WeChat after giving gifts: The magical reality of the world

 Wen/Wei Xia 

In terms of social gameplay, perhaps only WeChat itself can defeat WeChat, but it cannot quickly reproduce past successes every time.

During the Spring Festival, when visiting relatives and friends, apart from the movie “Nezha 2”, the most discussed topic was the AI intelligent assistant DeepSeek. Few people mentioned the gift-giving function, which was highly expected by major manufacturers before the year.

At present, WeChat has not been able to use blue bags for the time being, recreating the miracle of the Spring Festival red envelopes.

When WeChat first launched the gift-giving function, it was evaluated by the outside world as the red envelope version 2.0, and was called the blue bag because of the cover color. Ten years ago, WeChat quickly fought its way in the payment field with red envelopes. Now the blue envelopes are another innovation by WeChat trying to break the bottleneck of e-commerce business.

For e-commerce business, WeChat has never given up exploring. From WeChat Ministores to video number stores, and then to the current WeChat stores, WeChat has repositioned its e-commerce business, not only based on video accounts and live channels, but also to put the e-commerce business into the entire WeChat ecosystem. Think about it.

However, the lack of warmth during the Spring Festival also proves that it is not easy to follow this path of transformation.

Although it was not easy, it was not without results. A few days ago, WeChat released a set of data, which mentioned the performance of blue bags between New Year’s Eve and the fifth day of the New Year. This set of data shows that the top three popular gifts during the Spring Festival are casual snacks, candy/chocolate, plush/fabric, and books, which also achieved a month-on-month growth of 10000% during the Spring Festival.

The high month-on-month growth of these gifts is matched with the Spring Festival scene, and the original sales base is not high. However, the explosive power of other large items is relatively much less. This may be due to the logistics stoppage during the Spring Festival, which makes it difficult to deliver other large gifts, or more likely that users have not yet developed their habits.

Social relationships themselves have a viral effect. In the rise of Dianduo, the social fission of WeChat played a key role. This is also an important reason why WeChat blue packages are favored and are followed by major manufacturers. Therefore, if we just limit the blue bag to the e-commerce scene of WeChat stores and see that WeChat failed to reproduce the blue bag miracle during the Spring Festival, we will still underestimate the imagination of the gift-giving function.

According to iResearch data, in 2023, the annual number of gifts given in China’s gift economy will be 4.9, and the average annual gift amount will be 2,340.4 yuan. Another set of data worthy of attention is that although the proportion of gift economy users in China who choose to purchase on integrated e-commerce platforms is the highest, reaching 73.2%, the proportion of offline stores, stores, and gift shops purchasing is not low, reaching 61.9%.

This means that if you break out of the thinking inertia of sticking to online e-commerce business, perhaps there is still a lot of room for imagination in WeChat blue packages. But unlike red envelopes with extremely short links, the links of e-commerce services are long and complex. If red envelopes are fast-attacking light cavalry, then blue envelopes are coordinated phalanx of multiple arms. To make blue envelopes well, WeChat will also make more efforts.

01

After the launch of WeChat’s blue bag function, many merchants in WeChat stores have benefited from it. For example, Three Squirrels, Tea Yanyue, and MARS Mars Foods have all given away more than 100,000 gifts. Ruixing Coffee, Dongfang Selection, etc. have also created hit gifts. For example, more than 20,000 copies of Ruixing Classic Espresso liquor at 9.9 yuan have been given away, and more than 10,000 copies of Dandong Strawberries selected by Dongfang have also been given away.

In addition to these brands that have received the dividends of blue bags, in fact, in secret corners, WeChat blue bags have also become a new tool for arbitrage among merchants without sources.

The so-called unsourced merchants refer to some merchants that carry goods from other people’s stores or complete transactions in their own stores by purchasing goods from other people’s stores. Pianduo, which is characterized by low prices, is the main channel for these merchants to purchase goods. There are currently such a group of merchants without goods in the WeChat store.

On January 29, Xiaoyu received a gift from a friend on WeChat. The next day, she received a delivery text message. This delivery text message not only states that the goods were delivered by a Pendoduo merchant, but also shows that the price is 2.94 yuan. Curious Xiaoyu clicked on the link in the text message and found that in the Pinduo store in the link, the price of this Kabonni Milk Bubble Gel given to her by a friend was indeed 2.94 yuan, which made her feel that she was being tricked by the WeChat store.

The picture provided by Xiaoyu shows that her friend chose this gift for her in a WeChat store called Chenlong Zhenpin Store, but the same product in this store sells for 7.35 yuan. Xiaoyu’s friends paid 2.5 times the price for the same product. Xiaoyu and her friends were very angry.

