The Nesting Strategies of E-Commerce Wanghong: Promotional Temporalities in Online Shopping Festivals on Chinese Platforms

Abstract

The wanghong economy in China adopts unique platform monetization strategies, including social tipping, virtual gifting, advertising, and more prominently, e-commerce. E-commerce wanghong are one type of influencer focusing on pushing sales through e-commerce services and play a pivotal role in integrating e-commerce and social media. Online shopping festivals have recently catalyzed the intersection of wanghong cultures and e-commerce. A typical example is the e-commerce giant Alibaba, which implemented multi-stage promotional activities during online shopping festivals to provide practitioners with expanded business opportunities. Notably, this flourishing integration of e-commerce and wanghong culture is carefully guided by the Chinese government’s unique political agenda and regulatory framework. To study this dynamic interplay between e-commerce wanghong, platforms, and national policies, we explore how e-commerce wanghong become a kind of “platformed wanghong.” Furthermore, we examine how e-commerce platforms change users’ experiences of time during online shopping festivals, which we refer to as “promotional temporalities.” Finally, we investigate the “nesting strategies” employed by e-commerce wanghong during these events, which are intertwined with the platform’s promotional temporalities and must navigate compliance within the national regulatory framework. Our findings shed light on the complex relationship between e-commerce wanghong, platform strategies, state regulation, and audience engagement in the context of platform economy.

Introduction

The Chinese term “wǎnghóng” [网红, hereafter wanghong; lit. trans. “internet red”] refers to “someone who is popular on the internet” and inherently incorporates three fundamental elements: digital media as a promotional platform, a significant following base, and the resulting fame and popularity (Xu & Zhao, 2019). Studies have demonstrated that the core elements contributing to the popularity of wanghong are their ability to embody authenticity (Fung et al., 2023; X. Wang & Picone, 2021) and exhibit amateurish and vernacular creativity (Craig et al., 2021; G. Zhang & Hjorth, 2019). These qualities empower ordinary individuals in China to achieve fame and recognition in the online world. While its English translation may be equivalent to “social media influencers” or “internet celebrities,” scholars have noted the nuances of the term. For example, while both influencers and internet celebrities tend to have a more targeted approach to content creation, Chinese wanghong place a strong emphasis on attracting attention and turning online traffic into money (Abidin, 2018; Han, 2021). It has been established that making money becomes the default motivation for most people to pursue becoming a wanghong (G. Zhang & de Seta, 2018).

In China, monetization through e-commerce is crucial for wanghong, as view-based advertisement revenue is very limited (Guan & Zhou, 2024). Thanks to the maturity of China’s local manufacturing, supply chain, and e-commerce infrastructure, thousands of wanghong have been able to monetize their fame and personal brands through e-commerce (Craig et al., 2021; Han, 2021). In recent years, China’s online shopping festivals have further catalyzed the intersection of influencer culture and e-commerce. For example, Alibaba uses various strategies to attract consumers before the shopping festival (Z. T. Chen & Cheung, 2022). Starting in 2020, Alibaba extended the shopping festival from 24 hr to half a month and set up key dates such as pre-sale day, final payment day, and carnival day. ¹ This half-month discount event, combined with the wanghong economy, has continuously refreshed sales records^2,3 (Han, 2022). This carnival-style consumption has become a reflection of modern Chinese consumerism, and consumers use carnivals not to resist capitalist control (Bakhtin, 1984) but rather to consume like a game (Z. T. Chen & Cheung, 2022).

Wanghong have grown along with the platformization of China’s society (de Kloet et al., 2019), and the shopping festivals led by Alibaba have further promoted the convergence of wanghong and e-commerce (Guan & Zhou, 2024). It is worth noting that behind the prosperity of this commercial and cultural convergence is the careful guidance of the Chinese government’s unique political agenda and regulatory framework (Lin, 2023). In the following sections, we first explore the concept of wanghong and its e-commerce origins, then review the development of online shopping festivals in China and their interactive relationship with government policies, and analyze the positioning of e-commerce wanghong in this ecosystem. Then, the methodology undertaken was introduced, with subsequent findings discussing the distinctive features of e-commerce wanghong and investigating the promotional temporalities on platforms, and exploring the state’s promotion and supervision mechanisms for the platform economy. Finally, by analyzing the social media activities of e-commerce wanghong during online shopping festivals, this article reveals how their marketing strategies respond to the platform’s promotional temporalities and serve the goal of maintaining user engagement and parasocial relationships, while seeking compliant development within the national policy framework.

Wanghong economy and its e-commerce origins

Due to multiple contributing factors, the Chinese wanghong ecology has become more industrialized and commercialized. First, the Chinese governmental policies support the platform economy and cultural industries,^4,5 which contributes to the development of the wanghong industry. Second, the technological innovations on Chinese social media platforms, including short videos, live-streaming, and e-commerce applications, enhance wanghong viability through the near-frictionless ability to engage in commercial activities (Craig et al., 2021). Third, Multi-Channel Networks (MCNs), which serve as cultural intermediaries, have significantly influenced the business development and career management of wanghong (Li & Lin, in press). As a result, this professionalized and business-oriented model further promotes the booming wanghong economy.

