When Record-Breaking Becomes the Norm: Health & Wellness Consumption Trends and Product Highlights from Double 11 E-commerce

On November 11, the final gross merchandise volume (GMV) of the 11th Tmall Double 11 Global Shopping Festival settled at RMB 268.4 billion, setting a new record once again.

Sales surpassed 100 million yuan within the first 145 seconds;

In 10 hours and 31 minutes, GMV in the medical aesthetics industry surpassed the full-day total of last year;

11 hours and 9 minutes overall exceeded the entire day of last year;

Five brands joined the 100-million-yuan sales club;

This is the performance of Tmall Pharmacy, including health products and medical services, during the recently concluded Tmall Double 11 shopping festival.

This year’s Double 11 e-commerce sales were primarily concentrated in two major categories: health products and medical services. Notably, the number of blockbuster new products from leading brands and the prominence of top-tier medical service institution brands played a significant role in driving sales growth.

Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao enjoy first-mover advantages, but they face competition from numerous players such as JD.com and Pinduoduo in certain niche categories, including beauty and cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and health supplements.

JD Health’s Pharmaceutical Division saw its Double 11 gross merchandise value (GMV) reach 16 times the daily average. The GMV for health service categories, such as vaccine appointments and medical aesthetic services, also witnessed a year-on-year increase of more than tenfold.

Meituan Dianping’s Double 11 medical aesthetics services saw a year-on-year growth of 275%, while consumer healthcare services surged by 839%. Among these, injection procedures accounted for 100,000 orders, skin rejuvenation treatments for 130,000 orders, dental scaling for 150,000 orders, and health check-ups for 35,000 orders.

During this year’s Double 11 shopping festival, health-related products and services repeatedly took center stage. Throughout the entire day of Double 11, Swisse, By-Health, Bausch + Lomb, Yan Palace, and Xiao Xiandun successively joined the “RMB 100 Million Club” for GMV on Tmall Health.

“Brand,” “traffic,” “lower-tier markets,” “growth,” and “user stickiness” have become the key themes of this year’s Double 11.

In addition, we should also pay attention to the upgrading of technology and consumer experience. After major e-commerce platforms successively released their Double 11 data, what patterns can be identified?

The enthusiastic participation of health-related merchants in this year’s Double 11 shopping festival offers a glimpse into the booming healthcare market.

Data disclosed by Ali Health reveals that the number of merchants participating in this year’s Double 11 shopping festival was 1.7 times that of last year, while the number of products involved in the promotion reached 1.78 times the figure from the same period last year. The entry of nearly 4,000 new brands has injected significant vitality into the marketplace.

Moreover, a number of new ecosystem players have successively joined. For instance, health-focused merchants such as Dong-E-E-Jiao and Bairuiyuan have established “Tmall Liaison Offices” near Alibaba’s Hangzhou campus to facilitate timely communication and coordination.

To promote local specialties, heads of several impoverished counties began live-streaming e-commerce sales well before the Double 11 shopping festival, drawing widespread attention. Meanwhile, celebrities such as Olympic gymnastics champion Liu Xuan have opened stores on Alibaba Health’s platform to sell products. The adoption of these emerging marketing strategies has fueled a boom in the health market.

In addition to “new faces,” new products such as chewable goji berries, meal-replacement shakes, and ready-to-drink donkey-hide gelatin (ejiao) beverages have all captured the interest of a large number of young consumers. Taking ready-to-drink ejiao beverages as an example, consumers born in the 1990s and 2000s account for more than 60% of the customer base.

Digital Health ProductsProducts such as Yuwell thermometers, Abbott blood glucose meters, Omron all-in-one blood pressure monitors, and Signia remote-fitting hearing aids have been highly sought after by consumers. Notably, year-on-year transaction growth for Abbott blood glucose meters surged by 341%. This Double 11 shopping festival highlighted the trending shift toward younger demographics and smart health consumption.

The unexpected surge in popularity of some new product categories warrants attention to their trend directions. For instance, within the first three minutes of the Double 11 shopping festival, Voolga’s medical-grade facial masks generated gross merchandise value (GMV) exceeding the full-day total from the previous year; during the first hour, Hydron, Bausch + Lomb, and Shike Glasses ranked among the top ten merchants by GMV, driven by substantial sales of contact lenses.

In addition, this year's Double 11 a series ofHealth Services ProjectsThe sustained boom heralds a new e-commerce trend in the health industry’s shift toward service-oriented development.

