During this year’s Double Eleven, AI is no longer a “new feature” of the e-commerce platform, it is present in every step of your ordering process.
Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo are all using AI chatbots for shopping guides, recommendations, and transactions on a large scale, and virtual fittings are becoming more common. If you ask "What kind of jacket should I wear for commuting?", the answer to your question is most likely not a human customer service person.
The overall data is not hot. Statistics from the third-party platform Star Map show that from October 7 to October 31, Double Eleven sales increased only 2.4% year-on-year.
What’s eye-catching is the AI-related products themselves. Sales of AI toys this year have exceeded 100 million yuan, and sales of AI companion robots in the second half of October increased nearly five times year-on-year.
It’s interesting to look at these two sets of numbers together. AI shopping guides have made shopping more convenient, but the total number of orders has only increased by 2.4%, indicating that "more convenience" does not make people spend more money. What is really being driven is that AI itself has turned into commodities: talking plush toys, companion robots on the table, and buyers are mostly giving them to children or the elderly.
100 million yuan is not a large amount in the entire Double Eleven, but this category almost did not exist two or three years ago. The growth rate of companion robots is five times, and the base is not high. Whether it can be maintained next year depends on whether the product can really accompany people to chat, rather than stuffing it into a cupboard after playing with it for two days.
Whether AI can promote consumption growth, the answer given this year is: a little bit, mainly by itself.