First-Round Growth Slows as Platforms Stop Emphasizing Totals
This year's China Double 11 shopping festival was unusually quiet. According to Syntun data, during the first-round promotion from October 7 to October 31, gross merchandise volume (GMV) on comprehensive e-commerce platforms rose only 2.4% year on year, far below the 14.2% growth rate in the first round last year. Citi estimates overall GMV growth will be only in the low-to-mid single digits, and platforms will continue not to disclose total GMV. The turning point for Double 11 came in 2022, when Tmall for the first time in its history did not release final GMV, saying only that transaction volume was flat from last year, while 2021 GMV was RMB 5403 hundred million yuan, and JD.com also stopped disclosing its final transaction value that same year. Since then, platforms have shifted focus from totals to category performance, user engagement, and AI metrics, no longer seeking to set new transaction records.
Year-Round Promotions Dilute Exclusivity
Reports point to fully normalized promotions as the fundamental reason for the chill. According to mainland media statistics, major e-commerce platforms hold over a hundred promotional events a year, from Lunar New Year and Valentine's Day festivals to 618 and various subsidy campaigns, with Double 11 only one among them. Platforms such as Taobao, Douyin, and Pinduoduo run promotions almost every month, with flash sales, coupons, and tens-of-billions subsidies, diluting the exclusivity of Double 11, which has shifted from creating a consumption peak to becoming just one of many year-round marketing events. The People's Daily also noted that in addition to physical shopping, instant retail, community group buying, and private-domain communities are all attracting consumers, and the once-a-year price low has been replaced by abundant everyday promotions.
Consumers Turn Rational While Regulators Steer Back to Quality
After more than a decade of mega-sales experience and with AI-powered price-comparison tools now widespread, consumers can more easily see through tricks of raising prices before cutting them, buying based on need rather than impulse stockpiling. This year Tmall scrapped cross-store spending thresholds in favor of direct official discounts, while JD.com canceled pre-sales in favor of on-the-spot sales, showing that past tactics of manufacturing anxiety and stretching the sales period are no longer sustainable. Seven departments including China's Ministry of Commerce have explicitly moved to curb disorderly competition such as guaranteed lowest-price-across-the-web and automatic price-matching, guiding the industry back from low-price involution toward quality and service. Double 11 no longer serves to set new transaction records and clear inventory, but has shifted to customer retention, with transaction scale still huge, but attention, ritual, and frenzy irreversibly receding, and sparse media coverage marking the end of its golden era.