Beijing, March 28th (Reporter Wu Tao) Recently, Taobao launched a special edition, and JD.COM also launched a "shopping festival", which is generally believed to be aimed at "attacking" Pinduoduo, a shopping platform. E-commerce giants value it so much. What is the shopping? Are goods really cheap? Is the model sustainable? The reporter conducted an interview and investigation.
What is a shopping spree?
Pooling generally refers to organizing consumers who are interested in buying the same product through the internet platform, and collectively buying from suppliers in order to enjoy low-price concessions.
At present, the most representative purchase enterprise is Pinduoduo, which is developing rapidly. According to the data, since its launch in October 2015, the number of users in Pinduoduo has exceeded 300 million, which is almost the same as that in JD.COM.
In fact, the concept of "shopping together" has a long history. The earliest group buying model has the shadow of shopping together, but there are more shopping patterns at present, and it is also integrated into the social shopping model. For example, you may often receive a shopping link from a friend on WeChat, asking you to "bargain" or inviting you to buy together. This is the sociality of shopping together.
Why "fire"?
E-commerce giants will not turn a blind eye to shopping. Recently, Taobao launched a special version of APP, and JD.COM also launched a "shopping festival". The two largest e-commerce companies in China are making efforts on shopping, which shows how hot shopping is.
Tang Xingtong, an expert member of the Network Marketing Research Center of China Electronic Commerce Association, said in an interview with Zhongxin.com that social platforms such as WeChat have created opportunities for shopping together, coupled with the endorsement of social factors of acquaintances, compared with other low-priced shopping platforms, the conversion rate of shopping trust transactions is higher.
According to the report released by the E-commerce Research Center, the user groups of Taobao and Pinduoduo are highly coincident, and 50.3% of the users who uninstalled Taobao went to Pinduoduo.
As for the reasons for the popularity of shopping, some analysts pointed out that consumption not only needs to be upgraded, but also needs to be graded. Shopping meets the needs of some people for low-priced goods, and consumers are deeply involved through social interaction, which is the reason for growth.
Are goods really affordable?
One of the reasons for the popularity of shopping is the low price, but what about the quality of things? Consumers who have successfully made a purchase told the reporter of Zhongxin.com, "I have tried several times for fruit, and the pitaya is particularly small. When kiwifruit is received, it is also broken. In view of the cheap price, I didn’t say anything."
The reporter noticed that on a shopping platform, "NIKE" shoes with a price of over 100 yuan and "new balance" of 27 yuan are very common, and it is difficult to distinguish between true and false. Although the merchants did not describe them as Nike, the "tick" on the shoes and the word "Nike" on the shoe box are clearly visible. Some netizens left a message, "The shoes are too plastic."
There is no denying that there are many "0 yuan Buy" and "0.1 yuan Buy" on the shopping platform, and even if the quality of things is worse, it is worth the price. However, the number of such goods is almost limited. For such goods, it is mostly a matter of speed and luck; More goods are "not so high in price and not so good in quality".
Is 9.9 yuan postage reliable?
The reporter also noticed that on the platform of collective purchase, there are many 9.9 yuan products, and many netizens have doubts: 9.9 yuan can’t even cover the postage. Can such products be trusted?
Some people in the e-commerce industry said that these products are mostly unsalable or broken-code products. Failure to sell these products as soon as possible will only increase the cost of inventory management. Moreover, at this stage, enterprises have basically recovered their costs and sold them in large quantities in a short time, reducing inventory costs is to increase profits.
In addition, the postage is not as expensive as we thought. Some merchants can talk about the postage around 5 yuan because of the huge delivery volume, and 9.9 yuan can completely cover the postage.
Data Map: Employees of an e-commerce company answer consumers’ shopping questions in front of the computer. China News Service reporter Chen Yushe
Is the model sustainable?
As shown above, one of the charms of shopping together is to integrate social factors, but the reporter learned that many consumers think it is consuming personal trust value and wasting time.
"There have been several successful purchases, and you need a lottery to have the right to buy; You need to pay attention to WeChat official account before buying; After launching the purchase, you need to share it with your friends to help bargain or guide them to participate. " Tian Tian (pseudonym), an office worker, told the reporter of Zhongxin. com that as long as you have patience, you can definitely buy cheap things, but it takes a lot of time, and after sending them to friends many times, the other party will be annoyed, right?
It is obvious that the purpose of setting up such a rule is to pull new products quickly and hardly need to spend promotion expenses. Viral marketing is just like this, but it should be noted that viral marketing improves users’ cognition through high exposure rate, which does not mean consumers’ recognition.
Can this model continue? Tang Xingtong believes that the pooling model should last for a long time, because price concessions are lethal at any time, but they will not cover all categories of e-commerce; In addition, with the decline of heat, consumers will not be so high-frequency in the future. (End)
