The old battlefield of the 618 shopping festival has become a testing ground for AI.
There are still more than 20 days until the real June 18th shopping festival, but the e - commerce promotion has already kicked off.
Over the past decade or so, the competition logic of this mid - year shopping spree has been continuously evolving. It started from the early days of traffic competition and price - cutting races, then moved on to the competition in supply chains and the upgrade of service systems, and now it has reached the stage of direct price cuts and technological empowerment.
In the past half - month, major e - commerce platforms, both old and new, such as Taotian, JD.com, Douyin, Pinduoduo, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu, have once again launched various preferential activities for this year's June 18th promotion. More importantly, they attach great importance to redefining the rules of the promotion game with technology. They are implementing AI as the core carrier for consumer decision - making, merchant operation, and fulfillment services, which also adds more business highlights to this promotion.
This year's June 18th promotion can be said to be the e - commerce promotion with the highest "AI content" in history. From the "price war" to the "AI competition", this national consumption spree has transformed into a large - scale testing ground for China's e - commerce AI capabilities, presenting both new skills and new challenges.
01
This year's June 18th: Preferential Activities Combined with AI Empowerment
After years of intense competition, consumers have long been tired of the complex rules of full - amount discounts, pre - sale price locking, and cross - store order - combining. This year's June 18th sees the entire industry undergoing a collective transformation. All major platforms have unanimously abandoned the cumbersome marketing rules and centered the promotions on "direct price cuts, transparent bottom - line prices, and no need to combine orders", returning to the essence of consumption. At the same time, they have also placed AI at the core entrance of e - commerce traffic, further integrating it into the entire process of merchant operation and consumer shopping.
Last week, JD.com announced that this year's June 18th promotion will start at 8 p.m. on May 30th and end on June 21st. JD.com takes "full - scenario AI integration + hardcore low - price benefits" as the main theme. On the one hand, it realizes the in - depth integration of AI in all scenarios and industries for the first time, covering more than 3,000 life and industrial scenarios such as retail, logistics, health, and takeout. On the other hand, it focuses on the strategy of "official direct price cuts, up to 50% off", launches a new "hot - selling at low prices" activity, and comprehensively upgrades the "double - compensation if bought at a higher price" service.
On May 21st, the Tmall June 18th promotion officially started. The official said that this is the June 18th promotion with the greatest discount in the past five years. While continuing the direct - reduction activity, this year's category vouchers have been comprehensively upgraded to platform - subsidized vouchers, which can be used for popular categories such as beauty products, clothing, 3C digital products, and sports and outdoor products. Consumers can get them in the "Voucher Center".
Previously, Alibaba announced the full integration of Tongyi Qianwen with Taobao. Users can select, compare, and place orders for products on Taobao by chatting with AI on the Qianwen App. By clicking on the "Qianwen AI Shopping Assistant" in the Taobao App, users can use functions such as AI virtual try - on, AI calculation of discounts, and AI - assisted low - price grabbing, focusing on "AI - reconstructed shopping experience".
The Douyin June 18th Good - Things Festival will be held from May 15th to June 18th. In terms of promotion design, it follows the principle of benefiting consumers in a simple and direct way, continuing the "one - item direct price cut" and "instant discount" activities, and emphasizing "no need to combine orders". In addition, Douyin has invested 10 billion yuan in consumer vouchers this year, which will be distributed in different stages. Consumers can save up to 1,000 yuan per time when receiving the vouchers.
In terms of AI application, Doubao has officially started the internal testing of its shopping function and fully integrated with the Douyin e - commerce system. Relying on Doubao's intelligent interaction ability, users can trigger services such as AI - assisted product selection, intelligent price comparison, and exclusive discount collection with one click in all ByteDance products, including Douyin, Toutiao, and Hongguo Short Dramas, achieving a closed - loop model of "AI - based decision - making + full - domain traffic attraction + instant transaction". At the same time, Douyin has upgraded its Qianchuan intelligent marketing system and Feige AI customer service, using AI tools to comprehensively reduce the operation and content production costs of small and medium - sized merchants.
