Original title: At the end of the price war, both sides are defeated

When platforms, businesses and even consumers are working hard for the upcoming 618 sales promotion, 56 publishing houses boycotted the two "notification letters" of JD 618 sales promotion, which provoked a thousand waves.

According to relevant reports, this JD 618 promotion plan requires that all kinds of books be sold at a discount of 2-3% to participate in relevant promotion activities. The discount of 2-3% makes the publishing house say frankly that "one book will lose one book", and also shows the entanglement between e-commerce platform and publishing institutions that "love is also you, resentment is also you".

For a long time, the platform and publishing institutions have achieved mutual success. As far as the platform is concerned, the book selling business is very stable because of the book buying habits of readers; For publishers, the rapid development of e-commerce has also led to the growth of the book sales market. Although sometimes there is friction due to discounts, the pressure caused by discounts can also be alleviated by e-commerce strategies such as small profits, quick turnover and higher pricing. This balance was broken in the multi platform entry into the book track and the price war.

The publishing house and the platform are pinching each other due to discount, and consumers have different views on book prices. In the microblog comment area of this topic, a comment was praised by many people, "whose benefit and generosity is the key?"

Is the current book price expensive or cheap? Netizens have different views. "The price of books is getting more and more expensive. 70 yuan and 80 yuan are common, and more than 100 yuan are not uncommon.". Complaints about the high price of books can be found everywhere on social platforms: "Now some books are only worth a discount for their quality".

Again, the wool comes from the sheep. In the face of the suffering of ultra-low discounts and the temptation of e-commerce sales, publishers can only continuously improve pricing in order to maintain profit margins, while consumers will also become more sensitive to price in price reduction promotions, and e-commerce can only further increase discounts, eventually falling into an infinite cycle of "high pricing, low discounts".

When the low price competition starts, such a picture will continue to unfold: publishers are in a passive position in price negotiation, while consumers will shop around among multiple platforms to choose the one with the lowest price, and the user stickiness and loyalty of e-commerce platforms will also decline.

It is always the pursuit of the industry to let those who love reading enjoy books of high quality and good price. Therefore, how to pursue win-win results, find a balance point in cooperation, and jump out of the "volume" low price cycle is a "must answer" for publishers and e-commerce platforms. In fact, only by keeping the book market on the track of sound development can consumers, e-commerce platforms and publishers really benefit from it. （ Yu Qing ）