During this year’s Double 11 shopping festival, Alibaba Health, in partnership with Alipay, officially launched an online booking service for nighttime dental clinics across 22 cities in China. For example, Heli Flagship Store, a medical aesthetics merchant on Alibaba Health, offered a new product customized for Tmall’s Double 11 event—the “Two-Year Annual Pass for Full-Face Wrinkle Reduction.” On the first day of its presale, nearly 2,000 units were sold, with single-item sales revenue exceeding RMB 3.7 million.

In fact, medical services—including aesthetic medicine, dentistry, health check-ups, and vaccinations—also emerged as stars of this year’s Double 11 shopping festival. Within the first 10 minutes of the event, two aesthetic medicine merchants already surpassed their full-day transaction volumes from the previous year. Moreover, several brands specializing in health check-ups and dental services ranked among the top 10 on Tmall Health’s full-day transaction volume list.

As the project representative for new health services, Alibaba Health has this time collaborated with nearly 5,000 O2O providers across close to 150 cities nationwide.New Retail PharmacyParticipated in the event. During the promotional period, the volume of O2O orders on Ali Health reached 2.65 times that of the same period last year. By 24:00 on November 11, when the Tmall Double 11 Shopping Festival concluded, chain pharmacies such as Guizhou Yishu Chain Pharmacy, Tianji Pharmacy, and Shuyu Pingmin Pharmacy ranked among the top ten in order volume.

Another e-commerce giant, JD Health, participated for the first time this year as a subsidiary, and its businesses also achieved impressive results.

During the Double 11 shopping festival, JD Internet Hospital recorded a single-day peak of over 120,000 consultations. The gross merchandise value (GMV) for health-related services, such as vaccine appointments and medical aesthetic procedures, saw a year-on-year increase of more than tenfold. As of 11:00 a.m. on November 11, the GMV for physical examination services rose by 47% year on year, with the number of orders for physical examination packages purchased for parents surging by 390% year on year.

In the pharmaceutical field,Medications for Chronic DiseasesThe top three key departments—neurology, otolaryngology and ophthalmology, and dermatology—saw year-on-year growth of 279%, 387%, and 150%, respectively.

At 9:25 a.m. on November 11, sales of Dong-E-E-Jiao on the JD Health platform surpassed the total sales volume of the entire previous year. In the first 30 minutes, sales of the Shuerjia brand reached ten times the level of the same period last year. Within the first hour, Huiren’s sales exceeded those of the same period last year by 27 times. The daily sales volume of the Special Drug Insurance on that day was 69 times its average daily sales since launch. The maximum number of policies purchased by a single policyholder reached seven, covering an entire household of seven members.

JD Pharmacy’s offline stores saw a 205% year-on-year increase in customer footfall, an 850% year-on-year growth in GMV, and a 335% year-on-year rise in new membership sign-ups.

JD Medicine Express’s 30-minute door-to-door delivery service covers 23 provinces and 63 cities; it has established deep collaborations with 2,000 pharmacies, conducting joint online and offline promotional campaigns; 500 stores operate 24/7, providing nighttime medication delivery services to users; on November 11, the first order was fulfilled in 15 minutes, with the fastest medication delivery completed in just 5 minutes.

From the perspective of consumer psychology, during the Double 11 shopping festival, consumers are actually pursuing just three things:First, novelty; second, product categories; third, discounts.Meanwhile, major e-commerce platforms are simultaneously leveraging “new products,” “new technologies,” or novel “sales activation strategies”—such as live-streaming for traffic acquisition and conversion—and employing platform operational tactics to create “blockbuster hits.” In summary, the following are some observable trends for this year’s Double 11 shopping festival:

First, beyond price reductions, emphasize service and experience.For instance, Alibaba Health and JD Health have both launched on-demand local medication delivery services. Medical aesthetic and dental institutions are placing greater emphasis on clinical expertise in their service offerings, rather than competing on the price of medical equipment.

Second, create blockbuster products and leverage innovative strategies such as live streaming to drive traffic.Technology drives change; for instance, Tmall combines product sales with science popularization through educational content and live streaming.

Third, health checkups, dental cleanings, and aesthetic enhancements are the top three user favorites.As these services are easy to standardize and offered at low prices, they serve as highly effective customer acquisition tools, leading to a surge in sales volume.