This year, Kuaishou e - commerce has launched core activities such as official direct price cuts, order - placing lotteries, 1 - yuan auctions, and daily flash sales. Among them, products with official subsidies enjoy an 88% discount, supporting "one - item direct price cuts" without the need to combine orders. After users receive the promotion consumer vouchers, some products can also enjoy additional discounts, with a minimum discount of 75%. Kuaishou's AI assistant helps merchants with product recommendation and marketing activity planning, improving the shopping experience of consumers and the operation efficiency of merchants. Xiaohongshu, relying on its grass - planting gene, has launched AI grass - planting evaluations, intelligent product recommendations, and scenario - based demand matching tools. Based on users' notes and consumption preferences, it achieves precise grass - planting and efficient conversion, seamlessly connecting content grass - planting with consumer decision - making.
In this year's June 18th promotion, price - related activities are still common, but AI has become the core growth factor. As direct price cuts return to the essence of consumption, AI technology has stepped from behind the scenes to the forefront, becoming an important engine driving e - commerce growth, optimizing the consumption experience, and activating the vitality of merchants.
02
Different Paths and Logics of AI - powered E - commerce
In this year's June 18th promotion, the empowerment of AI has become a consensus. Major e - commerce platforms such as JD.com, Alibaba, Douyin, and Kuaishou have upgraded AI from an auxiliary tool to an operational infrastructure and a core means of improving efficiency and increasing revenue in actual business operations.
There are similarities in the implementation paths of AI among different platforms, but there are more differences, showing differentiated development paths. This difference is based on their own core business models, user structures, and business ecosystems, forming a layout with different focuses and precise positioning. The different AI strategies behind these platforms reflect their adherence to their core advantages and their differentiated predictions of the future e - commerce form.
For example, JD.com has built a full - chain AI layout from infrastructure, industrial depth, to user experience, covering more than 3,000 scenarios such as retail, logistics, health, industry, takeout, and housekeeping. During this year's June 18th promotion, JD's AI will directly participate in business decision - making in aspects such as business diagnosis, product operation, marketing investment, live - streaming conversion, and customer service after - sales, helping more than one million merchants reduce costs, increase efficiency, and grow their businesses.
Different from other e - commerce platforms, JD.com's core competitiveness has never been traffic, but supply - chain efficiency, which is also what Liu Qiangdong has always emphasized. Therefore, JD.com's strategic logic in AI is essentially to strengthen the foundation of physical e - commerce with digital intelligence. Compared with superficial experience optimization, JD.com pays more attention to the in - depth transformation of the physical world such as supply chains, logistics, and industrial belts by AI. Through the full - scenario implementation of AI, it aims to solve industry pain points such as low fulfillment efficiency, inventory backlog, and uneven service in traditional e - commerce, which is in line with its platform positioning of high - quality, service - oriented, and strong - fulfillment.
The pain point of Alibaba's e - commerce lies in the inefficient matching of massive supply and demand. It needs to activate the resources of a large number of products and merchants while considering how to enhance consumer attraction. The intervention of AI can solve the problems of supply - demand mismatch, traffic waste, and low conversion efficiency, and reconstruct the relationship between people, products, and the market in the entire domain.
On the merchant side, Alibaba's "AI Wanxiang" has been upgraded to a four - Agent collaborative engine, covering four aspects: demand insight, product selection decision - making, content production, and advertising optimization, helping merchants build a more complete business decision - making chain. At the same time, it has released a new AI customer service, Dian Xiaomi, officially upgrading customer service to an AI shopping guide to improve business efficiency. On the consumer side, users can directly make shopping decisions through natural language and vague needs on the Qianwen App and the Taobao AI assistant entrance, optimizing the shopping experience.
For Alibaba, the logic of playing two AI cards in this year's June 18th promotion is to reshape the entrance of the consumption experience with AI and reduce costs and increase efficiency for merchants with AI, forming a positive cycle of dual - wheel drive to re - establish competitive barriers.
The AI layout of Douyin and Kuaishou e - commerce focuses on their core characteristics of native content, large traffic, and instant transactions, aiming to optimize the consumer path from "grass - planting" to "grass - pulling" when users are browsing short videos. Their core strategy is to use AI to liberate content productivity and improve the e - commerce closed - loop, transforming from a "traffic platform" to an "intelligent trading platform". For example, Douyin has integrated Doubao with its mall, allowing users to complete the entire process of "consultation - price comparison - order placement" within Doubao. Kuaishou has deeply embedded AI in the entire merchant operation process, from video production, account operation to after - sales assistance. AI tools have become a "standard configuration" for merchants.
