China's livestream shopping is booming, fueling new tech such as avatars and AI
BEIJING — Livestream shopping is taking off in China, driving development of new tech products such as virtual human streamers and mobile data packages.
It's an attempt to monetize — and innovate — in one of the few bright spots for an economy that's largely slowing in growth.
Livestreaming e-commerce saw sales surge by 19% during the latest Singles Day shopping festival in November, while sales via traditional e-commerce dropped by 1%, according to McKinsey analysis.
Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, retailers in China have rushed to hire or develop in-house livestream hosts to sell products. Individuals, such as online influencer Austin Li, have become celebrities and overnight millionaires through using livestream commerce.
«Livestreaming, particularly livestreaming commerce, is something no country in the world has anything at the scale China has,» said Daniel Zipser, senior partner and leader of McKinsey's Asia consumer and retail practice.
Now companies are testing out livestreaming hosts that are digitally created humans — either avatars that represent an actual human host, or a virtual human being created from scratch.
That use of virtual livestreaming hosts was a trend that stood out during this year's Singles Day, said Xiaofeng Wang, principal analyst at Forrester.
«The quality has improved a lot this year, the virtual hosts look more real, at least the ones I've seen from Tencent, JD,» she said.
Wang added that using virtual livestreamers is a way for retailers to differentiate themselves from others, as well as reduce the cost of hiring a famous influencer, who might also carry the risk of being involved with celebrity scandals.
Tencent has launched a product that only needs a
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