More than half of SISU students joined in livestream shopping during this year’s “Double 11”, according to our survey. Among the livestream participators, 39% are male and 61% are female.

The survey indicates that 31% of participators who have purchased in livestreaming spent 100-500 yuan during “Double 11”, followed by participators who spent more than 1000 yuan.

Daily necessity ranks first among goods purchased by them, accounting for more than 20%, followed by apparels, beauty care, foods and collectibles. According to the data form Ebrun, an e-commerce trend prediction platform, the top three sellers of livestreams during “Double 11” are clothing and necessity brands.

A survey conducted by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), showed that the British and Americans, aged from 19-25, bought apparels on livestream more than other types of products, with a proportion of about 26%.

SISU students prefer online shopping platforms to live stream platforms. About 28% of them select fixed live streaming platforms. Most of them feel satisfied with their livestream shopping experience.

Compared with purchase links with only words and pictures, our survey also points out that SISU students give priority to the audio-visual description of products during livestream shopping.

Professional hosts and large discounts are another two top reasons for purchasing in a livestream.

The ranking of reasons for purchasing in a livestream.

Source: CNNIC

For young British and Americans, the primary and second factor in choosing livestream shopping is the quality of products and free delivery, while neither of them is in SISU students’ rank.

Zhang Xin, a three-year student of SISU, said that it was the exciting atmosphere of livestreaming that stimulated her to purchase. “I have once joined in one livestream whose host promised to send an iPad to a random watcher every single minute. It attracted millions of customers and the comments filled the screen.”

Wang Ruijing, another three-year SISU student, paid the most attention to merchants’ reputation. She always purchases in livestreams hosted by the official stores, even the discount of which is smaller.

However, more than 40% of the students in SISU didn’t choose to purchase in a livestream in this year’s “Double 11”.

According to our survey, the top three reasons that stop them from purchasing on livestream include below expectation, insufficient discounts and false promotion.

The type of problems met by SISU students during a livestream shopping.

The type of problems met by SISU students during a livestream shopping.

Chen Lianyi found that she only cared about the price. “I only watched the replay of the livestream and paid attention to the price part,” she said.

Ding Zheyu complained about the small discounts and complex promotion rules. Consumers can get 30 yuan off every 300 for some types of products, while get 50 off every 500 for others. She said, “I will buy more things than I actually need if I want to get larger discounts.” 

She once bought five-pounds nuts during a livestream shopping on WeChat but only received one pound at last. When she complained to managers, the platform was blocked due to fraud, and she was unable to trace her money back.

The top negative comments of livestream shopping abroad include shill streamer, bad in quality and monotonous contents.

Some of the British and Americans regard livestream shopping as old fashioned. A netizen abroad said on reddit, “We sure have come full circle back to 1991, haven't we?” Many comments also mentioned that the livestream platforms now are akin to HSN and QVC (TV shopping companies) in the 1990s.

There are also supporters abroad who think livestream shopping has a promising future because of its diversity, effective sales and so on.

 Source: Reddit and Quora

According to Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, the market of livestream in China is getting larger with an increasing number of participants. The user size of e-commerce in China peaked in 2022, with 845 million online shopping users and 751 million livestreaming users.

Source: Chinese National Bureau of Statistics

However, in some western countries such as the US and the UK, this industry is still undeveloped. In 2022, the size of US e-commerce market was only 130 billion dollars, less than 4% of that of China’s. Moreover, the active participators center on ages between 19-25.

British and American consumers are not interested in livestream shopping. According to The Influencer Marketing Factory research, only 25% of British consumers have made purchases during live streaming, compared to 36% in the US.

The Chinese tend to do livestream shopping on Douyin, the Chinese version TikTok and Taobao, Chinese largest e-commerce platform, while people in the UK and the US prefer TikTok and Facebook.

The huge difference in using livestreaming between Chinese and Western countries may lie in their different cognition of social media.

The Chinese have accepted the combination of social media and commerce. They are accustomed to clicking into the social media to do online shopping while the British and the Americans regard the livestream platform as a place for communication.

The high price of express delivery in Western also hinders the development of online shopping.