The institutionalization of the wanghong economy arguably originated at the 2015 Wanghong Economy Media Seminar held by Alibaba, the e-commerce giant. ⁶ This seminar aimed to foster the growth of wanghong stores operated by female wanghong with substantial followings on social media platforms like Weibo (Han, 2022). Alibaba also launched the “iFashion channel” on its consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce platform Taobao to provide traffic support for these wanghong to run their independent brands. ⁷ With these tools, it has been noted that the “personal brands” of wanghong often generate sales that compete with those of other reputable “corporate brands” during online shopping festivals in China. ⁸ Many platforms have combined e-commerce elements with short video and live-streaming features to provide Chinese netizens with seamless “one-click” purchasing services (Craig et al., 2021). For example, Taobao Live introduced the purchasing feature during the live-streaming show in 2016. ⁹ Kuaishou ¹⁰ and Douyin ¹¹ —the two most prominent Chinese short video platforms—launched their e-commerce businesses with live-streaming capabilities in 2018 and 2020, respectively (ByteDance, 2020; Kuaishou, 2018).

Public discourse and industry reports recognize wanghong as a lucrative profession that even “earns more than movie stars” (CBNData, 2016, p. 5). Much research interest has focused on how wanghong impacts the platform economy, including virtual gifting (X. Zhang et al., 2019), product endorsements (Park & Lin, 2020), and monetized gender performativity (G. Zhang & de Seta, 2018; G. Zhang & Hjorth, 2019). There are also recent studies that critically explored the precarious labor challenges faced by wanghong in the context of platformization (Cunningham et al., 2019; Guan, 2021). One emergent phenomenon that has not yet been fully discovered is the dynamic interplay between wanghong and platform-initiated commercial events, such as online shopping festivals. To understand this, it is essential to begin with a brief history of online shopping festivals in China.

Online shopping festivals and e-commerce wanghong

In China, online shopping festivals originated from the concept of Singles’ Day [光棍节 guānggùnjiē], which was started by Alibaba in 2009 as a day to encourage singles to celebrate and enjoy special discounts and deals (Feng & Lu, 2022). It is also known as the “Double 11 Shopping Festival” [双十一 shuāngshíyī, hereafter Double 11], which is held on November 11th every year. This date was selected because it is a memorable date composed of four “1”s, which symbolize loneliness (Meng & Huang, 2017). While only 27 merchants participated in the first Double 11, the event still achieved sales of 50 million yuan (approximately 8 million USD). ¹² This groundbreaking marketing event came at the right time—China was actively dealing with the global financial crisis and urgently needed to boost its economy by expanding domestic demand (Sun & Creech, 2019). Meanwhile, the “11th Five-Year Plan for E-commerce Development” (2007–2012) [电子商务发展 “十一五”规划] included e-commerce in the national strategic development for the first time, providing a favorable regulatory environment for platforms like Alibaba to experiment with innovations. ¹³ Since then, Chinese online shopping festivals have quickly gained popularity and become massive online sales events, with other e-commerce platforms also joining in. Most notably, the Double 11 of 2012 has grown into the world’s biggest online shopping festival (Alizila, 2023a; Sun & Creech, 2019). The Double 11 of 2018 achieved 24.2 billion USD in sales within 24 hr, exceeding the total online sales for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday in the US combined. ¹² Double 11 not only strongly promoted the popularization of online shopping but also led to the development of supporting service industries such as express logistics, creating a large number of employment opportunities. ¹⁴ It is precisely because this commercial festival fits the multiple national policy goals of expanding domestic demand and promoting employment that it can grow rapidly in a relatively loose regulatory environment and eventually become a milestone event in the development of China’s e-commerce (Meng & Huang, 2017).

With the popularity of online shopping festivals, Alibaba has adopted wanghong cultures as an integral part of its social commerce strategy ¹⁵ (Han, 2022). This strategy is highly consistent with the government’s promotion of a new digital economy, ¹⁶ which aims to cultivate and support small start-ups, stimulate entrepreneurship and innovation. ¹⁷ Especially under the policy background of “Constructing Platforms to Promote Mass Entrepreneurship” [大众创业万众创新], Alibaba actively encourages wanghong to shift from simply endorsing brand products to opening personal stores on the Taobao platform. ⁶ This type of wanghong, who focus on pushing sales through e-commerce endeavors, has been regarded as “e-commerce wanghong” (CBNData, 2016). According to Han (2022), there are three mechanisms for e-commerce wanghong’s Taobao stores: “incubation,” “store launch,” and “transformation” (Han, 2022). The “incubation” stage requires e-commerce wanghong to strategically create engaging content, build a favorable persona, and attract followers’ attention on social media. In the “store launch” stage, e-commerce wanghong open Taobao stores to introduce and sell personal brand products. In the “transformation” stage, e-commerce wanghong design and implement product marketing campaigns on social media to guide followers to their Taobao stores to make an order. In this way, e-commerce wanghong would successfully convert followers into active consumers. Based on this model, e-commerce wanghong significantly impacted online shopping festivals. During the Double 11 of 2019, the sales revenue of nine popular women’s clothing wanghong stores exceeded 1 billion yuan (roughly 13.7 million USD). ⁸

