CONNECTED COMMERCE X DOUBLE 11 2025
The New Commerce Contract: Why Trust + Intelligence Will Define the Next Decade of Retail
By Terry Lu, Managing Partner, Strategy & Innovation – OMD China
and JP Edwards, Managing Director, Product – OMD Worldwide
Double 11 continues to offer a glimpse into the future of global commerce. Recent festivals highlight a clear trend: the brands that win will be the ones that can earn trust while operating at machine speed. The world’s largest shopping event made it clear that performance alone is no longer enough – nor is brand-building in isolation. The next decade will be shaped by what we can call ‘the new commerce contract’: a blend of ‘consumer rationality’ and ‘platform intelligence’, where value must be proven, experiences must be immediate, and trust must be continuously reinforced.
This contract is not unique to China. It is a template for how retail, media, content, and technology will converge everywhere. And unlike previous cycles – which were defined by new formats or channels – this shift is structural. It changes how people make decisions, how platforms mediate those decisions, and how brands must show up.
Three elements from Double 11 2025 reveal what this new commerce contract demands – and why they matter to senior marketers.
1. The Rise of Rational Consumers: Value Must Be Demonstrable, Not Performed
The era of impulse purchasing and manufactured urgency is fading. Across the festival, there was a decisive shift toward ‘calm, rational, evidence-based consumption’, especially among Gen Z. Hashtags like #lowmaterialdesire and #spendmoneywhereitcounts have amassed tens of millions of views, reflecting a consumer base driven less by hype and more by verification.
This shift doesn’t mean people want fewer experiences – it means they want proof, not persuasion. Proof that a claim is real. Proof that a brand aligns with their values. Proof that they won’t regret the purchase.
Implication: Brands can no longer rely on promotional theatre. The work now is ‘trust architecture’: clear disclosures, transparent comparisons, authentic content, and post-purchase value. In a world where shoppers cross-examine claims in real time, truth becomes a performance advantage.
2. Instant Commerce Has Redefined Expectations – Not Just Convenience
Instant commerce grew 28.6% YoY to RMB 1 trillion, outpacing total retail ecommerce more than threefold. Historically concentrated in groceries and meals, it is now moving into apparel and household goods – making immediacy a cross-category expectation rather than a premium feature.
Consumers now evaluate brands not only on what they promise, but how fast they deliver on it. The “moment of truth” has literally collapsed into the moment of action.
Implication: Speed is no longer an operational KPI; it is part of the brand experience. Marketers must design campaigns *with fulfilment in mind*, integrating media, supply chain, retail media, and local availability into a single system. When consumers expect immediacy, fragmentation – between teams, messaging, or channels – becomes a liability.
3. AI Is Now the Engine of Commerce – Not an Add-On
Double 11 was described as Alibaba’s first fully AI-powered festival, and the numbers justify the claim:
- 300 million customer queries answered by AI chatbots
- 150 million marketing images generated per day
- 30% conversion uplift for merchants using AI-assisted support
- 5 million analytics reports automatically produced for sellers AI is fundamentally changing how markets function. It fluidly rewrites product pages, surfaces in intent signals, makes recommendations, synthesizes reviews, and increasingly influences consumers’ choices.
Implication: AI doesn’t just speed up execution; it compresses the competitive gap. When every seller can produce content, creative assets, and analysis instantly, differentiation moves upstream: into data quality, brand trust, product experience, and long-term equity. Efficiency becomes democratized – meaning effectiveness becomes the real battleground.
A New Mandate for Global Marketers
The new commerce contract has clear consequences. Brands must build for a world where consumer trust and platform intelligence must work together – where human expectations and machine systems co-author the buying journey.
To succeed, marketing organizations must now focus on four imperatives:
- Build a Machine-readable Brand: Structure your product truth, reviews, claims, and creative in formats AI can ingest and recommend. This is the new SEO – a world where you optimize for algorithms and agents.
- Design Experiences That Deliver Value at Human Speed: Instant commerce rewards brands that erase friction – from fulfilment to customer service to content relevance.
- Invest in Trust as a Differentiator: In a rational-consumption era, loyalty is built through transparency, quality signals, cultural alignment, and meaningful post-purchase care.
- Orchestrate, Don’t Optimize: The winners won’t be those with the best channel strategy, but those with the most connected ecosystem — where creative, retail, media, data, and operations move as one.
Conclusion
The lesson of Double 11 is not that China is ahead. It’s that the global future of commerce is already here; a future where brands must earn trust the human way and deliver value the machine way. The next decade is already being defined by brands that do both.
This is an adapted version of reporting that first appeared in OMD Rapid Response