A mobile phone "switched" the live broadcast economy suddenly emerged

Editor's note

General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that it is necessary to develop the digital economy, accelerate the promotion of digital industrialization, rely on the drive of information technology innovation, and continuously promote the birth of new industries, new business models and new models, and use new momentum to promote new development. In the first half of this year, under the influence of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, new economic formats represented by live broadcasts and short videos have risen rapidly. While "enabling" and "assigning value" to the real economy, they have shown strong vitality. From the field to the factory, from the star to the entrepreneur, from the fungus to the heavy-duty truck, why the live broadcast economy can rise now and what kind of changes has it undergone? Are the constantly expanding scenarios and content also reshaping the production and supply chains of the real economy? In this regard, the research team of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Xi Jinping's Research Center for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era, through observation of the characteristics of the live broadcast economy and its role in economic and social recovery, understands how Internet platforms can improve technological innovation, their manifestations, and development context It sorted out and put forward countermeasures and suggestions on the future development of the live broadcast economy.

  Clicking on the homepages of major e-commerce companies, "Live" has become a fixed section, and even the daily search for goods is interspersed with "Live" stores. From consumer live broadcasts, lifestyle live broadcasts to education live broadcasts, the live broadcast economy "switched" by a mobile phone has sprung up, becoming a network interface for many industries to load "new business models" in the 5G era. This new form connects producers, operators, consumers, video viewers, Internet experts, and live broadcast platforms, bringing new experiences to each subject. On Internet platforms such as Douyin, Taobao, JD.com, and Station B, the anchors introduced the product features to consumers who watched the live broadcast with a real scene and a sincere attitude, and shared their life insights, and even county and township officials in some places started the live broadcast. Bringing goods, while shaping the local special product brand, also promotes the development of local culture, ecology and other tourism industries.

1. Why is the live streaming economy rising now?

  "Hello everyone, let's not say much, let's draw a wave of prizes first." "Buy it!" "End of the grab? We will replenish the goods immediately"... When I heard the iconic scream from the live broadcast room, Salsa from Beijing Can't help but add a few discount products to the shopping cart. This year, due to the spread of the epidemic, various offline business activities were pressed to pause. The live broadcast flew into the homes of ordinary people during the epidemic prevention period, ushering in a new development boom.

  According to data released by CNNIC, as of March 2020, the number of live webcast users in my country has reached 560 million, an increase of 163 million from the end of 2018, accounting for 62% of the total number of Internet users. According to iiMedia Consulting's calculations, the total scale of China's live broadcast e-commerce industry in 2019 has reached 433.8 billion yuan. It is expected that the market size of the live broadcast economy will exceed 900 billion yuan in 2020. As one of the hottest emerging business models, live broadcasting has forced various industries to expand their business online. Why is the live broadcast economy more and more favored? What are the characteristics?

  As a kind of visual economy, the live broadcast economy realizes real-time interaction in real scenes. Through visual content production, live broadcast conveys product information and user experience based on a variety of real-life scenarios. When the anchor "face-to-face" displays product performance characteristics and participates in real-time feedback, it also gives the public a new look and feel. Therefore, live broadcasting has become a way of life, social, emotional experience, and cultural resonance that makes people immersed and linger. At the same time, the traffic blessing and technological innovation of the live broadcast platform have brought consumers a happy experience different from traditional online shopping.

  The live broadcast economy is an “online gathering” of elites, effectively expanding the radius of social production and operation. "Everyone is an internet celebrity, everything can be broadcast live" has become the norm in the live broadcast economy. From farmers in the fields to corporate executives in office buildings, live broadcasting has brought about changes in personal career development and created an "online assembly"-style live broadcast ecology. Short video and live broadcast platforms have moved multiple industries in the offline economy, such as shopping malls, real estate, car companies, home furnishing, art, education, tourism, and agriculture, to online, building a bridge between products and consumers, providing SMEs, Individual businesses have found a new way out of the production and operation dilemma under the epidemic, which greatly increased product sales and opened up ideas for product upgrades.

  The live broadcast economy has driven social innovation and reshaped the production model of enterprises. The live broadcast economy conforms to the current "six stability" and "six guarantees" guidelines and policies, and realizes social innovation of independent employment and time-sharing employment. From live broadcast training to operation guidance, from technology update to industrial upgrading, the live broadcast economy relies on the technology supply and communication mode of the Internet platform, which has brought about a major shift in the production model throughout the society.