Live-streaming sales or live-streaming-daihuo [直播带货] has become the new trend during online shopping festivals in recent years ¹⁸ (Abidin & Guo, 2023; Han, 2022). Daihuo translates as “product promotion with sales conversation” (Abidin & Guo, 2023, p. 14). During the live-streaming-daihuo, live-streaming hosts showcase and promote products to audiences, and audiences can interact with the host and make purchases directly when watching the live-streaming show. This interactive shopping quickly emerged as a new monetizing method for e-commerce wanghong (Han, 2022). During the Double 11 of 2021 on Tmall and Taobao, 6 of the top 10 live-streaming-daihuo hosts were e-commerce wanghong. ¹⁹ Alizila, the official media outlet of Alibaba, stated that e-commerce wanghong are turbocharging the 11.11 shopping festival via live-streaming-daihuo. ² In this context, the focus of e-commerce wanghong has gradually changed from entrepreneurs who specialize in their personal brands to versatile online salespeople who promote diverse products. ²⁰

Although the commercial value of wanghong has been recognized as a critical dimension, existing research has mainly focused on the type of wanghong who use virtual gifts and product endorsements as key monetization strategies (Park & Lin, 2020; X. Zhang et al., 2019), and therefore has not yet explored the rapidly developing e-commerce sector in depth. In addition, the state’s policy support and regulatory mechanisms have significantly affected the development trajectory of the platform economy and wanghong, especially in this specific context of online shopping festivals. As such, this study looks into e-commerce wanghong who focus on “pushing” sales and their social media practices during online shopping festivals. Specifically, the following questions guide our analysis:

• Research Question 1: How do state policies and platform governance shape the development of e-commerce wanghong?

• Research Question 2: How do regulatory shifts transform platform features and user engagement during online shopping festivals?

• Research Question 3: How do e-commerce wanghong navigate and adapt their strategies within these evolving platform environments?

Methodology

Our methodology comprised document analyses, digital ethnography, the walkthrough method, and content analyses. First, to study the dynamic interplay between e-commerce wanghong and online shopping festivals, we conducted a document analysis to identify the characteristics of different e-commerce wanghong. We utilized Dydata, ²¹ a platform offering comprehensive documents, news, and reports across various industries. On this platform, we entered keywords such as “e-commerce wanghong” [电商网红]; “wanghong economy” [网红经济]; “Double Eleven” [双十一]; and “shopping festival” [购物节] to retrieve relevant information about e-commerce wanghong and online shopping festivals from 2016 to 2023. The search results were not precise and retrieved all documents that contained the searched keywords; thus, we filtered the results to keep data relevant to our research background, subjects, and objectives (n = 137). We then screened these reports to filter any that discussed the development of online shopping festivals, introduced e-commerce wanghong (and related concepts), or contained sales data of e-commerce wanghong during online shopping festivals, resulting in a shortlist of 51 reports.

To supplement our database, we consulted official government websites related to national policies and collected authoritative policy documents. In addition, we thoroughly assessed the official websites of major e-commerce platforms and social media platforms that operate online shopping festivals and cultivate e-commerce wanghong to look for company policy documents or financial reports. For a complete list of the documents studied in this paper, see Appendix 1 in the Supplemental Material. In general, we coded the data to identify three representative e-commerce wanghong based on the following criteria: they must have a large follower base and high sales volume during online shopping festivals, be officially endorsed or certified by the platform they operate on, and be recognized as reputable e-commerce wanghong in the news reports. In addition, during our data analysis, these wanghong needed to be still active on the platform (not having voluntarily left the platform or been banned by the official). We then summarized the main platform these e-commerce wanghong operated on, their official title or designation on the platform, their preferred content format, and their business model.

Second, we deployed the digital ethnography from June 2022 to July 2023 to observe different online shopping festivals across multiple platforms. The detailed online shopping festivals and observation periods can be found in Table 1 in the Supplemental Material. Specifically, we collected data through the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018) during the Double 11 of 2022 on the Tmall and Taobao platforms. By examining this festival held by Alibaba, we gained valuable insights into the strategies, impacts, and performance of this e-commerce giant in China. During the Double 11 of 2022, the first author interacted with Taobao and Tmall App step-by-step through the App logo, log-in page, homepage, the festival main page, specific product page, and terms and conditions of this shopping festival. She also engaged with various Taobao and Tmall app features, such as splash screen ads, coupons, order placement, live-streaming, and Daihuo features. As such, the dataset comprised screenshots and volumes of field notes tracking the features of online shopping festivals.