The combination of "Doubao + Douyin e - commerce" also provides a new closed - loop idea. Doubao's huge traffic pool with a monthly active user base of 345 million has great potential to be converted into e - commerce GMV. However, the challenges are also obvious and need further verification. Since Doubao has a strong tool attribute, users' primary goal when opening it is to search for information and ask questions rather than shopping. The mismatch of traffic attributes will drag down the conversion efficiency. On the other hand, the product inventory of Douyin e - commerce still lags behind that of traditional e - commerce platforms, limiting the richness and coverage depth of recommended products.
03
New Challenges from the Testing Ground to the Main Battlefield
As the first annual large - scale test of AI - powered e - commerce, this year's June 18th promotion will undoubtedly further verify the feasibility and value potential of AI technology in consumption scenarios. The commercial implementation of AI is no longer a dream but is truly integrated into every aspect of user shopping, merchant operation, and platform operation, releasing potential business growth and narrative dividends.
However, the all - around penetration of AI into e - commerce will also give rise to new industry problems and development risks, facing new challenges in terms of traffic logic, consumer freedom, and business ecosystem.
Firstly, intelligent recommendation creates an information cocoon, eroding consumers' autonomy in consumption. The recommendation algorithms of traditional e - commerce already have the problem of "information cocoons", and AI shopping assistants make this problem more hidden and thorough. If consumers rely on AI recommendations for a long time, they will only be exposed to products and content that match their preferences, making it difficult to discover niche products and emerging categories, and narrowing their consumption vision.
This means that the original shopping process of active exploration, comparison, and selection by consumers has become a passive acceptance dominated by AI, and the consumers' right to choose autonomously in consumption is gradually eroded, significantly reducing the fun and exploration of consumption. More importantly, due to channel barriers, Qianwen only recommends Taobao products, JD AI Shopping only promotes JD - sourced products, and Doubao gives priority to pushing products from the Douyin Mall... Each AI shopping assistant has become the gatekeeper of a "walled garden", making it impossible to achieve real cross - network price comparison.
Secondly, the reconstruction of the e - commerce shopping model by AI will also impact the commercial foundation of platforms. The business model of traditional e - commerce is based on "traffic × conversion rate × customer unit price", relying on users' long - term stay, high - volume browsing, and frequent interaction to achieve advertising exposure and traffic monetization. However, AI agents can automatically complete the entire process of search, price comparison, order placement, and repurchase. Users no longer need to browse, compare, and swipe content repeatedly, and can directly "place orders precisely and leave quickly", compressing the decision - making time that used to take an hour to just one minute.
As a result, the significant decrease in users' stay time and page views directly leads to a reduction in advertising exposure opportunities and a decrease in traffic monetization efficiency for platforms. The traditional traffic - based commercial model of e - commerce is facing a crisis of reconstruction. Tencent also mentioned in this month's earnings conference call that AI agents will gradually replace the "click - based interactive tools" in traditional web pages and apps, which will have a greater impact on the advertising placement of e - commerce companies.
Thirdly, the homogenization of algorithms intensifies competition, putting pressure on the survival of new products and niche brands. The AI algorithms of major platforms all take "conversion rate, cost - performance, and sales volume" as the core evaluation criteria, giving priority to promoting popular products, high - sales, and high - popularity items. This leads to the increasing concentration of traffic on leading brands and popular products, making it difficult for niche brands, new products, and unique items to get exposure opportunities, intensifying the Matthew effect in the industry. In the long run, it will suppress the innovation vitality of the e - commerce industry and is not conducive to the diversified development of the consumer market.
However, regardless, the commercial era of AI has arrived. In the past decade or so, the core of e - commerce competition has been traffic - whoever has more users, longer user stay time, and higher conversion rate is the winner. But in the AI era, the core of competition is shifting to "AI capabilities" - which platform's AI can better understand users, match supply and demand, and improve efficiency. When traffic and price are no longer advantages, AI will help the e - commerce industry upgrade its business model.
Conclusion
As the price - cutting competition reaches its limit, AI has changed from an "auxiliary tool" to a "main - stage player", taking over the baton of e - commerce growth.
This year's June 18th promotion is the first time that AI has taken the center stage. Major platforms are competing on the same stage, testing the results of user experience, shopping efficiency, cost - reduction, and efficiency - improvement in business operations. At the same time, they also need to be vigilant against the alienation of technology. These are just the beginning of the test. The battle reports of major e - commerce platforms 20 days later may add new notes to AI - powered e - commerce.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Laika Think Tank" (ID: laikazk). Author: Gong Yan, Editor: G3007. Republished by 36Kr with permission.