Bloggers bring live tour experiences to online audiences at Yuyuan Tourist Mart in Shanghai. [Photo/xinmin.cn]

As Shanghai May 5 Shopping Festival goes into full swing, livestreaming is being widely adopted by merchants and e-commerce platforms.

According to the new economy report released by internet giant Alibaba in April, among China's first-tier cities, Shanghai has the most users and brands participating on Taobao Live, Alibaba's livestreaming channel, in China.

Not only Shanghai's local brands, but also international big names have turned to livestreaming to promote sales. Tesla, the world's best-known new energy vehicle producer, opened a flagship store on Alibaba's e-commerce platform Tmall on April 16, and followed this by livestreaming for eight consecutive days.

Xiaohongshu, a Shanghai-based social commerce site that allows users to share favorite goods in virtual communities, also recently opened up new sales channels based on livestreaming.

On April 25, Xiaohongshu, together with some of the most popular business complexes in Shanghai, launched a series of online-to-offline marketing campaigns. Bloggers showed the experience of consumption in physical stores through livestreaming to encourage audiences to go to the stores to shop.

Qu Fang, the founder of Xiaohongshu, believes that the next trend in mobile internet will be "online experience", such as cloud exhibitions and cloud shopping. According to Qu, the "online experience" will lead not only to an online consumption boom, but will also promote offline consumption.