Fourth, a wide variety of health supplements are available, with "Guochao" (China-chic) products garnering the most attention.Amid the backdrop of consumption upgrading, consumers are more willing to try new products, especially viral hits; therefore, SKUs should closely align with consumer preferences and demands.

In addition to e-commerce giants, many vertical-sector enterprises have also launched a “valuable” Double 11.

Kangaiduo, a pharmaceutical e-commerce platform, reported internal Double 11 statistics showing over 800,000 paid orders across all online channels within 24 hours, more than 400,000 packages dispatched from warehouses in the same period, and over 3 million unique visitors site-wide. As of midnight on November 11, Kangaiduo’s Tmall store achieved gross merchandise value of RMB 45,404,993.

As a “veteran” with years of operational experience during the Double 11 shopping festival, Kangaidu achieved RMB 10 million in sales on the Tmall platform within the first half-hour of this year’s Double 11 event.

In terms of product categories, Kangaiduo maintains its competitive edge in pharmaceutical e-commerce across segments such as health supplements, contact lenses, and family planning products. In vertical therapeutic areas including andrology, gynecology, rheumatology and orthopedics, dermatology, respiratory medicine, gastroenterology, and urology, Kangaiduo ranks first in the industry on the JD.com platform.

Qinbaobao, a family parenting platform, launched its private label “Qinbao Youpin,” which joined the Double 11 mega-sale campaign starting last year. According to official announcements, Qinbao Youpin’s Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) on this year’s Double 11 day quadrupled year-over-year, with the average transaction value increasing by over 50% and the number of paying customers more than tripling.

On the Eve of Double 11, How to Stock Up and How Much to Stock: An Annual Test for E-commerce Brands. The Maternal and Infant Lifestyle Brand “Qinbao Youpin,” which has long advocated the “Blockbuster Logic” and “C2M Customization” models, stated that its inventory preparations are within expectations and that it faces no inventory pressure.

In addition to the viral “diapers” that swept across smaller social media platforms, Qinbao Youpin’s “Double 11” bestseller list this year also included smart early-education devices, children’s clothing, and beauty and skincare products. Furthermore, high-potency anti-aging ampoules, diapers, and “Miracle Water” were nearly sold out on the platform at one point.

“We have adopted a flexible supply chain model, basing our inventory stocking on dynamic performance analysis and major promotional surge coefficients. This approach has achieved an inventory forecasting accuracy of over 90%, thereby mitigating stocking risks at the source. During the Double 11 shopping festival, we replenished stock in a timely manner to ensure customers could purchase their desired products. Meanwhile, with distributed warehouses across multiple regions in China, our 24-hour dispatch rate during the major promotion period approached 90%, and nearly half of all orders were delivered within 48 hours.” The head of Qinbao Youpin revealed, “The repurchase rate for this year’s Double 11 increased compared to the same period last year, with the repeat purchase rate among existing customers alone exceeding 80%.”

On November 12, Gengmei APP, a leading professional medical aesthetics platform in China, released the 2019 Double 11 Medical Aesthetics Consumption Report. The data showed that the order volume on November 11 increased sevenfold compared to the previous year. Overall sales revenue grew by 487%, and the number of purchasing users increased by 514%. With discounts starting at 50% off across the board, a total of 200,000 coupons were issued, saving users RMB 99 million in total. The highest single expenditure was made by a male customer from Shanghai, who spent RMB 630,000.

Based on user data from the Double 11 shopping festival, including searches, browsing, and orders, the top ten most popular medical aesthetic procedures on the platform are: double eyelid surgery, hyaluronic acid injections, botulinum toxin wrinkle reduction, comprehensive rhinoplasty, facial fillers, liposuction, Thermage, Ultherapy, hair transplantation, and orthodontic treatment.

In the health products category, companies place great emphasis on two factors: one isSelection of Best-Selling Products, one isSupply Chain Assurance, which is a concentrated embodiment of the traffic-driven mindset.

Relatively speaking, healthcare service institutions tend to be more inclined towardUser Experience, a head of a medical aesthetics institution revealed to VCBeat: Since the prices on e-commerce platforms were relatively favorable during last year’s Double 11 shopping festival, it caused considerable dissatisfaction among existing customers. Adjustments were made this year; the store anniversary celebration was held just before Double 11, and the Double 11 prices were set slightly higher than those during the anniversary sale, thereby protecting the interests of loyal customers. Given the chain’s modest scale, greater emphasis is placed on the experience of super users rather than on traffic-driven strategies.

