CITIC SEC: WeChat's gift-giving feature is under gray testing, expected to solve the pain points of social e-commerce.

CITIC SEC released a research report stating that on December 18th, WeChat Mini Programs officially launched the "Gift" function for testing. It is expected to gain a market share in the hundreds of billions only in the gifting scene. Considering its impact on the WeChat ecosystem, the total scale of social e-commerce is expected to reach trillions by 2027. From the perspective of retail landscape, the rise of social e-commerce can bring incremental consumption and also divert shares from other channels. It is expected that in the short term, its impact on offline retail will be stronger than e-commerce, and in the long term, with the extension of playability, it is expected to solve the pain points in terms of experience and product layers, and further develop more social scenes with consumption of goods, driving the continuous growth of the industry. CITIC SEC's main points are as follows: Industry Dynamics: WeChat Mini Programs launched the "Gift" for testing, creating a new play for social e-commerce. On December 18th, WeChat Mini Programs officially announced the launch of the "Gift" function for testing, which is open to all categories excluding jewelry and education training, with products priced at less than 10,000 yuan. The user experience is similar to "WeChat Red Packets," where the sender can click "send to a friend" on the product details page, choose the style, recipient, and complete the payment to send the gift. This play is expected to deepen the penetration of e-commerce in the gifting scene and stimulate about 1.4 billion WeChat users' awareness of the WeChat Mini Programs e-commerce ecosystem. Scale Calculation: Gifting scenes as entry points may lead to a trillion-dollar market through fission. According to iMedia Consulting, the estimated size of the gift economy market in 2025 is approximately 1.45 trillion yuan. The bank calculated that the GMV scale corresponding to the "Gift" play is expected to reach 150 billion yuan in 2025 and increase to 400 billion yuan in 2027. In addition, taking the gifting scene as a fission point, WeChat is expected to divert users to WeChat Mini Programs to form repeated purchases, thereby promoting the overall prosperity of WeChat's social e-commerce (gifting + WeChat Mini Programs). It is expected that the GMV scale of WeChat's social e-commerce (WeChat Mini Programs + "Gift" play) will reach 340 billion yuan in 2025 and exceed a trillion yuan in 2027. Impact on the landscape: Incremental and existing together, mainly replacing offline gifting scenes. Incremental consumption: The incremental of the WeChat "Gift" play mainly comes from the replacement of WeChat Red Packets, directly converting red packets into product consumption. It also satisfies some specific scenarios, such as not knowing the recipient's address or not being able to enter the recipient's address, thereby bringing incremental consumption. Existing competition: The "Gift" play may partially replace offline and online gift consumption. "Gift" is expected to achieve the online-ization of offline gift consumption by virtue of the convenience of e-commerce. At the same time, the "Gift" play will directly divert the share of other e-commerce platforms through empowering e-commerce within the WeChat ecosystem (video accounts, WeChat Mini Programs). It is expected that content e-commerce (such as TikTok, Kuaishou) with relatively weak price barriers may be more affected. Dynamic evolution: The play has scalability, and some pain points may be resolved. The current "Gift" function in the testing phase is relatively simple, with some pain points not matching conventional gifting scenarios. Among them, price transparency, waiting for the delivery after the gift is received, inability to return goods, and other pain points are expected to be optimized or resolved as the function and play are developed. The issues faced in the early stages of new channel development, such as insufficient pricing power and the need for merchant resources, will need to wait for the validation of the channel business model and active entry by merchants to be resolved. Players' Strategies: Conceptual gifting brands and video accounts with deep deployment of brands are expected to benefit first. By comparing common gift categories with strong categories in the WeChat e-commerce ecosystem, food and beverage, beauty and skincare, household essentials, and nutritional health are four categories with stronger growth certainty and are expected to seize the opportunity of the new channels first. From a brand perspective, brands with deep deployment in video accounts and mini-program ecosystems, as well as conceptual gifting brands (upgraded products, mid-to-high price points, strong brand momentum), are expected to benefit first. In addition, gifting shows significant search mentality, and e-commerce platforms all have the potential to develop related formats. Some players' strategies and dynamics are as follows: EAST BUY (01797): Settled in WeChat video accounts, WeChat Mini Programs integrate live streaming, short videos, communities, shopping malls, and other functions. The user profile matches the video account well, and the product brand has a strong brand awareness, suitable for gifting. Three Squirrels Inc. (300783.SZ): Entered the WeChat ecosystem in 2019 with layouts in public and private domains. According to Dujie Spicy (nickname, responsible for the Three Squirrels Inc. brand WeChat video account), within a day of the launch of the gifting tool, the transaction volume and new user growth of the official store account increased by over 500%, and the matrix account growth rate averaged over 10%. Kidswant Children Products (301078.SZ): As a leading company in the maternal and child industry, Kidswant Children Products has a large membership system. According to Interface News, its membership exceeds 90 million, with over 10 million WeChat private domain users. On December 19th, Kidswant Children Products opened a WeChat Mini Program store and launched the gifting function. As of December 22nd, it had completed 65,000 orders. MEITUAN-W (03690): Has opened a "Gift Shopping Mall" tag for purchasing cakes, milk tea, food, and other categories in the form of vouchers, which can be used just like vouchers. Currently, it does not support gifting to other users. Risk Factors: Slow adoption of new functions; increased risk of strict policy regulation; consumer demand recovery slower than expected; intensified industry competition risks.