Live streaming has become a new track for cross-border e-commerce, with the market size in the United States, Japan and South Korea exceeding 10 billion

Before the outbreak of the epidemic, many domestic brands used live streaming as an auxiliary means to expand their influence. Now, with the miracles of "Li Jiaqi" and "Viya"-style live streaming sales happening one after another, major brands have also begun to regard live streaming as "a key element" in their marketing process.

With the development of 5G technology, live streaming will become smoother and more common in the future. "Live streaming has greatly reduced the cost of acquiring traffic and enabled merchants to reach new customers, so it has been able to gain a foothold in China in the past two years and is now taking off," said Zhu Jianian, a cross-border e-commerce expert and managing director of Azoya International in the United States. "It is expected to become mainstream internationally in 2020."

Currently, live streaming is becoming more and more common not only in Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries, but also in the United States and the West. Last year, the US e-commerce giant Amazon launched a live streaming function. Coresight Research said that in the United States, the market value was about US$6 billion last year and could reach US$11 billion by 2021. It is expected that by 2023, the US e-commerce live streaming market will exceed US$25 billion.

On the other hand, TikTok and Walmart's second live broadcast in the United States has just ended. Compared with the first live broadcast trial in December last year, this live broadcast has officially entered the ranks of "selling goods". Gabby Morrison, a 19-year-old Internet celebrity with 3.5 million followers on TikTok, hosted this live broadcast. In the one-hour live broadcast, she introduced 45 products such as skin care, makeup, hairdressing, and clothing.

William White, chief marketing officer of Walmart U.S., said: "During the event, we had seven times more views than expected, and the number of followers of the TikTok account increased by 25%." After this event, the number of followers of Walmart's official account has exceeded 680,000.

Outside the United States, South Korea is also facing the viral spread of "live broadcast culture". According to statistics from Ebest Investment Securities, the domestic "LIVE Commers" market in South Korea is expected to grow from 3 trillion won in 2020 to 8 trillion won in 2023. After the release of Naver's live business service "Shopping Live", its views exceeded 100 million as of January this year. During this six-month period, the cumulative number of buyers was about 1 million.

With this precedent, various e-commerce giants have also begun to enter the live broadcast commercial market. Companies such as Kakao, 11 Street and Coupang have already entered the market.

In February this year , a railway model shop called Popondetta held a live broadcast at the AEON Shopping Center in Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, which aroused enthusiastic response from consumers and increased orders. It is reported that AEON will also carry out live broadcasts in 80 shopping malls across Japan.

Walmart

E-commerce platform

Live streaming sales