  The survey found that Sichuan has issued the country’s first provincial-level live streaming industry development plan, and plans to achieve 10 billion yuan in sales of live streaming products in 2022; Anhui issued "Opinions on Promoting Online Economic Development", proposing to vigorously develop live streaming products. Encourage the development of new forms of smart marketing such as social e-commerce and community e-commerce; Guangzhou issued the "Guangzhou Live Broadcasting E-commerce Development Action Plan (2020-2022)", proposing to build a batch of live broadcast e-commerce industry clusters within three years and incubate 1,000 Internet celebrity brands, training 10,000 cargo carriers... Various localities accelerate the deployment of the live broadcast industry, and actively promulgate policy documents to promote the upgrading and development of e-commerce.

  The policy encouragement and active participation of governments at all levels is an important supporting force for the rapid rise of the live broadcast economy. Not only that, the short-term stimulus of the new crown pneumonia epidemic has greatly accelerated the transfer of the offline economy to the Internet online. At the same time, the popularization of mobile terminals is an important driving force for the rise of the digital economy, and the rise of the Internet live broadcast platform has also opened up channels for the development of the live broadcast economy and broadened its horizons.

2. Provide an opportunity for the transformation of the real economy to the Internet

  "Now as long as you place an order in the live broadcast room, I will take the order and ship it for you online. Your purchase is our biggest motivation for production!" The factory director of a snail noodle brand in Liuzhou, Guangxi is facing the camera of his mobile phone and broadcasting to netizens all over the country How to work overtime to produce Liuzhou snail noodles and take orders online for the majority of netizens who love snail noodles. It can be seen from the live broadcast room that the workshop is busy and the workers are working on the assembly line. "Before, our daily production capacity was 200,000 packs. We did not expect the order volume to surge to tens of millions of packs during the epidemic."

  With the development of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou, all walks of life use a mobile phone, a bracket, and a beauty lamp to ignite the spark of economic recovery, adding new sales channels to many traditional industries. Various live broadcast ideas such as "cloud shopping", "cloud tourism", and "cloud performances" have emerged in an endless stream, providing an opportunity for the real economy to transform to the Internet during the epidemic.

  Although most of the audience's attention to the live broadcast economy is concentrated in front of the screen, if you stretch your eyesight, you can find that the live broadcast economy has developed into a huge industrial chain. It encompasses multiple departments including product production, content production and operation, consumption and distribution, and after-sales service. The enthusiasm in front of the screen is full of enthusiasm, linking the surging economy in the background. What changes has the live broadcast economy brought to the offline industry and the real economy? What kind of social utility has it produced?

  Seek stability while changing-subvert traditional business thinking. During the epidemic, many farmers faced traffic constraints, poor information, and poor harvests. The poverty alleviation task in some cities and counties was arduous. However, live broadcasting has opened up new sales channels for agricultural products, and has also activated the social welfare concept and sense of responsibility. By leveraging the advantages of video, using content resources and professional skills, "e-commerce live broadcast + consumer poverty alleviation" has become an important way to alleviate the downward pressure on the economy; on the other hand, it has also brought a new linkage of social production relations to farmers, markets and audience . The research team learned that as of April 3, county heads or other officials in 37 places including Mizhi County in Shaanxi, Dangshan County in Anhui, Pingnan County in Guangxi, and Yuexi County in Anhui had brought goods through the Douyin live broadcast platform. More than 1.13 million pieces of agricultural and sideline products were sold, with sales exceeding 60 million yuan.

  Yunnan's "Hua Ge" couldn't bear to see flowers rotten in the fields due to the stagnant logistics. Using live broadcast, they sold 1.5 million in 7 days; Guangzhou's "Huacheng Wandian Broadcasting Plan" event attracted more than 2,000 merchants to sign up, a single live event The total sales amounted to 7.67 million yuan...Live broadcasting has quietly changed the commercial thinking and traditional business model of the local economy from the source. With the popularity of "live streaming with goods", short video and live training have become "compulsory courses" for some businesses. By accepting systematic and professional training, the industry itself has more abundant activities and expanded profit models.

  From O2O to VOT-dual-line production with visual linkage. If an important breakthrough in the development of e-commerce is to realize the connection between online and offline, then the advent of the live broadcast economy will fully unfold the offline production chain and realize the deep visual of things. ) Linked production. On the one hand, dynamic, real-time visual presentations have replaced static and one-sided communication, making them more attractive; on the other hand, video enters the production end, making the “backstage” hidden behind the screen move to the “foreground”, inspiring The production vitality of the physical industry.