We also observed one of the most notable e-commerce wanghong, Zhao Daxi’s Weibo activities during the Double 11 shopping festival of 2022. Zhao is a top e-commerce wanghong with more than four million followers on Weibo and runs a personal brand that sells women’s clothing on Taobao. Her social media profile shows the logic of pursuing “high visibility” (Abidin, 2016), and her Taobao store has always been on the best-selling list during major online shopping festivals. ²² By selecting Zhao as an exemplar, we aimed to comprehensively understand the successful trajectories and practices of e-commerce wanghong and elucidate the interplay between social media, self-branding, and e-commerce business during online shopping festivals. The online immersion period was 19 October to 17 November 2022. The data collection period was guided by Zhao’s Weibo posts as she announced her participation in Double 11 in a post published on the start date and reflected on her Double 11 experience in a post published on the end date. This extended online immersion period on Weibo included visiting her Weibo profile daily, observing her social media activities, and recording her social media posting through fieldnotes (e.g. notes, screenshots, downloads, etc.). For some of the key dates during this event, such as the deposit day (24 October 2022), the balance day (31 October 2022), and the official Double 11 day (11 November 2022), observations occurred every hour due to Zhao intensifying her social media activities to boost her online sales for these key dates.

Finally, we conducted content analysis on Zhao’s Weibo account during the Double 11 in 2022. These data, including screenshots and written notes, were collected through the above-mentioned digital ethnography. A grounded theory approach (Glaser, 1978) was adopted in the thematic coding of these data. We developed a coding framework to categorize and analyze the content of Zhao’s posts to capture different aspects of the content, such as the self-presentation, relational, and commercial strategies employed by Zhao in her posts. A detailed coding scheme with examples can be found in Table 2a-b in Supplemental Material.

Findings

Platformed wanghong

The first objective of this study is to explore how national policies and platform governance affect the development of e-commerce wanghong. Through document analysis, we found that a common attribute of e-commerce wanghong is an affiliation with the platform, whether explicit or implicit, on which they are active. For example, Li Jiaqi, a prominent figure on Taobao, who is holding the official title of “beauty zhubo” [美妆主播, ‘beauty live-streamer’] on Taobao. The manager of Li’s MCN company openly thanked for marketing resources for Li from Taobao Live, the Tmall Marketing Department, and the entire Alibaba Group during the 618 Shopping Festival in 2023. ²³ Another MCN company (Ruhnn) that incubated the well-known e-commerce wanghong Zhang Dayi directly stated on its official website that it is an Alibaba-backed wanghong agency. ²⁴ Feng Min, the founder of Ruhnn, expressed his gratitude to Taobao in his IPO speech and acknowledged that Alibaba had provided solid and reliable e-commerce support for the wanghong ecosystem created by Ruhnn. ²⁵ More recently, Fengkuang Xiaoyangge, a top e-commerce wanghong on Douyin (a leading short video platform in China), also expressed his heartfelt appreciation to the Douyin platform in a public speech at the Douyin E-commerce Creator Summit ²⁶ : “I am very grateful to the Douyin platform . . . I met Douyin because of dreams, and we walk together because of trust” [translation by authors].

While e-commerce wanghong is widely adopted in industrial reports and media coverage, no platform uses this term directly. The official titles, designations, or certifications of e-commerce wanghong across the platforms are diverse and distinctive. For example (see Table 1), with the official title of “beauty zhubo,” Li Jiaqi specializes in the beauty sector, focusing on live-streaming as his primary content format and business strategy on Taobao. Zhang Dayi’s official verification on Weibo as the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of her MCN company, Ruhnn, explicitly reflects her entrepreneurial identity rather than merely a content creator. Douyin awards its e-commerce wanghong with content creation certifications. Fengkuang Xiaoyangge, who primarily focuses on live-streaming-daihuo, was recognized officially as a “funny short video creator” [搞笑短视频创作者]. Despite Douyin’s venture into e-commerce in 2018, as highlighted by Deng et al. (2020), the platform continues to prioritize its identity as a content platform. The various official platform certifications of e-commerce wanghong seem to overshadow the underlying support of the platform.

Table 1.

The Representative Cases of E-Commerce Wanghong.

Representative e-commerce wanghong	Official title on the platform	Primary monetization model	MCN company	Platform affiliation
Li Jiaqi	Beauty zhubo	Live-streaming-daihuo	MeiOne	Taobao Live (Alibaba)
Zhang Dayi	CMO of Ruhnn	Online retailing	Ruhnn	Weibo and Taobao (Alibaba)
Fengkuang Xiaoyangge	Funny short video creator	Live-streaming-daihuo	Three Sheep Group	Douyin (ByteDance)

Platforms support not only content creation but also economic opportunities for e-commerce wanghong. In the early stage, platforms provide more favorable economic conditions (Rietveld et al., 2020) by privileging e-commerce wanghong’s data over other users and actively investing in many MCNs to incubate future wanghong ¹⁵ . This trend resonates with the state’s agenda of “internet +”. ²⁷ The integration of wanghong and e-commerce has innovated the traditional sales model, seamlessly connected content creation and commercial realization, and reshaped the product sales chain. It is worth noting that the platform continues to strengthen its core competitive barriers through e-commerce, cross-platform strategic alliances, and live-streaming-daihuo during large online shopping festivals (Abidin & Guo, 2023). E-commerce wanghong use live-streaming to transfer digital elements into the industrial chain, significantly responding to the governmental new economy policy. Finally, platforms promote live-streaming-daihuo as the primary monetization way for e-commerce wanghong and concentrate traffic exposure resources on a few of wanghong (Tencent News, 2021). Taking the pre-sale date of Double 11 of 2021 as an example, two e-commerce wanghong, Li Jiaqi and Viya, achieved significant sales performance. Their sales on that day exceeded 20 billion yuan, accounting for 90% of Taobao Live’s sales. ²⁸

