For e-commerce sellers, the promotion in 618 years is undoubtedly a major play. With the increase of omni channel layout, the possibility of "exploding" a single platform is becoming smaller and smaller.
"Seen from this year's 618, the logic of traditional platforms is sometimes unclear, and business constraints on each other are obvious. If the platform wants both GMV and profit, and 'gene' can't support low prices, it will inevitably face challenges." On June 18, the top fresh seller of e-commerce for 16 years, Star Chi (alias) In an interview with a reporter from the 21st Century Economic Report, I sighed that 618 is no longer a big promotion of JD's platform, and Tmall and Pinduoduo are equally vigorous.
He said frankly that he got the most satisfactory "report card" this year, which can be said to be the biggest growth in the past years. "This year, the main reason is that the platform has given subsidies. Tmall has been pulling up the data since the beginning, and the chatter is that a large number of passengers came near the end."
In 2008, JD launched its 618 year promotion for the first time. Sixteen years have passed by, and the strength and weakness of e-commerce platforms are also changing quietly from the establishment, rise, peak to cooling. By the end of the US stock market on June 17, the market value of JD was $44.647 billion, Alibaba was $180.276 billion, and Pinduoduo had reached $205.955 billion.
Although the users' pursuit of 618 is not as good as before, the skinny camel is still bigger than the horse. 618 is still an important battlefield for major e-commerce platforms. No one dares to lie down easily, and a battle of "chasing the deer" has begun.
Xingchi sighed that after 16 years of employment, it had eaten the early dividend of e-commerce, and it did not catch up with Tmall's traffic, but kept pace with JD. It avoided the "Pinduoduo" in the early entrepreneurial period, and unexpectedly caught up with the rise of "Shuaikuai". "There are mistakes and gains. On the whole, it is much better than just operating offline stores. Now only industries with low profits can survive."
"We have forgotten who the real customers are. Our customers are the users who use our applications to shop, and we have not given them the best experience." Cai Chongxin, the co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba, once reflected on the reasons for the backwardness in the past few years.
After the current value and freshness began to decline, platform merchants began to "roll" details crazily in order to retain consumers, and the playing methods and actions tended to converge. From the consumer side, we may only see the price and express delivery and other services, while from the merchant side, we see the reality is much more cruel.
How to capture the hearts of users, low prices become a key link. But it is not easy to achieve low prices?
Previously, Taotian announced the cancellation of pre-sale, and the platform carried out the control of first rising and then falling. Tmall supported the whole price protection service of goods from payment to July 5, as well as the measures of including the mail of event goods and providing freight insurance.
"It can be seen that Taotian 618 has spent a lot of effort to launch a low price strategy and issue a large number of subsidies. For example, Taotian Factory, a large bag of snacks, and the introduction of vertical live broadcast. But it always gives people a sense of dispersion and does not form a joint force." In the view of StarChi, Taotian's size is like a giant ship, although it is difficult to turn around, But it may release huge energy when it really moves. Therefore, he predicted that GMV will have a great growth in 618 this time, but the profit margin may not be able to increase.
Through the platform, Xingchi felt that its performance was good. After "getting along" with many e-commerce platforms, he found that it was more important to choose a platform that was suitable for him, while the self operated platform was not suitable for the sales of people's livelihood products. "The positioning and pricing of products are not clear, and it is difficult to effectively balance them. Now the proportion of sales on JD has dropped from more than 40% two years ago to less than 20%."
However, JD is striving for change, taking price as the most critical exposure factor. Previously, in addition to the 10 billion yuan subsidy, JD also lowered the entry threshold for third-party businesses. As a result, merchants are less restricted and can choose to deliver goods by express at a lower price than JD Logistics. The cost is reduced to a certain extent.
In the past years, JD has made profits mainly through the price difference of commodity sales and logistics services, such as JD's self run stores and JD Logistics, which are well-known to consumers. Although these two items have high revenue, their costs are also very high. It has a bad start in the sinking market, but the moat is also very obvious. Self operated goods have advantages in timeliness, and household appliances, mobile phones and other categories are still popular, especially when Daejeon is involved in the installation problem, and people trust JD more.
With the gradual decline of e-commerce festival, on the node of "618 Promotion", different brand strategies and playing methods have emerged. The flow dividend is no longer the lucky thing.
Different brands and sellers have different choices. Some people choose to wait and see, and some people bow into the game; Some people exit sadly, while others rise against the trend.
Behind each choice, new trends have emerged. "Pinduoduo people don't talk hard, the context is very clear, and the traffic is very smooth." StarChi said that Pinduoduo's strategy in e-commerce is very simple, meeting almost all the needs of head stores. This means that as long as the industry is at the top, you can earn more money than your peers.
Over the past years, 10 billion yuan of subsidies have led to the effect of order explosion. Shops are also willing to invest in advertising. If the number of orders is large, the stores will be profitable. On the other hand, Pinduoduo will also provide low price traffic, but will not give subsidies to let stores compete. The frenzy driven by years of consumerism is returning to rationality. "It's not that the brand can't afford it, but that Pingdi is more cost-effective", which has become the mantra of many young people.
According to Maslow's hierarchy of demand theory, the white brand is highly consistent with the simplest consumption concept: eliminate the turnip and save the essence, go straight to the most basic value of the product, and the low price method captures the minds of current consumers.
According to the data of its own stores, Xingchi found that the users of Pinduoduo were mainly sinking into the market before, but now they have more and more overlap with JD and Taotian. According to the data of Xingchi Pinduoduo stores, Guangdong users ranked first in terms of turnover, accounting for 20%, followed by Shanghai, Zhejiang and Jiangsu.
With the rise of new platforms and live broadcasting rooms, 618 has gradually returned to its former glory. Now it is hard to see the flag with the lowest price, which is replaced by "low price every day". More than a decade ago, when the 618 and the National Day holiday began, the supply of goods was not very sufficient, and people still had the habit of hoarding goods at low prices. At that time, there were not many kinds of goods on Taobao and Jingdong, and the prices were relatively expensive. The prices would fall during the 618 and the Double 11, which triggered purchasing power.
The era of simply pursuing short-term sales peak has gone, and focusing on user experience and sustainable development is the long-term way.
"Platforms need to figure out what they want. This time in 618, some platforms are subsidized with real gold and silver, and some subsidies and advertising must reach 1:1.3, which means that I have to spend an additional 0.3 to launch, which is obviously meaningless." Speaking of the behavior of some platforms, Star Chi believes that this practice will only let businesses with low customer price and low gross profit go further and further.
For e-commerce platforms, we need to develop our strengths and avoid weaknesses in the future, and cultivate our internal skills. Alibaba's e-commerce business has suffered from the impact of new forces. In the future, it may be possible to achieve disruptive innovation in e-commerce business and cloud services through the development of AI technology. JD has provided a good shopping experience through its self run mode and self built logistics, but the cost is too high. The gene determines that JD is difficult to have the cost performance ratio of Pinduoduo. In the future, it needs to balance prices and services and build a solid user base. The rapid expansion of Pinduoduo has also brought many problems. How to attract more middle class and high net worth people in the future still has a long way to go.
After the "volume" reaches the acme, the seller should also want to understand the business logic. Xingchi believes that, whether online or offline, commodities are the foundation to ensure the quality of commodities, strive to become the head of the industry, and cultivate core competitiveness. For small businesses, it is not necessary to cast a net on all platforms. They can build a good platform first, slowly from 0 to 1, and then from 1 to 10. They can slowly build up the supply chain, logistics and other advantages, and the next thing will come naturally.
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