  Although the concept of "factory direct sales" has long existed, the real-time interactive visualization process for manufacturers to show their products to the "front-end" audience is a new idea that the live broadcast economy brings to the resumption of production and production of small and medium industries. It opens the "black box" of the production workshop and allows the production, assembly and production of products to be embedded in consumers' purchase intentions, which not only enhances mutual trust between the two parties, but also brings new opportunities for industrial brands and sales to manufacturers.

  Take the Douyin platform as an example. Since the beginning of the spring of this year, Sany Heavy Truck has completed 50 million sales through two-hour live broadcast from decrypting the assembly line to immersively experiencing the life of heavy-duty truck drivers; Changhong has contributed more than 40,000 online and offline in the live broadcast A single transaction order, sales exceeded 100 million yuan...The live broadcast economy has further developed its strength, extending into the local production chain at all levels, from agriculture and manufacturing to industrial production and service industries.

  5G empowerment-creating a flexible supply chain. The current live broadcast economy is still in the process of scale expansion, and mass production, fast sales, and destocking are still the main characteristics of its industrial chain development. However, with the upgrading of consumption, the live broadcast economy has allowed more manufacturers to see more precise market demand, and promoted their order requirements for product differentiation, personalization, and sales customization. With the popularization of 5G technology, a "high-speed, low-latency" supply and demand industrial chain has been formed, and a flexible supply and demand system combining "production + content + service" has come to life, and it is also forcing China's industrial intelligent upgrade , Large-scale industrial equipment and manufacturing will also have huge flow potential.

  The research team learned that during the epidemic, Humen Town, a major clothing town in Dongguan, staged a production chain reengineering of "armored vehicles" transformed into "hussars". Different from the traditional "design-order-production-export" model, Humen Town uses online clothing live broadcasts, relying on big data analysis such as clicks and rankings to quickly grasp market changes and return to order production. In the past, sales were determined by production and inventory. The massive backlog is accelerating the transition to flexible supply of unitized production.

  At the same time, the development of 5G has brought more room for imagination to the live broadcast economy, and the production end has been given more flexibility and autonomy. The Customer to Manufacture (C2M) business model combines technical capabilities with The needs of end users are combined in real time. On the one hand, the network interconnection of the industrial chain, supply and demand services can be adjusted anytime and anywhere, on the other hand, the communication between the production end and the consumer end is further enhanced, and the production is more socialized and targeted. This transformation of the reverse customized production chain is also the development direction of future enterprises.

3. Promote the recovery of domestic large-scale circular consumption

  In the recent "June 18 Shopping Festival", many celebrities joined the live broadcast to bring goods, and there were even virtual idols such as Luo Tianyi and Onmyoji. With the appeal of public figures, the live broadcast of goods superimposed the multi-layered expectations of consumers, fans, and the "meal circle", activated the stock of human capital, and promoted the consumption recovery of the domestic cycle.

  While cultivating new business formats, live broadcasting has also created more new jobs. A mobile phone, video meeting, and product introduction have reached the basic threshold for live sales. The simplification of the technical environment has brought the transaction process back to the most familiar face-to-face interaction. More importantly, the live broadcast economy has brought the possibility of the return of rural human capital. Migrating to work is no longer the only choice for farmers, and agricultural products are no longer an object that urgently needs to be standardized and aligned with industrial products. Instead, differentiated sales strategies can be used to create a rural landscape that consumers care about and drive rural employment.

  In July of this year, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the State Administration of Market Supervision and the National Bureau of Statistics released and updated 9 new occupations. Under the occupation of "Internet Marketing", "Live Sales Sales" was added. Now field control and 14 new professions such as the selection division.

  However, it is not easy to do a good job of live broadcasting. To obtain a continuous traffic base and attention resources, continuous innovation and guidance are required.

  For content creators, the platform has a large number of users, which means that every video may be a fresh start. With the advancement of the live broadcast economy, digital content producers have gradually upgraded from previous ordinary users to professional teams, realizing the transition from UGC (User Content Production) to PGC (Professional Content Production). Emotional interaction, trust construction, and deep community cultivation are all important points of force for live broadcast innovation.

  At present, China’s live broadcast industry is in a period of rapid sinking, during which a large number of innovative and professional content producers have emerged, including live broadcast talents trained by professional content production institutions, such as MCN (multi-channel network) companies and partnership teams. It also includes the "production + content" professionals trained by the live broadcast platform in the production line. The content innovation in front of the screen not only provides opportunities for "experts" to share, but also creates employment opportunities for "suspects".