Benefiting from the favorable policy environment that has elevated oral health to a national priority, dental medical services have entered a period of explosive growth on e-commerce platforms. During this year’s Double 11 shopping festival, Taikang Bybo Dental achieved sales exceeding RMB 62 million, with 1.1 million store visits, 750,000 followers, and 20,000 orders placed. This performance ranked it second overall in the online healthcare sector and first in the dental category.

Data shows that Taikang Bybo Dental achieved sales exceeding RMB 5 million within just two minutes of the flash sale launch, with order volume surpassing 3,000 in under five minutes.

Compared with last year’s Double 11 shopping festival, consumer spending power in oral health has seen explosive growth. Rather than casually browsing platforms for low-priced bargains, consumers are proactively adding products and services to their shopping carts, strategically purchasing items related to oral health maintenance, check-ups, and treatments. This proactive behavior reflects heightened personal health awareness among consumers and is poised to drive a transformation in oral healthcare services.

In the public’s conventional perception, dental care seems limited to tooth extraction, denture fitting, and cavity treatment. However, during this year’s Double 11 shopping festival, procedures that balance oral health with aesthetic appeal—such as dental cleaning and whitening, orthodontics, and all-ceramic crowns—along with dental implants, which are superior to traditional dentures, have gained widespread recognition and topped sales charts.

Taikang Bybo Dental achieved a 56% year-on-year sales growth throughout the Double 11 shopping festival. Among the offerings, 17,800 dental cleaning packages were sold, 20,000 orthodontic treatments were contracted, over 3,500 dental implants were snapped up, more than 4,000 all-ceramic crowns were hotly purchased, and over 7,000 dental fillings were ordered.

The head of Yanshu, a leading brand in non-surgical aesthetic medicine, stated that the customers acquired during this year’s Double 11 shopping festival were highly targeted, resulting in favorable transaction prices and zero complaints from existing clients.

For healthcare service providers, theyWe strongly desire to select users who match our criteria and recognize its medical value.. The positioning and scale of each institution determine its operational strategy. For institutions with a smaller scale that prioritize superior user experience, collaboration with Double 11 and e-commerce platforms involves moderate advertising investment and partnership, rather than large-scale spending.

Relatively speaking, some large chain stores are more aggressive in driving sales volume and enhancing brand exposure. Moreover, due to their extensive offline store networks, they often possess stronger capacity to handle demand.

VCBeat has learned through various channels that many medical aesthetic institutions plan to revamp their flagship stores on Meituan-Dianping and Tmall. The initial strategy is to attract customer attention by showcasing brand professionalism and endorsing the expertise of their physician teams, followed by moderate advertising investment. Tmall’s future strategic focus will be on physician-led live streaming, with medical aesthetic service designs placing greater emphasis on clinical techniques rather than competing on the price of equipment.

Unlike health products, medical service offerings involve the challenge of service delivery, going beyond a simple product-sales logic. The aforementioned head of a medical aesthetics institution stated that, broadly speaking, Tmall is a retail e-commerce platform, where providing services requires a strong focus on improving conversion rates. In contrast, Meituan-Dianping is inherently a lifestyle services e-commerce platform, with a natural logic for converting traffic from general beauty and wellness services to medical aesthetic procedures.

The Meituan-Dianping platform serves two primary functions: first, it enables the display of products and services; second, it encourages customers to leave reviews by delivering high-quality service, which encompasses both medical services and personalized, attentive care. Tmall operates on a competitive track model where sales volume is key; live streaming by professionals not only educates consumers but also drives sales.

Regarding the challenge of standardizing online medical aesthetic services, standardized protocols essentially involve restructuring the treatment workflow for specific devices. Some clinics that prioritize therapeutic outcomes tend to favor combination therapies integrating multiple technologies, such as those targeting dark circle elimination, which yield superior results.

With the Double 11 shopping festival having drawn to a close, where will future growth lie for the two major sectors of health products and medical services? We believe that the former will primarily be driven by “pharmaceuticals,” specifically the growth points in pharmaceutical e-commerce, while the latter will depend on upgrades in business models and technology.

The success of pharmaceutical e-commerce during the Double 11 Shopping Festival is a result of rising income levels among Chinese consumers, heightened health awareness, and the deepening adoption of online medication purchasing models, highlighting the trend of consumption upgrading in the national healthcare sector.

