Source | BohuFN
Author | Lingling
Alibaba in Reflection
A year ago, Ma Yun wrote on Alibaba's intranet that "Alibaba will change, and Alibaba will change." A year later, on April 10, Ma Yun published an article entitled "To Reform and Innovation" on the intranet, which affirmed and encouraged the changes made by Alibaba. He said, "In the past year, Cai Chongxin and Wu Yongming led Ali to carry out a series of future oriented reforms with admirable courage and wisdom"; "This year, I saw the birth of a strong and brave Ali team in the face of many doubts and various pressures both at home and abroad."
He said, "I believe that the e-commerce in three years' time is certainly not the hottest e-commerce today... The important thing is not who to catch up with today, but how to improve the consumer experience of tomorrow's e-commerce."
At the same time, he is also honest that Ali has made countless mistakes in the past 25 years. "To face problems frankly is not to deny the past, but to find the way to the future responsibly."
Before that, in an interview video released by the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund on April 3, Cai Chongxin, the co-founder and chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba, reflected on Alibaba's strategy in the past few years: "In the past few years, when we conducted internal review and self reflection, we knew that Alibaba was lagging behind because we forgot who the real customers were. Our customers are people who use APP to shop, and we haven't given them the best experience. "
Behind the "collective" reflection, the era of Alibaba's rapid growth has gone farther and farther. According to the financial report released in February this year, Taotian Group's revenue of 129.07 billion yuan in Q4 last year accounted for about half of Ali's current revenue, 4.5 times the size of the second largest international business revenue, but its revenue growth rate was only 2% year on year, ranking at the bottom of the group.
As for the "reflection" of Cai Chongxin and Ma Yun, "Diaoye", a big seller on Taobao, mentioned on his WeChat public account, "I want to say: it's shameful to throw the pan of all contradictions to Xiaoyaozi. You can stop for a while. The top priority is: Taobao's' niche 'is being squeezed for the first time in history. It's useless to just reflect, and breaking the situation is the right way."
Many sellers intuitively feel that Taobao is in a mess.
"Now I feel that everything inside Taotian is in a mess. Normally, at the beginning of each year, all brands have to sign a" New Year's Box "with Tmall. This is not only a means for Tmall to bind various brands, but also a major source of income. The problem is, it's April now. The bartenders who pick us up have been changing over and over, so no one pays attention to the signing of the New Year's Box. We carry pigs The head can't find the temple gate. " Carving Ye said.
There are quite a few businesses with similar views. Some businesses said, "All platforms under the Taobao system are engaged in disorderly policies, which are unstable and inexplicable."
At present, in the face of rapid changes in Ali, some people also question: "Can Ali's body withstand such intense and frequent high-level personnel transfers, coupled with headless policy adjustments?"
User experience ignored by Taobao
How on earth has Alibaba ignored user experience in the past few years? We tried to understand the problem.
From the perspective of consumer reflection, Taobao really "values businesses over consumers". "Let the world have no difficult business" has always been an important mission of Alibaba, and has never changed since its inception. This also means that B-end merchants are Alibaba's core service customers. Over the years, many businesses launched by Alibaba, such as Alibaba Cloud and Nail, are also targeted at the B-end.
As a result, the consumption experience of many consumers is that Taobao is more protective of merchants, and returns and refunds are troublesome.
After Cai Chongxin's interview attracted attention, the We Media blogger "Naughty E-commerce" said, "Cai Chongxin finally admitted that Ali ignored the user experience." He shared a case: two years ago, the merchant bought a sofa on Taobao, and the merchant "cut corners" but did not admit it. After applying to the platform, Taobao customer service directly and forcefully refused.
In the past few years when Ali has been engaged in consumption upgrading, consumers and small and medium-sized sellers are not flattered.
In 2008, Ali's cash flow began to grow exponentially. Tmall, which serves brand merchants and earns advertising fees from brand merchants, was also born in this year. There is no doubt that Alibaba has achieved rapid growth through its service brand businesses, but it also ushered in a backlash.
Under the platform policy and algorithm at that time, a large number of small and medium-sized sellers could not get enough traffic support, complained, and chose to leave.
At the same time, the products recommended by users are becoming more and more expensive. Originally for a more affordable promotion, but also because of more and more complex play methods and rules, affecting the consumer experience.
With the prevalence of Pingdi economy, the emergence of Pinduoduo, to a large extent, filled this gap and took away many businesses and users from Taobao.
Return to Taobao, return to e-commerce
After serving as the CEO of Alibaba Group, Wu Yongming directly divided Alibaba's huge business system into two parts. Some businesses are defined as core businesses, and the rest are non core businesses. He maintained high intensity of resources and R&D investment in core businesses, while non core businesses realized their value by making profits as soon as possible or by various other capitalization methods.
From various measures, Ali is making every effort to build resources and develop Taotian's core e-commerce.
On March 26, Ali announced that it had decided to withdraw Cainiao's listing application and offer to acquire the equity of Cainiao's minority shareholders and the equity owned by employees. This acquisition involved an amount of 3.75 billion US dollars.
As for Ali's decision to withdraw its IPO application for Cainiao Hong Kong shares, Cai Chongxin mentioned that in the current environment, it should focus on promoting synergies between different businesses within the group, which best reflects the real value of the company's various businesses.
It can be seen that from the perspective of Alibaba's stable e-commerce status, the logistics business needs to be deeply coordinated with the e-commerce battle in the coming year to serve the Group's strategic focus, which is a major reason for the suspension of the listing of rookie.
Secondly, 1688 fully accelerated its entry into Taobao.
At present, 1688 has opened four official stores in Taotian, namely "1688 Strict Selection Store" (Taobao Store), "1688 Official Factory Store" (Tmall Store), "1688 Enterprise Self purchase Store" (Tmall Store), and "1688 Industrial Expert Selection Store" (Tmall Store). In the future, these 1688 series stores will be integrated into a channel similar to Tmall Supermarket to launch strictly selected products for Taobao users.
In addition, Taobao is promoting content e-commerce.
On March 28, Taobao announced that it will add 10 billion cash and 100 billion flow to content e-commerce this year. Taobao regards content e-commerce as a dividend and sets the goal of doubling the number of users on a year-on-year basis.
Tmall announced that the FMCG industry provides free commission incentives for shop broadcasting, and businesses at all stages of development can participate; Tmall apparel industry has invested more than 1 billion level platform resources, incubated high-quality content broadcast rooms, vertical talent, etc., and improved brand content penetration.
In February this year, Taotian also set up a live broadcast e-commerce company to provide full hosting operation services for stars, KOL, etc. who intend to enter Taotian.
Revitalizing Taotian is not easy, but for Ali, this is the only way to go.
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