However, just 1 month after Double 11, Viya was involved in a tax evasion scandal and fined 1.341 billion yuan for tax evasion. ²⁹ After this scandal, the Chinese government has regulated the live-streaming-daihuo’s tax payment through the issue of the “Announcement on the Collection and Administration of Personal Income Tax on Income from Equity Investment Operations” [关于权益性投资经营所得个人所得税征收管理的公告]. ³⁰ In the same year, the State Council issued the “Anti-monopoly Guidelines on the Platform Economy” [关于平台经济领域的反垄断指南], ³¹ which clearly prohibited platforms from using technical means to implement exclusion and restriction of competition. With the implementation of governmental regulation, the platform quickly realized the potential risks of promoting leading wanghong and adjusted the preferential conditions provided to them. For instance, in mid-January 2022, Taobao Live released an annual incentive plan to encourage emerging wanghong and talented people in the early stages. ³² Douyin also began to enable merchants to do live-streaming-daihuo by themselves and provide corresponding traffic support to further decentralization and reduce dependence on top-tier wanghong. ³³

Indeed, it is not unusual for content creators and social media influencers to benefit from platform-based programs, as evident in the YouTube Partner Program ³⁴ or the Amazon Influencer Program, ³⁵ which often offer opportunities for content creators and influencers to generate additional income through commissions on readership or sales. However, things work differently in China. Scholars point out that “platforms are often agents of governance, rather than just objects of governance” (Yuan & Zhang, 2025, p. 4). This characteristic is particularly evident in the development of the wanghong economy—platforms actually participate in the governance process of wanghong development through algorithm distribution, traffic inclination, and business rule formulation. Since the beginning, platforms adopt wanghong as a highly disruptive strategy (Craig et al., 2021) to match changing markets and governance (X. Chen et al., 2021). The incubation and cultivation of wanghong mainly start from their inception, followed by consistent platform support, leading to a symbiotic relationship where platforms rely on wanghong-generated traffic. This is a variant of what Nieborg and Poell (2018) call the “platformization of cultural production,” which refers to “the penetration of economic, governmental, and infrastructural extensions of digital platforms into the web and app ecosystems, fundamentally affecting the operations of the cultural industries” (Nieborg & Poell, 2018, p. 4276).

In our e-commerce wanghong case studies, “platforms have increasingly cultivated their wanghong and promoted the capitalization of wanghong as an industry” (Xu & Zhao, 2019, p. 147). We thus term this practice “platformed wanghong,” which refers to digital platforms integrating wanghong into the platform’s monetization and growth strategy, especially for driving e-commerce sales. Moreover, “platformization involves not only what we call intuitional shifts in markets, infrastructures, and governance, but also changes in the practices of labor and creativity, and democracy” (Poell et al., 2021, p. 7). As markets and governance change, further adjustments by e-commerce wanghong are essential to respond to changes in the platform and maximize their visibility and monetization capabilities. The following sections will discuss how governmental regulations transform platform features and user engagement during online shopping festivals and how e-commerce wanghong deal with the changes.

Promotional temporalities during online shopping festivals

For our second research question, we undertook comprehensive digital ethnographic fieldwork. We noticed that Alibaba has experimented heavily with implementing temporal designs on its e-commerce platforms from 2020 to 2022. For example, Tmall and Taobao have expanded the signature Double 11, initially scheduled for November 11th, into an 11-day-long retail marathon since 2020 (Alibaba, 2021). In this sense, the online shopping festival is not just a 1-day event but two rounds of promotional sales to keep transactions and consumers clicking (Figure 1). Each round encompassed the entire consumer cycle of paying a deposit during the pre-sale period, completing the final payment when the balance officially started, and then waiting to receive the goods. The implementation of two rounds of sales provided consumers with more flexible options, allowing them to complete their purchases in advance of the first round of sales so that they could get the goods they purchased at the same discounted price before the official day of the Double 11 (Figure 2). This “buy early, enjoy early” strategy greatly enhanced the purchase decision process (Xiong et al., 2019), with a clear temporal incentive for consumers to enjoy their purchases sooner. After this new temporal introduction, consumers were attracted by various discounts and time-limited offers, while brands and merchants used this opportunity to boost their sales significantly (Alibaba, 2021). At the Double 11 of 2022, Alibaba further redesigned the pre-sale event to begin at 8 pm on October 24th. ³⁶ The deposit and balance payment on the first round of sales and the second round commenced at 8 pm. As such, this new temporal introduction has become increasingly popular among consumers, as it helps them avoid the “midnight rush” of placing orders. ³⁷

Figure 1.

The Tmall double 11 consumer rules for 2022. Screengrab and translation by authors.

