In order to please young people, major e-commerce companies are working hard during this New Year's Goods Festival.

As the 2025 Spring Festival approaches, major e-commerce platforms have launched innovative New Year Goods Festival activities to attract young consumers. This article details the marketing strategies of e-commerce platforms during the New Year Goods Festival, including the launch of large gift boxes, red New Year uniforms, creative flavor foods and other products, as well as interactive gameplay such as stocking up coupons and gift-giving functions. These strategies not only meet consumers' rigid demand for New Year goods, but also enhance consumers' willingness to buy and the platform's user stickiness through the transmission of emotional value.

Where has the New Year atmosphere gone? The most authentic New Year atmosphere is hidden in the little details of preparing for it.

Just as the moving part of the phrase "Chinese New Year is coming soon" lies not in the "Chinese New Year" itself, but in the anticipation of "coming soon". Choosing new clothes, purchasing New Year goods, booking tickets... It is these seemingly ordinary busyness and anticipation that turn people's formal Chinese New Year celebrations into a real reunion trip.

At the beginning of the new year, the e-commerce industry also ushered in the first highlight of 2025 - the New Year’s Goods Festival.

The New Year Goods Festival is the most important marketing event before the New Year. For brands and e-commerce platforms, the purchase of New Year goods is a public topic, with rigid consumer demand and a long enough purchasing cycle.

With more channels, more distracted attention, and more rational consumers, simple price wars and big gift packages are no longer enough to attract users' attention. This year's New Year's Goods Festival is all about emotional value.

1. Form: big gift boxes, red clothes, new designs

Compared with the big promotions at different times, the New Year Goods Festival is more like a composition with the theme of celebrating the New Year. Various innovative products and "Spring Festival gift packages" emerge in an endless stream. The main purpose is to make consumers "buy for happiness".

JD.com data shows that during the Lunar New Year Festival, the sales volume of gift boxes increased by 5.5 times year-on-year. Among them, nut gift boxes, puffed food gift packages, cake gift boxes, meat snack gift packages, candy gift boxes, biscuit gift boxes, candied fruit gift packages, etc. have become more popular gift box products.

Judging from the trend, Spring Festival gift packages are getting bigger and bigger, while the specifications of the products in the gift packages are starting to get smaller.

Take snack gift packs as an example: Yanjinpu Spring Festival gift pack, a spicy stewed gift box can hold 19 categories and 200 packs of stewed food; Three Squirrels meat gift pack has 18 flavors and can hold 169 snacks; Bestore nut gift box contains 10 kinds of nuts and 14 gift boxes...

On the one hand, a big gift package can meet the diverse needs of consumers, realize one-stop shopping, and appear decent and substantial when giving gifts. On the other hand, the gift package contains a variety of flavors, which not only provides a rich tasting experience, but also becomes an important medium for New Year sharing and socializing, adding more fun and interaction to social scenes.

It is worth noting that many young people have taken over the "New Year's goods purchasing rights" this year, and new changes have also taken place in New Year consumption.

First of all, paying for beauty has become another form of emotional consumption. Hairdressing, manicure, and eyelash extensions have become the essential "three-piece beauty set" for the Chinese New Year. Yilan Business learned that during this year's New Year's Goods Festival, Li Jiaqi's live broadcast room sold more than 110,000 hair care products, nearly 20,000 manicure and hand care products, and more than 30,000 boxes of false eyelashes.

Secondly, when it comes to eating, which is a top priority, young people have different preferences: they like creative and novel flavors.

Peng Yue, head of the food and fresh produce industry at Taobao Tmall, revealed at the New Year Festival trend communication meeting that coriander-flavored instant noodles and spicy strips-flavored dumplings are popular, and the purchasing population is mainly those born after 2000; the liquor market is beginning to become younger, and the motivations for buying liquor are different from those born in the 1970s and 1980s. Although they are the same liquor, young people will mix it into cocktails and make Fenjiu into cinnamon-flavored and hot liquor.

Finally, New Year's uniforms are also a typical example of satisfying emotional value in form. The so-called New Year's uniforms refer to the clothes that people carefully choose during the Spring Festival to welcome the New Year and have a brand new look. They symbolize joy, a sense of ritual, and expectations for good wishes for the new year.

JD.com data shows that during the New Year Goods Festival, searches for New Year's uniforms increased by 180% year-on-year, of which searches for red uniforms increased by more than 4 times year-on-year. Searches for products such as red woolen coats, red Year of the Snake socks, and red underwear gift boxes also increased by more than 100% year-on-year.