There are not a few netizens who have the same experience as Xiaoyu. One netizen received a WeChat gift from Little Beaver Loopy’s change purse. The shipping text message he received from Panduo showed that the price was 4.58 yuan, but his friend bought it at 19.9 yuan; A netizen sent a friend AD calcium milk worth 15.8 yuan, but the price in the shipping text message his friend received was 13.2 yuan.

Through simple handling, you can make several times of profits without the financial pressure caused by hoarding goods, which also makes this business full of attraction. However, e-commerce without supply not only leads to inflated commodity prices, but also cannot guarantee product quality and after-sales service, thus affecting consumers ‘shopping experience and even infringing on consumers’ legitimate rights and interests. It has become the hardest hit area for consumer complaints on complaint websites.

“What these unsourced merchants earn is the difference. If a consumer refunds, he will come to us for a refund without having to bear any risks, and he will come to us to solve after-sales problems.& rdquo; A merchant who runs an online snack store told “Zaihua” that his store often receives transfer orders from these unsourced merchants.

In fact, in recent years, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Jingdong have increased their efforts to crack down on this kind of non-source e-commerce. For example, Taobao used to only downgrade and remove goods from the shelves of non-source merchants, but now it has developed to delete all stores. For goods, a maximum penalty is paid for each time, etc., Jingdong directly defines this kind of non-source e-commerce as malicious reselling.

But this does not mean that merchants without goods have no living space. There is even a non-goods e-commerce industry chain in the market. Among them, there are not only cargo transfer parties who earn price differences, but also teachers who specialize in teaching business advice. On the Black Cat Complaint website, a search using unsourced e-commerce as the keyword found 1077 results, a considerable number of which were related to being cheated when purchasing unsourced e-commerce courses.

“The content of the training is to let us steal other people’s pictures and links, upload them to our store, and sell them at a higher price.& rdquo; One complainant wrote in the details of the complaint. Before selling courses, these institutions often promoted the high returns of non-source e-commerce. However, under the crackdown of e-commerce platforms, these non-source merchants often suffered heavy losses later, with the cost of purchasing courses ranging from 500 to 8,888 yuan. The cost is even more wasted.

After the launch of WeChat Blue Bag, these unsourced merchants, who were severely cracked down on various e-commerce platforms, were like bloodthirsty sharks who smelled the smell of blood and swarmed to harvest crazily during the Spring Festival holiday. This has to attract the attention of WeChat, which has always emphasized user experience. Obviously, the behavior of these unsourced merchants has ruined users ‘sense of experience with blue bags.

The foundation of WeChat Blue Package is e-commerce. Although the product team has successively made up for the lessons that the e-commerce team lacked, many problems have still been exposed.

02

Even for well-behaved WeChat store merchants, the gift-giving business is actually not easy to do.

A Shanghai-based merchant mentioned that among the gift orders in its store, gift orders account for about 68%. According to statistics from the manager of the video number MCN on his Weixin Official Accounts, a WeChat store had 1013 gift orders during the Chinese New Year, 469 gift orders had been received, and half of the gifts were returned.

When China gives gifts, there is often a tug, so during this process, some recipients did not accept the gift although they accepted their wishes. On the other hand, WeChat blue bag is still a new feature. Some recipients will not use it or miss the blue bag information, resulting in failure to fill in valid address information in time for 24 hours.

The gift-giving function has just been launched, but there are still imperfections. Many users encounter problems when using this function. Some users said that they had sent 3 gifts in a WeChat group of 19 people, and 16 people participated in the lottery, but no one won; some users complained that the gifts they initiated were not locked in stock and were out of stock after half of the drawing. Moreover, it is risky to distribute the product. In order to ensure your safety, we do not support the ambiguous prompt of receiving gifts.

In addition, after-sales issues are an important slot in the gift-giving functions of various platforms. In fact, this problem not only appears in WeChat stores, but also appears in other e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Douyin that have launched gift-giving functions.

For example, some Taobao users said that when the giver and recipient are both 88VIP, if the recipient chooses to return the goods, he will have to bear the freight, and can only apply once. If the merchant refuses, there will be no other after-sales entry in the order. It is worth mentioning that since Taobao’s gift-giving function has discounts such as 15% and 17% discount, a considerable number of users do not really give gifts, but use the method of giving gifts to small numbers for shopping, using the gift-giving function as a coupon.