Figure 2.

The double 11 of 2022 calendar and timeline visualization. Screengrab and translation by authors.

Moreover, through the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018), we found that the platform systematically implemented “institutional nudges” through well-thought-through, coordinated website designs (Wu et al., 2021). Specifically, we documented how platform interfaces are deliberately designed to guide user behavior. For example, a critical characteristic of online shopping festivals is the structure of the user experience over time. Both online shopping festivals on Alibaba and other platforms (such as JD.com) adopted various time-relevant designs (Figure 3). As the Double 11 of 2022 approached, Taobao and Tmall tailored their app interface designs to integrate the platform’s logo with the “11.11” data information. Upon clicking into the app, users were greeted with a splash screen themed around specific Double 11 event timings and discount details. The platform’s homepage prominently displayed the start time for the Double 11 pre-sale event’s deposit payment (8 pm on October 24th), some using pop-up windows and others cleverly embedding the timing within product descriptions. When users navigated to the Double 11 special event page, they encountered a time reminder banner at the top, with the prominent message “Double 11 presale starts tonight at 20:00,” accompanied by specific timing details for the deposit payment date below it. While browsing within the app, users might also come across pop-up ads. These pop-ups included the Double 11 red envelopes prepared by the platforms for consumers, the information on when these red envelopes could be claimed, and notifications reminding users of the start time for the Double 11. Time-relevant design elements were commonly found on other e-commerce platforms during online shopping festivals. During the Hot’8 online shopping festival on JD.com (held in August 2022), many time-relevant nudges and prompts have been used on this platform to create a sense of urgency and excitement. These included features like event calendars, countdown timers, reminders, and estimated delivery times (see Figure 4).

Figure 3.

The time-relevant designs on Tmall during double 11 of 2022. Screengrabs by authors.

Figure 4.

The time-relevant nudges on JD.com during the hot’8 shopping festival of 2021. Screengrabs by authors.

Digital media environments and their user guidance mechanisms have been extensively studied. Previous research points out that online attention flows differently from its televisual predecessors due to the “user’s heightened feeling of choice” (Wu et al., 2021, p. 2983). However, online platforms adopt “liberty-preserving approaches that steer people in particular directions, but that also allow them to go their own way” (Sunstein, 2014, p. 358). This guidance mechanism can be regarded as nudges, which are not manipulations imposed on user choices but an inevitable environmental factor when people make choices (Thaler & Sunstein, 2009). In our cases, time nudges are common on e-commerce platforms to encourage customers to make timely purchases (Tuncer et al., 2023). These design elements are not merely aesthetic choices but calculated mechanisms to intensify user engagement and consumption patterns. Specifically, for creating urgency, flash sales, limited-time offers, countdown timers, and pop-up windows have been widely adopted on e-commerce platforms. They made users feel that time was running out, encouraging immediate action. This heightened urgency can make users more aware of the passage of time and push them to make decisions quickly. When users know a time-limited event is approaching or a package is coming after purchase, they may experience anticipation and excitement while waiting. Several rounds of sales also helped users to experience anticipation several times. This anticipation can stretch the user’s perception of time, making the event feel longer or the purchase feel more meaningful. For platforms that regularly feature time-related nudges or events (e.g. several sales rounds), users would develop cyclical engagement patterns and create a temporal pattern in their online activities. Thus, we conceptualize “promotional temporalities” as platforms’ strategic practice of defining temporal frameworks and designing festivals that reshape how users and cultural producers experience time. That is to say, e-commerce platforms structure the user’s time experience with strategically time-related nudges or events (e.g. several sales rounds), creating artificial urgency, fostering user anticipation, and maintaining cyclical engagement among users.

Notably, the strategic extension of major e-commerce platforms’ signature shopping festivals and the implementation of time nudges are clearly in line with China’s policy measures during and after the pandemic. During the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, as China faced the dual challenges of pandemic control and economic recovery, the State Council issued guidelines to stimulate consumption and employment through digital innovation (The State Council, 2021). This policy support proved timely as the pandemic-induced stay-at-home economy created unprecedented opportunities and challenges for new retail formats. Alibaba then extended the festival period, which helped prevent concentrated consumer traffic and logistics pressure, supported steady economic recovery, and created a more sustainable consumption model. Other major platforms like JD.com and Pinduoduo followed this trend, effectively turning what was once a 1-day shopping into a more immersive and long-term retail celebration. These examples illustrate a distinctive Chinese model of platform-state governance structure, in which digital platforms have evolved from mere objects of governance to active agents of governance (Yuan & Zhang, 2025). Platform’s sustained efforts on several stages of online shopping festivals, with multiple time-relevant designs in the platform, paved the way for “more opportunities for merchants and brands to increase sales and engage with consumers to build relationships” (Alibaba, 2021, p. 33). These entities maximize user engagement and capture attention spans through sophisticated institutional nudges and strategic platform design, ultimately converting time spent and user engagement into transactions. This transformation serves commercial and policy objectives, particularly the government’s initiative to stimulate domestic consumption. In the next section, we further explore how e-commerce wanghong participate in this sophisticated governance structure.