Moncler's snake-shaped down jacket for the Year of the Snake, Gauven's limited edition Ankle red down jacket, 13DEMARZO's "God of Wealth Bear" New Year's red sweater, VICTORIA'S SECRET's same snake series satin long pajama set as Yang Mi's... The "Year of the Snake" limited edition products from global clothing brands are collectively launched on Tmall, and they are all red.

Of course, in addition to creating the festive atmosphere in form, e-commerce companies are also mobilizing consumers' emotions through their gameplay.

2. Gameplay: Group buying and gift giving

During this year's New Year's Goods Festival, e-commerce platforms accurately grasped consumers' psychological need to "stock up" for the New Year and jointly launched more stockpiling products with brands.

Yilan Business learned that Taotian began to re-promote the model of stockpiling coupons in 2024, and received good market feedback. Consumers can use the preferential mechanism of the big promotion to purchase goods that are not easy to stock up through coupons, forming a "stock up and take out less" consumption method. And redeem them in stages and at key points throughout the year, and continue to enjoy the benefits of the big promotion.

Stockpiling is not a new way of playing, and it is often seen in local life group buying. But in the past year, more catering categories have begun to launch stockpiling card coupon products.

For example, on Pinduoduo, Mrs. Crab has launched Salt Pond Beach Lamb gift box coupons, and on JD.com you can buy a large number of seafood gift box coupons with multiple varieties. Tmall also has black pork gift coupons and Yangcheng Lake hairy crab gift coupons... As the Chinese New Year approaches, agricultural products and seasonal products have become popular choices for consumers to stock up on coupons.

At the same time, the update of the "Send Gifts" function also provides a new scenario for selling emotional value during festivals.

In December 2024, WeChat Store took the lead in launching the "Send Gifts" function for grayscale testing, through which users can directly send platform products to friends. Subsequently, Taobao, Douyin, JD.com and other platforms followed suit and launched similar functions.

The gift-giving methods on each platform are slightly different. For example, Douyin launched the "New Year's Gifts as You Like" campaign, which combines gift-giving and card voucher hoarding, and supports the gifting of more than 100 categories of daily life services such as hot pot, movies, and home cleaning. All group-purchased products with the "support gift-giving" mark can be transferred. JD.com has added the "try your luck to grab gifts" gameplay based on the "one-to-one gift-giving". In addition, Pinduoduo also launched the "group order gift-giving" model with the New Year's Goods Festival, encouraging users to group order and buy New Year's goods with relatives and friends.

On the one hand, users interact with relatives and friends through gift giving, which invisibly increases the platform's penetration rate and sense of participation in holiday scenes, while strengthening the stickiness between users and the platform and increasing the possibility of repurchase. On the other hand, unlike traditional "self-use" consumption, the gift-giving function guides users to purchase goods based on "other people's needs", expands consumption scenarios, and also brings about a wider range of product categories. At the same time, combined with red envelopes, group buying and other gameplay, the purchase conversion efficiency of goods is improved.

In fact, the "send gift" function is not new. As early as the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival in 2014, WeChat launched the "WeChat Send Gifts" function, where users can add mooncake gift boxes to WeChat red envelopes and send them to friends along with the red envelopes. Taobao, Douyin, and Meituan have also launched similar gift functions, but with different names.

In the view of Yilan Business, compared with ten years ago, the habits, scenarios and people of "gift giving" are different.

Ten years ago, gift giving was more common among elders, relatives and friends, and business gifts between companies also accounted for a significant proportion. Now, gift giving covers a wider range of people, and the younger generation has become an important participant in gift giving. With the rise of the "she economy", female consumers are becoming more proactive in gift giving.

In terms of gift content, traditional New Year goods are dominated by tobacco, alcohol, tea, and health products, emphasizing practical value. Today, gift-giving habits pay more attention to emotional and personalized expressions. Young consumers are more inclined to choose gifts with unique meanings, such as holiday limited editions, customized products, and other creative gifts.

3. Conclusion

From choosing new red clothes to customizing gift packages, from updating the gift-giving function to various interactive games, e-commerce platforms are using emotional value as a link to accurately reach the hearts of consumers.

For brands and platforms, capturing consumers' emotions is more important than price wars. Only by deeply binding products with culture, rituals and emotions can we stand out in an era of scarce attention and achieve a win-win situation for both commercial value and user emotions. After all, what is sold during the New Year Goods Festival is not only products, but also the strong emotional value behind the New Year atmosphere.

Author: Li Yan Editor: Muyu