

Kuaishou’s e-commerce business is less sensitive to demand during special periods, which is related to the composition of its supply.

Judging from the sales data of various live broadcast rooms on Kuaishou during the Spring Festival, there is no obvious difference between users' purchasing behavior and daily shopping behavior on Kuaishou. Personal care products still account for half of the market (51%), but the frequency of facial masks has decreased, while the number of skin care products, including: water/lotion/cream/essence/eye cream, etc. has increased. From the gradual enrichment of the subcategories of personal care products, it can be seen that Kuaishou users' personal care consumption habits are gradually being developed. They are no longer confined to a single product, but have successfully planted grass and placed orders for corresponding products at all stages of skin care.

For all kinds of beauty and personal care brands. Mars Marketing Research Institute also gave advice: the tens of billions of personal protection market on Kuaishou is expanding. It is imperative to speed up entry and enter the market when users are "initializing" their consumption habits. This is the best time to penetrate and tap into the lower-tier markets, and it will enable users to build trust in the brand more quickly and usher in a second spring of development.

Compared to Douyin, the number of times daily necessities/household cleaning products appear on Kuaishou is not that high, and only 5 disinfection and protection products are on the list. Compared with the situation of hoarding masks and disinfectants across the entire network, Kuaishou users do not seem to be sensitive to this.

The Mars Marketing Research Institute believes that there are two reasons for this:

1. The categories of products purchased by Kuaishou users are restricted by the categories of products promoted by the anchors. At a time when the epidemic is raging, even if the anchors want to purchase protective materials such as masks and disinfectants in bulk for everyone, there is a problem of lack of supply. In addition, Taoke and Pinke on Kuaishou are less mature than those on Douyin, and most of them are merchants with sources of goods who bring their own goods. Therefore, Kuaishou users’ purchases are limited by the categories sold by the anchor they follow, and they mostly buy whatever the anchor recommends.

Second , users who are accustomed to shopping in Kuaishou's live broadcast rooms are distributed more in lower-tier cities. Compared with Douyin users who are mostly concentrated in first- and second-tier cities, Kuaishou users have a delay in learning about the epidemic and have relatively low awareness of epidemic prevention. Therefore, the demand for disinfection and protection products is also weak.

Analysis of high-view and high-sales products on Douyin

But everyone knows that the sales volume of a product is not entirely determined by the number of views. Many products that attracted a large number of users through creative short videos ultimately failed to stimulate users' desire to buy.

From the figure, we can see that among the TOP100 browsed products brought by short video traffic on Douyin, the most popular ones are home furnishing/home decoration/home textile/kitchenware products and women's clothing.

Coinciding with the Spring Festival, consumers have a certain demand for replacement of home furnishing/home decoration/home textile/kitchenware products, and most of these listed products are both "creative" and "practical". These novel and practical items are very popular among young Douyin users. The content format of short videos also vividly demonstrates the product performance, thus attracting a large number of product views. Women's clothing products, on the other hand, have firmly grasped the needs of female users through strong visual stimulation and incisive copywriting recommendations. Clicking on the shopping cart will jump to the product page to view the specific price and product details, becoming a must-go link for every user who is attracted to the product.

However, based on the data on sales growth (i.e. exposure/conversion) brought about by increased browsing in some industries, personal care products performed the best during the Spring Festival and were most likely to inspire users to buy them. Under the influence of the "face project", personal care products are more in demand, the product promotion effect of short videos is more intuitive, and the selling prices are mostly within 100 yuan, making the link from promotion to promotion easier to complete.

wm specially analyzed a total of 9 products that ranked in the top 20 in terms of browsing volume and sales volume during the Spring Festival, and found that perfumes and cosmetics accounted for the highest proportion, occupying 4 seats. Perfect Diary, Little Autine, Zhiyouquan, etc. were all on the list, followed by household products and daily necessities. Note: TikTok has become the best channel to inspire female users to buy products and make purchases.

After further analyzing the products with high browsing volume among these 9 products, the Mars Marketing Research Institute found that the product with the highest browsing increase was the magnetic eyelash set, while the product with the highest sales increase was the brown glass bowl. Using Kas Data, let’s take a look at the reasons why these two products became popular.

Magnetic eyelashes:

Mars Marketing Research Institute believes that the high number of views of this product is mainly due to the following two reasons.