The nesting strategies of e-commerce wanghong: a case study of Zhao Daxi

To understand how e-commerce wanghong’s activities intertwined with promotional temporalities on e-commerce platforms, we conducted a content analysis on Zhao Daxi’s Weibo posting during the Double 11 of 2022. We found that the height of her social media activities was clustered around the key dates during this online shopping festival. We analyzed her social media activities through the metaphorical lens of “nesting behavior” to explain the importance of designing different activities on social media for different promotional stages of e-commerce platforms during online shopping festivals. Nesting is a pattern of hormonally influenced actions in some animals (such as rats, birds, and rabbits) related to preparing the environment for birth and raising offspring (Lehtonen et al., 2023). Although humans would not build nests, they experience some nesting behavior that is often driven by cultural and social factors and personal preferences (Shahvisi, 2020). It typically peaks in the third trimester of pregnancy to prepare the environment for the arrival of the baby (Anderson & Rutherford, 2013).

Under the metaphorical perspective of “nesting,” we saw the Double 11 day (November 11th) as “the due date.” Therefore, in the period before the due date, Zhao made a lot of preparations for the arrival of this day. For example (Figure 5), Zhao commenced a warm-up campaign on social media 5 days before the deposit payment day for the Double 11 pre-sale (October 24th). On October 19th, she posted a Weibo message featuring her brand’s name with the “11.11” date, announcing, “The annual Double 11 presale is coming again!” (Weibo from Zhao Daxi, 2022). The following day, on October 20th, Zhao declared that she would enter “the big bang mode,” meaning she would frequently post on social media to promote her brand’s Double 11 marketing activities, again including her brand’s name with the “11.11” date in this post. Zhao posted 30 Weibo messages from October 19th to October 24th, adhering to her stated high-frequency “the big bang mode.” In the next 7 days until the balance payment day starts (October 31st), Zhao continued various activities on social platforms, including promoting brand clothing, teasing new products, introducing products, and live-streaming-daihuo, totaling 36 Weibo posts.

Figure 5.

The nesting strategies and the timeline of double 11 of 2022.

Over the next 10 days, Zhao continued to post on Weibo to encourage the balance payments and prepare for the arrival of Double 11. During this period, she published a total of 36 Weibo posts. When Double 11 day finally arrived, she made six posts that day. Zhao’s high-frequency Weibo posting behavior on social media can be compared to the human nesting behavior in late pregnancy, preparing for the arrival of a newborn—an intensive preparation for an important moment. However, with the end of the Double 11, Zhao’s “big bang model” has gradually stopped. In the following 6 days, she posted only six Weibo messages, including one day without any posts. This behavior pattern reflected e-commerce wanghong’s “agentic adaptations of what platforms offer them” (Abidin, 2021, p. 1), with nesting strategies aligned with promotional temporalities on e-commerce platforms.

Our analysis discovered that Zhao included three specific moves to complement the nesting strategy: namely, increasing attention span, leveraging on-platform nudges, and cultivating parasocial relationships with the audience (Horton & Richard Wohl, 1956). For e-commerce wanghong, increasing attention spans is crucial to maintain engagement and maximize the impact of their content. To achieve that, Zhao created captivating content, such as friendly greetings, teasers about new products, a must-have-items list, and tips for saving money, to serve as clickbait for holding the audience’s attention. She also adopted various nudges on platforms to influence people’s behavior and decision-making processes subtly and positively (Tuncer et al., 2023), including coupons and the official lottery draw system on Weibo.

For the period before the due date, Zhao increased the frequency of teaser campaigns and self-designed gamified activities. She continued encouraging her followers to “like or comment” on her Weibo posts and randomly selecting lucky followers from the list of likes or comments to receive discount coupons. She also intentionally left hints for followers to collect exclusive coupons or giveaways through gamified activities as if they were hunting for Easter eggs (Abidin, 2021). On the official due date, she gave followers cash through lucky draws as incentives (to encourage followers to buy her products) and directly made her self-branded products as giveaways. The cash amount usually consists of auspicious numbers favored by Chinese people, such as 666 or 888. After the due date (post-Double 11 period), Zhao made official statements on Weibo regarding the bad shopping experience some followers may have had during the festival to remove misunderstandings. The visibility of postings was controlled by her, with the relevant information set to “only visible to followers,” giving the impression of “keeping family problems from being publicized, but for followers, it was an experience of Zhao being responsive and answering questions. We also found that Zhao gave followers huixuejin, [回血金, cashback], which usually occurred after followers purchased. Huixuejin is a clever way to maintain the relationship between e-commerce wanghong and followers because followers buy a large amount of e-commerce wanghong products during online shopping festivals and are “bleeding heavily.” Thus, e-commerce wanghong gives followers cash to “put their blood back” (get their money back). Moreover, the content posted by Zhao on social media shifted from commercial promotion to personal life sharing after the due date. She started to share her personal life and family photos. K-pop stars have also used this strategy as a treat for their fandom (King-O’Riain, 2021). The personal updates served as emotional compensation for the “crazy spending” of followers to finally achieve the goal of fostering parasocial relations.

