Benefits for Customers and Brands
Explaining the success of a live sales session, one of the principles in business is “Win Win” – Both win, even “Win Win Win” – “All parties win”. In any live stream sales session, the coordination of the 4 parties is always needed, including: Customers, Brands, Platforms, and channel owners.
The first is the customers, they will be able to buy the things they like at a cheap price, receive gifts, and receive entertainment value when interacting online with famous and interesting guest appearances. Clearly, with customers, what the 75 billion live stream session brings is even beyond the usual standard of “Delicious – Nutritious – Cheap”.
For brands, brands with participating products in live stream sessions are willing to accept very low or even no profits but the results they receive are always more. That is the branding value that live sessions bring.
Everyone on social media platforms needs to determine the value they bring to the community in addition to selling goods
At some point, a live stream session reached nearly 30,000 views at the same time. Before the live session, brands also appeared in a well-orchestrated marketing campaign with a series of short video clips, posters, and electronic billboards …
With branding value, spending hundreds of millions on gifts or selling at cost is not a loss. That is the reason for the presence of: thousands of deals for 1,000 VND / product, vouchers up to millions of VND, and offers such as: buy one gift one, buy one get 5, combo price… And those cheap gifts and products contribute to attracting more viewers to the live session.
Roles of Platforms and Channel Owners
Talking about the platform, TikTok Shop was launched in Vietnam in mid-2022 and quickly became the second-largest e-commerce market in Vietnam. Unlike other e-commerce platforms, TikTok Shop’s approach is very direct. They directly address the purchasing needs of buyers and the selling needs of brands. The role of the platform is closely related to the figure, as it contributes to attracting billions of VND of customers to the live session from TikTok Shop converted into vouchers, special offers dedicated to this live session.
Not only regularly having a series of vouchers, special deals to attract buyers; this e-commerce platform is also attracting the participation of sellers with attractive subsidies. According to statistics as of September 2023, if on other platforms, sellers have to pay 16% on each product sold, TikTok Shop only increases the highest platform fee by 4%.
For live sales sessions, if you want to be supported by TikTok, TikTokers need to demonstrate their capabilities, reputation, and strong appeal. With a similar campaign, for the regional market, Momentum Works estimates that in 2023, TikTok Shop held 13.2% of the market share for e-commerce in Southeast Asia.
These great benefits are crucial weapons for TikTok Shop to attract buyers and sellers. However, the sellers’ subsidies and the gifts for buyers are also limited. This makes many people think of the story of dominating the Vietnamese market of a familiar technology car brand. They opened up the market by “burning money” through promotions, subsidies, and gifts for both drivers and passengers to test and participate in the new model.
Drivers need to be encouraged to mobilize a large number of people to participate in a short period of time, ensuring the needs of users, so that they feel convenient. Conversely, users are also attracted to book more cars, increasing income for drivers. But when they have a strong foothold, that is when the market has to play by the rules of the “dominant”. Increasing discounts, changing policies… at this time, instead of receiving attractive benefits, drivers think about widespread strikes for their rights.
Lastly, the role of the livestream channel owner. In addition to inviting other influential people to participate in the live session, if they want to be supported by the platform to increase viewer interaction and to receive many attractive benefits from brands, they need to be a credible character with influence. Becoming an influencer is a long-term journey, with many difficulties, they will find shortcuts that many channel owners think about. That is when the “popular” services emerge, becoming a problem for e-commerce platforms in general, such as the virtual order creation service.
“Virtual order creation” means activities where orders are still recorded on the e-commerce platform system, but in fact, there are no buyers and sellers. The purpose of this is to increase the ranking of the shop on platforms, because it is common that e-commerce platforms always prioritize displaying shops with more orders, reviews, followers, likes… Increasing the ranking also means attracting more customers. And when customers see the high number of orders sold, they also feel more trustworthy to continue buying, thereby increasing the conversion rate.
In addition to the principle of “all parties win,” there is another principle that “there is no cheating way that brings long-term benefits”. Mr. Tran Manh Duy – Creative Director of DC Media said if the platform detects any fraudulent behavior, then the entire amount of goods sold will be frozen and the sales channel will be locked. Everyone on social media platforms needs to determine the value they bring to the community in addition to selling goods. Clearly, the first thing is to be a reputable channel owner and in order to be reputable, they must bring real values to the community.