• The video is short and concise, with clear selling points: In fact, for small products, overly long video explanations and content packaging will not allow users to grasp the key features, resulting in low video completion rates and poor grass-planting effects. Most of the product videos are very short, about 10 seconds long, and there is no dubbing, mostly with music, allowing users to focus all their attention on the product usage demonstration in the video. With a simple curling of two eyelashes, the eyes can be immediately enlarged, and the effect is intuitive and amazing.
• The product directly hits the pain point: Eyelashes have always been a crucial step in women's makeup, and therefore related products and services such as mascara, false eyelashes, and eyelash extensions have been derived. However, due to factors such as product effects, personal techniques, and price, it is still a problem to have thick eyelashes quickly and conveniently at an affordable price. But judging from the video, this product solves the above problems very well. The price of 39.9 yuan is not high, and it is easy to operate and looks good on the eyes.

The above two reasons both perfectly demonstrate the functions and effects of the product, solving the inconveniences faced by female consumers in eyelash makeup. Therefore, they can greatly stimulate users’ interest in the product and bring a large number of views.

But from the data we can see that with about 650,000 views, it only brought in sales of more than 9,000. After a detailed investigation, the Mars Marketing Research Institute discovered that the product was not the same as the one in the video. The product in the video was not the same as the product linked to the shopping cart in the lower left corner, which made the redirected users feel betrayed. When searching for product-related words on Douyin, a large number of negative reviews were found, indicating that the product is relatively weak. It can be seen that popular videos and high product views cannot bring high sales. Products must still be based on fundamentals and improve product strength, and avoid selling dog meat under the guise of mutton.

Brown glass bowl:

It can be seen from the product promotion video that, unlike the previous product which is concise and intuitive, it adds a lot of narration to introduce the product. Because as far as the product itself is concerned, a bowl can only display very few functional points, so the product advantages must be emphasized through language. And emphasize three major buying points: 1. Affordable price. Two glass bowls, priced at 10.9 yuan, are made of thick material and can be eaten with eyes closed; 2. High-end: brown glass, simple and classy, ​​it is face-saving to entertain guests during the Spring Festival; 3. Humanized functions: double-ear design, anti-scalding, which solves the problem of fast heat conduction of glass products.

As a result, the additional 600,000 visitors brought in 46,000 sales, with extremely high conversion efficiency.

After analyzing the two highly viewed and high-selling products mentioned above, the Mars Marketing Research Institute proposes the following three points for your future short video/live streaming sales.

1. Adjust the video style according to the product features and optimize the promotion method.

Grass-planting videos should not be all the same, and the content should be produced based on the characteristics of the product. For example, products that are easy to operate, have a low usage threshold, and have intuitive effects can use short videos to strongly output their functional selling points. The video can be completed in a single swipe of the user, with low time cost for viewing, and can quickly achieve the purpose of promoting products. However, products with scattered functional points and high usage thresholds require the assistance of sales-type explanations to help users quickly understand the product selling points, retrieve their own needs, and promote products in a targeted manner.

2. Improve product strength and more effectively convert grass-planting potential into grass-pulling consumption.

Through the analysis of high-view and high-sales products, it was found that Douyin users' ordering behavior is still relatively rational, with less impulsive consumption. They are more likely to click on the product details page to view it and compare prices from different stores. Therefore, we should abandon the mentality of relying on luck and the behavior of trying to pass off inferior products as good ones. Even if there is a certain degree of performance improvement in the early stage, it will backfire in the platform's UGC content feedback due to the poor reputation.

3. Low price, low price, low price.

Low price remains the unchanging rule for high sales, and items under 100 yuan are most likely to stimulate impulse purchases among the public.

The most important thing about short video promotion is triggered shopping, that is, establishing various scenarios to effectively implant products to stimulate consumers' shopping desire. Innovative content and the practicality of products help users quickly promote products. However, if the price exceeds consumers' expectations, this triggered consumption will die down and conversion will not be achieved.

Therefore, we also recommend that brands pay attention to quality control when inviting a large number of KOLs/KOCs to promote their products, and that the prices of the products promoted in the early stages must be affordable and user-friendly, so as to better shorten the distance from planting grass to pulling grass and even drying grass.

Author: Mars Research Institute

Source: Mars Research Institute