In summary, Zhao’s case reflects how e-commerce wanghong use and adjust strategies to cope with platform changes. This “nesting strategy” of e-commerce influencers reflects the design of platform shopping festivals and user adaptation practices to match the political and economic transformation of the internet, e-commerce, and Chinese society. In other words, the wanghong economy is now at the intersection of the accumulation logic of internet companies and the state, as well as the power of platforms (Han, 2022).

Discussion and conclusion

Since the rise of influencer cultures, platforms have served as both a stage for influencers to showcase their talents and monetize their work and as regulators imposing numerous rules and restrictions. The extension of platform governance power has penetrated into multiple social fields: from social relations and economic structures in rural China (Duan et al., 2023), to smart city in urban life (Caprotti & Liu, 2022); from financial activities (J. Wang, 2021) to labor practices (L. Zhang, 2023). Meanwhile, influencer’s understanding and adaptation to platform algorithms (Bishop, 2019; Bucher, 2018) and content-moderation practices (Zeng & Kaye, 2022) have become topics of academic discussion. This phenomenon is even more pronounced in China, where platform (and behind-the-scenes state) control over wanghong extends beyond adjusting content visibility; it profoundly affects their monetization methods (de Kloet et al., 2019). As platforms become agents of governance (Yuan & Zhang, 2025), some research directly refers to them as “Platform Baba (Daddy),” which implies a paternalistic control relationship between platforms and wanghong or other content creators (Han, 2022). Short video platforms have further reinforced this control by cultivating wanghong’s pursuit of money through algorithms and incentive mechanisms, tightly linking creative labor with revenue, thereby impacting the autonomy of content creation (Huang & Ye, 2023). Although these studies provide insights into the relationship between influencers and platformization, they tend to focus on the experience of influencers as creative workers and their cultural production on the platform creation (Duffy et al., 2021). The rapidly emerging field of e-commerce has not been well understood. In our cases, audiences actually buy products from e-commerce influencers instead of just consuming the cultural content they produce. Therefore, this study focuses on the symbiotic governance relationship between the state and the platforms (Wu, 2024; Yuan, 2024), as well as the impact of online shopping festivals on e-commerce wanghong’s promotion of their personal brands on social media, and attempts to understand why the platform cultivates its own influencers. We found that the platform, as an intermediary, incubates and supports these platformed wanghong, bringing traffic back to the platform, thereby promoting e-commerce sales while pursuing profit maximization and policy involvement.

Moreover, e-commerce wanghong adjusted their various temporal practices to align with the predominant digital technologies, highlighting the importance of analyzing the consequences of how time and our perceptions of it are being reshaped. Hogan (2010) suggests that time on platforms can become complex. Previous research on how platforms influence users’ experiences of time has explored the concepts of liveness and ephemerality (Bayer et al., 2016; Kaun & Stiernstedt, 2014; Ma et al., 2021). In our case, promotional temporalities can make certain moments feel more significant and structured (e.g. the key dates during online shopping festivals). In various ways, social media order and structure time to accumulate economic surplus value (Fuchs, 2014). Our study identified how minor interface features—such as prominent placement of Double 11 banners, countdown timer, and estimated delivery time—collectively form a sophisticated choice architecture that subtly directs purchasing decisions. This evidence directly responds to the notion of “institutional nudges” (Wu et al., 2021) by revealing how digital architectures systematically channel attention and actions toward institutionally beneficial outcomes to achieve policy involvement.

In recent years, the so-called “Platform Baba,” mainly Alibaba, has no longer published the sales record for its signature online shopping festivals since 2022 ³⁸ —a strategic move that both complies with stricter antitrust regulations and helps avoid portraying market dominance. While the wanghong economy is continually driven and shaped by social media platforms, popular influencers, consumer markets, and manufacturing industries (Guan & Zhou, 2024), the broader dimensions of state involvement cannot be overlooked (Yuan & Zhang, 2025). Moreover, many Chinese platforms have gone overseas (Vecchi & Brennan, 2022), trying to replicate some successful models of Chinese platforms in Western markets. To date, TikTok faces an uncertain future over the ban in the US market. ³⁹ Future research can continue to focus on the dynamic relationship between state intervention, platform monetization, and influencer online practice in other political contexts. TikTok shops and live-streaming-daihuo by influencers also have emerged in many other countries. ⁴⁰ Thus, we encourage more research to focus on e-commerce influencers who promote sales and compare the similarities and differences with influencers who focus on creative works. As we conclude this study, we call for future research to try various research methods and conduct on-site field research and interviews to gain insights from the practitioners, as our research is mainly online field research based on digital ethnography.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-sms-10.1177_20563051251349742 – Supplemental material for The Nesting Strategies of E-Commerce Wanghong: Promotional Temporalities in Online Shopping Festivals on Chinese Platforms

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-sms-10.1177_20563051251349742 for The Nesting Strategies of E-Commerce Wanghong: Promotional Temporalities in Online Shopping Festivals on Chinese Platforms by Ruohan Li and Crystal Abidin in Social Media + Society