  Whether platform companies can stand out in the live broadcast economy depends on how much visual and creative content they reserve. Live broadcast platforms need to quickly embrace environmental changes, continuously launch new product forms, output more creative operating methods, and develop in the direction of diversified live broadcasts, diversified realization, and community-based fans. In addition, the rapid development of platforms often contains governance risks such as price mechanisms, payment mechanisms, rights protection, and fair competition.

4. The top-level design of digital economy governance should be carried out as soon as possible

  With the rapid development of the live broadcast economy, industry competition in the live broadcast field has become increasingly fierce. Since the development of live e-commerce, it has shaped the basic operation mode relying on "front-end" interaction and "middle-stage" content innovation. However, live broadcasts currently have problems such as disconnection from the production side and lack of close contact. At the same time, live broadcasts still have many challenges in models, concepts, and methods to drive the real economy. Such as untimely supply feedback, unreasonable flow distribution, lagging industrial policies, and imperfect laws and regulations. Therefore, how to effectively incorporate the physical industry into the live broadcast, build an inclusive and stable live broadcast ecosystem, and smooth the domestic cycle is an important issue that needs to be resolved.

  Pay attention to product-end quality improvement and enhance brand innovation. In April 2020, the China Consumers Association released the "Online Survey Report on Consumer Satisfaction with Live E-commerce Shopping", which showed that 60.5% of the respondents said they were "worried about the lack of product quality." To seek the sustainable development of the live broadcast economy, high-quality product production and after-sales service have always been an important cornerstone for the long-term development of the physical industry. The development of the live broadcast economy connects the production side and the sales side, impacting and reforming the brand awareness and brand behavior of companies to a certain extent. Many companies have transformed from pure OEMs to independently designing products for consumers to choose. When the production side companies are in the price This kind of supply chain can directly replace more “fake brands” to occupy the market, thus obtaining a virtuous circle of development.

  Focus on 5G industrial applications and reverse custom production chain. At present, my country is actively deploying digital new infrastructure projects to promote the development of science and technology. The technological development represented by 5G, VR, and edge computing will gradually expand from the commercial field to the industrial Internet. The low latency, large traffic, and high concurrency brought about by technological evolution will also bring convenience to existing live broadcast e-commerce companies in production, supply, and docking. In the new era of 5G, we should pay attention to the application of live broadcast in the field of industrial Internet, try to open up enterprise factories, branches and upstream and downstream cooperation units, and transform complex, time-consuming and labor-intensive production steps into visual production training with clear process guidance. Thereby reducing the transmission cost of time and space, promoting the improvement of production efficiency, and helping enterprises to form a flexible industrial chain with upstream and downstream interconnection and reverse customization. For small and medium-sized enterprises in the live broadcast, appropriate flow distribution and flow tilt, and technical support for different enterprises and categories, to help them get out of the epidemic and incubate growth.

  Standardize platform governance and explore new mechanisms for comprehensive governance of online and offline economies. Governance issues in current live broadcast platforms have become increasingly prominent. Issues concerning the protection of users’ personal information rights and consumer rights have attracted widespread attention; content supervision in live broadcasts has become more difficult; some manufacturers have even inflated their operating income through means such as brushing orders and falsifying data in order to obtain higher profits. In this regard, laws and regulations such as the "E-Commerce Law" and "Internet Live Broadcasting Service Management Regulations" should be taken as the criteria, and the personal information protection law and the regulations on the protection of minors online that are being studied and formulated as an opportunity, relevant regulatory authorities and live broadcast platforms should be strengthened Research on platform governance issues. In platform management, both the country’s external governance and the self-governance of the corporate platform are strengthened, and at the same time, the collaborative governance mechanism is improved so that both online and offline live broadcast platforms can correctly implement the first responsibility and actively perform social responsibilities.

  Build a reasonable policy guidance framework and build a benign industrial synergy pattern. The live broadcast economy has largely changed the traditional production and consumption mode, collaborative division of labor, and economic theoretical framework, brought about overall changes in the economic structure, and also brought new opportunities and challenges to traditional taxation policies and industrial management policies. In this regard, government regulatory agencies should follow the development trend of "live broadcast", carry out the top-level design of digital economy governance as soon as possible, establish rights and responsibilities in terms of reasonable taxation and fair competition, and effectively guide the development of social industries. At the same time, manufacturers should consciously abide by industrial rules, put an end to vicious competition, and strive to build a benign cooperative live broadcast community ecology.

(Author: Academy of Social Sciences Research Center, Xi Jinping new era of ideological socialism with Chinese characteristics research group write: Lu Peng, Sun Ping, to Jinglin, Liu, Zhang Qin)