Insights from industry leaders may offer a glimpse into future trends:

On September 12, Alibaba Health Pharmacy unveiled the Super Pharmacy 2.0 standards on the occasion of its third anniversary, upgrading from a pharmaceutical retail platform to a family-centric health service platform.

Super Pharmacy 2.0 adheres to six major standards, encompassing comprehensive product categories, universal population coverage, and all-scenario services, while enhancing safety assurance through rigorous quality selection, medication management, and health companionship.

“It is foreseeable that the largest pharmacy in China will undoubtedly emerge online,” said Shen Difan, CEO of Alibaba Health. “Our vision is ‘to provide fair, inclusive, and accessible healthcare services to one billion people.’ Therefore, Alibaba Health Pharmacy does not aim to be the largest pharmacy, but rather strives to offer a more comprehensive, safer, and more inclusive service. Fifty percent of our customers come from small towns in third-tier cities and below, enabling them to enjoy pharmaceutical and healthcare products and services on par with those available to residents of first-tier cities.”

On October 28, JD Health held a partner conference attended by over 1,000 participants. At the event, CEO Xin Lijun unveiled a new strategy centered on “health management,” committing to connect and integrate the entire industry chain, leverage diverse medical resources, and provide users with products and services that span the full life cycle and cover all health-related scenarios.

It has become common practice for pharmaceutical e-commerce platforms, after achieving significant scale and strength, to extend upstream and establish an integrated “medical care + pharmaceuticals” model. In December 2017, JD Internet Hospital launched its trial operations. In January 2019, the “JD Internet Hospital Suqian Branch” went online, marking the first online-offline integrated collaboration between a public hospital and a platform-based internet hospital in China, as Suqian First People’s Hospital was effectively migrated onto the JD Internet Hospital platform.

Having established its “medical services + pharmaceuticals” ecosystem, JD Health plans to deeply integrate these two sectors. At the Partner Conference, it officially announced its entry into the field of chronic disease management, collaborating with leading specialty departments of major public hospitals across China to provide specialized disease management for chronic conditions such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, diabetes, and mental disorders.

Xin Lijun introduced that JD Health has signed agreements with eight specialized psychiatric hospitals, including Tianjin Anding Hospital, to establish a specialist medical consortium for mental disorders. It will also collaborate with the Chinese Society of Endocrinology of the Chinese Medical Association to jointly build the JD Internet Hospital Diabetes Center.

It is evident that for pharmaceutical e-commerce, establishing a closed-loop integration of “medical care” and “pharmaceuticals,” starting with households and patients with chronic diseases to unlock new growth drivers, represents a promising future direction, which also encompasses “insurance.” Currently, major leading pharmaceutical e-commerce platforms are strategically positioning themselves around “internet hospitals” and specialized offline chronic disease management.

Certainly, the pharmaceutical e-commerce sector is significantly influenced by policy and remains under strict regulatory oversight, particularly with regard to prescription outflow. For government agencies promoting prescription outflow, hospitals issuing prescriptions, and e-commerce platforms facilitating this process, developing a product that satisfies multiple stakeholders—including patients, hospitals, and the government—is no easy feat.

As for how to deepen engagement in healthcare services and capture their demand, we may glean some insights from the strategies employed by Meituan Dianping. In the future, Meituan Dianping’s Healthcare Business Unit will continue to develop online tools from both the supply side and the trust-building perspective, aiming to enhance merchants’ operational efficiency. This effort will primarily focus on three major directions:

First, we will continue to develop service items into standardized SKUs, aiming to standardize all procedures in the dental industry. At a minimum, this ensures that patients and dentists have a highly consistent understanding of each standardized procedure, thereby facilitating word-of-mouth promotion.

Second,Structuring and Upgrading UGC Reviews, it may diversify content formats—such as diaries, image-text posts, and even videos—with the aim of shortening consumers’ decision-making time.

Third, the commoditization of physician services involves modularizing and maximizing the granularity of online scheduling for doctors’ and specialists’ time. In the future, we aim to build a platform based on mutual trust among consumers, Meituan-Dianping, and healthcare institutions, working in tandem to enhance consumer services and ultimately achieve a win-win outcome for the entire industry.

For e-commerce and online platforms, the key undoubtedly lies in leveraging technological and business model innovations to ultimately return to a consumer-centric logic, driving growth and stickiness through enhanced user experience.