A Douyin user told “Zaihua” that he encountered similar problems while using Douyin’s gift friend function. Before the New Year, the user purchased a two-person set meal for half-day demon grilled fish through Douyin Group purchase and presented the set meal to his friend. However, since the friend did not have time to consume, he wanted to apply for a refund, but there are no after-sales entrances such as refunds on the order page.

“I originally wanted to automatically refund it when it expired, but later I found the refund portal after looking for Douyin customer service. rdquo; This user said that orders that have been donated by Douyin Group Purchase need to contact customer service before they can be refunded. Unlike platforms such as Taobao, the recipient cannot carry out after-sales operations such as refunds. Only the giver can apply for refunds.

Different from ordinary shopping behavior, a gift order is for two or even more consumers. Whether the payer should apply for after-sales or the recipient should apply for after-sales, as well as the various logistics and other expenses incurred during the after-sales process. At present, several e-commerce platforms have not given a clear link.

On the platform, the after-sales problems of the gift-giving function have become more complicated. I believe these problems can always be solved. After all, no one wants to miss this big market.

In addition to online platforms, there are actually many gift-giving scenes offline. This may be an opportunity for WeChat blue bags to go out of the circle.

03

In addition to adding the blue bag function to the chat interface, WeChat is also embedded in the payment page.

During the Chinese New Year, after a merchant used WeChat to scan the code to make payment, a function prompt appeared on the successful payment page asking the merchant to help send it to a friend. ldquo; The launch of blue bags is regarded as an important turning point for WeChat e-commerce, but now it seems that blue bags are not only associated with merchants in WeChat stores, but also associated with offline merchants using Weixin Pay.

An offline merchant in Guangdong shared that the function of helping customers send goods to friends can be set up at the business collection office. After this function is turned on, customers can ask merchants to send products to friends on their behalf after arriving at the store for consumption. If a friend fails to fill in a valid shipping address within 24 hours, the merchant will not receive a notice of the delivery service, and both parties will need to negotiate the handling method.

Specific operating methods: on the page where the payment is successful, the customer can click the Send button, follow the page instructions and fill in the product picture, product description and other information, and then send it to a friend via WeChat to fill in the address. The blue bag received by my friend is the same as the blue bag received directly after giving gifts at the WeChat store, and the operation method is also exactly the same.

The Weixin Pay service, which is used by almost everyone, has brought more usage scenarios to Blue Bag.

Compared with the position of WeChat stores in the e-commerce field, Weixin Pay has already occupied an absolute market share in the payment field. Especially in offline payment scenarios, WeChat has firmly taken the lead with a market share of 70%. Weixin Pay, which already covers a fairly comprehensive range of offline merchants, is a huge entrance in itself.

Among the offline consumption scenarios, there are also quite a few scenarios that are consistent with gift-giving. For example, when you see a good book in a bookstore, encounter meaningful cultural and creative products during a trip, or specialty snacks, you can directly use this function and ask the merchant to send it to your friends after the payment is completed. Compared with the past, this function eliminates the need to ask a friend for the delivery address and contact information, and also increases the sense of ceremony of giving gifts. This gives many people who once wanted to give but found it troublesome more motivation to send a gift to a friend in the distance.

In fact, when shopping offline, the entrance to WeChat blue bag is not only on the page where the payment is successful, but also you can complete the gift by scanning the code. ldquo; Such a scene was displayed at the 2025 WeChat Open Class. Merchants can directly generate offline gift codes in the WeChat store and display them next to the corresponding products. After scanning the code, customers can directly enter the WeChat store to give gifts.

On the bookshelf at the WeChat open class site, there is a corresponding QR code next to each book.”Zui Hua” scanned the QR code next to the book “Above Homo sapiens” through WeChat and directly entered CITIC Publishing ‘s WeChat store. The product page that appears after scanning the code not only contains information such as the price, evaluation, and details of the book, but also two shopping methods: sending friends and purchasing, which is very convenient.

In contrast, the help mail entrance only requires merchants to send goods on their behalf, but the scanning entrance requires merchants to have corresponding stores in the WeChat store. The latter has a higher threshold, but it is a way to open up online and offline links. The method will even encourage more merchants to open WeChat stores and expand the store sources of WeChat e-commerce.

This time, WeChat e-commerce is really building its own multi-service hybrid array.

Although the Spring Festival is about to pass, there are various festivals such as Valentine’s Day to follow, and there are still many opportunities to give gifts. Holding a WeChat with a long usage time and a social link in your hand has enough time to improve the entire link and repair the link. Bugs are likely to reproduce the blue bag miracle moment in the future. This is a big gift that other platforms are anxious about. nbsp;