The era of "traffic cult" will eventually be gone

Author: Wen Jing

Editor: Positive Wind

Source: Zhenghe Island

01

In the fall of 2012, I was an exchange student in Europe and met several local friends. They took good care of me and made me feel warm. As a token of appreciation, I ordered several ballpoint pens in the shape of Peking Opera face dolls on Taobao, and entrusted the visiting scholar's brother to bring them from China to Europe as a gift.

"Almighty Taobao" will certainly not disappoint. As a person in a foreign country, I can easily choose from thousands of Chinese-style gifts. Friends were overjoyed, and the most excited was Anthony, who was a trainee lawyer at the time: this exquisite and beautiful gadget full of oriental charm attracted the attention of his colleagues, and for a time he became the "most beautiful boy" in the whole office.

At that time, I would not have thought that many years later, the shop that sold small gifts had been listed in Taobao's "must-visit good stores", and was also included in the "Collection of Hearts and Minds Private Collections of Old Stores", and "in the same frame" with big brands such as Procter & Gamble, Kazilan, and forbidden City Taobao.

A few days ago, I inadvertently visited that store again, and found that the small shop has long been upgraded, and a unique small world has been opened up in the vertical category of gifts: birthday gifts, New Year gifts, sending parents, girlfriends, customers, different groups of people with different collocations, the arrangement is clear and clear.

In the past 20 years, we have seen too many stories of using e-commerce to make small businesses into brands and even industries, and many inconspicuous corners have burst out unexpected vitality.

At the end of 2009, Ren Qingsheng and Zhou Aihua of Dinglou Village, Daji Town, Cao County, Heze City, Shandong Province, pooled 1,400 yuan to buy computers, install network cables, and open a Taobao shop to sell costumes. At first, the business was not good, but in 2010, I received my first order and earned 600 yuan.

At that time, the couple did not expect that many years later, Dinglou Village in Daji Town would become a nationally renowned "Taobao Village". When local young people get married, the most popular dowry and dowry is not a house and a car, but a Taobao shop and a Tmall shop. With the changes in the market, the performance service business has evolved into a Hanfu business. Nowadays, the entire Daji Town, and even the entire Cao County, has formed a Hanfu industrial chain, and Cao County is known as the "first Hanfu for young people" production place.

In May 2021, Cao County was burned all over the Internet because of a piece of "shouting wheat", and netizens ridiculed that "the center of the universe is in Cao County". This is a bit nonsensical, but the emotions behind it are full of goodwill: Cao County was once one of the poorest counties in Shandong, but it was able to break a new road in more than a decade and get rich by e-commerce, which is too bloody and inspiring.

02

There is always creativity and innovation in the private sector, and there are potential entrepreneurial opportunities. How can we make it easier for ordinary people to seize these opportunities and make their business more sustainable and sustainable? This is one of the issues that Taobao has been most concerned about since its inception.

As early as around 2010, Taobao began to consciously encourage small and medium-sized and micro sellers to differentiate their operations, and explore the personalized path of "small and beautiful" in the market environment of homogeneous competition and low-price competition.

In 2010, Taobao announced the launch of a small and medium-sized seller support plan, with an initial investment of 400 million yuan. In 2012, the Alibaba E-commerce Conference officially set "small and beautiful" as the criteria for selecting winning companies.

Since about 2016, cultivating "specialty merchants" has become a major focus of Taobao. If you often visit Taobao, you will probably encounter some niche treasure original brands from time to time, with excellent quality and frugality, the key is unique design, which can perfectly avoid the trouble of "bumping shirts".

This is largely due to the Taobao Maker Festival, "IF Plan" and other support programs for small and medium-sized micro businesses and young entrepreneurs. These plans have allowed many original designers, craftsmen, new farmers, etc. to grow rapidly on the Taobao platform. According to the data in 2020, almost 40,000 people pour into Taobao every day to start a business, and within a year, 150,000 new merchants with annual income of more than one million were born on Taobao.

But at the same time, it is not difficult to observe that in recent years, the e-commerce industry has surged and undergone some profound changes. One of the most significant trends is that the "traffic cult" is very popular, and various e-commerce platforms have more or less fallen into the criticism of "heavy traffic, light quality, and light service".

Driven by traffic, e-commerce has a fast growth rate and an immediate effect, but if the platform pursues traffic too much, it will cause at least two negative effects:

First, the traffic logic "Matthew effect" is strong, channel resources will inevitably be concentrated to large brands, large anchors, squeezing the survival and development space of small and medium-sized and micro merchants, resulting in unfairness;

The second is to focus on traffic-centered play, focus on short-term benefits, ignore long-term operations, easy to hurt the sustainable development of the industry and even the industry, and the rights and interests of consumers will eventually be damaged. This is actually contrary to the original intention of the e-commerce platform.

The drawbacks of the traffic economy are becoming more and more obvious, and the large e-commerce platform must be adjusted to adapt to the changes of the times and respond to the expectations of society.

03

On January 1, 2022, Alibaba China's digital business segment was officially established. On January 6, Dai Shan, President of Alibaba China's Digital Commerce Sector, issued an internal letter announcing organizational adjustments.

If I had to distill a key word for this architectural change, I would choose the word "service." The goal and idea of the entire business adjustment are to upgrade the ability of the platform to serve consumers and merchants.

For example, the establishment of the three major operation centers of users, merchants and platforms is the most obvious signal:

The Industrial Operation and Development Center, as the core business of Alibaba's digital business sector, stands at the high level of service merchants in the industry, helping them improve their operational capabilities and enhance consumer satisfaction;

Platform strategy and operation center, focusing on the establishment of a fairer rule system and a full range of digital business operation system, enhance the sensitivity and insight of merchants to the market;

User operation and development centers, live broadcasting services, and "shopping" businesses focus on optimizing consumers' shopping experience.

Specifically, on the merchant side, Tmall and Taobao two core businesses will achieve full integration, after the removal of barriers, Taobao and Tmall will be interconnected, for small and medium-sized businesses, this is undoubtedly a "one-size-fits-all" initiative, because this means that the original platform to empower brand merchants can also empower themselves, both to achieve resource access, bring more efficient operational decisions, but also to crack the previous situation of merchants fighting each other on the two major platforms, making the experience more convenient.

For example, Taobao has launched the inclusive plan for small and medium-sized businesses, which is expected to cover 1 million merchants, and has also set up a team dedicated to the growth of small and medium-sized and micro businesses to support more young entrepreneurs to realize their dreams through e-commerce.

In a word, Ali will take the support of small and medium-sized businesses as a long-term goal this time, and provide global merchants with full-life cycle consumer operation and commodity operation capabilities for small and medium-sized businesses.

On the user side, in the past, the promotional rhythm and user activities of Taobao and merchants were not the same, for example, during the "Double 11" period, consumers often needed to make orders on Tmall and Taobao to enjoy discounts, and with the opening up between the two major platforms, this "sense of separation" will be further eliminated, allowing consumers to obtain a simpler, smoother, richer and more affordable shopping experience.

At the same time, in Dai Shan's internal letter, the user operation and development center is also placed at the top of the three major centers, which can also be seen that she attaches great importance to consumer experience.

Overall, Alibaba China's digital commerce sector is taking a very different route from the traffic economy, which clearly returns to service and points to high-quality development, and clearly puts forward the goal of "making the consumer experience simpler, richer and smoother" and "making the whole life cycle growth of small and medium-sized businesses have a clearer and more certain roadmap". It can be seen that small and medium-sized micro and medium-sized businesses are expected to obtain a more equal and broader development space in the new structure.

04

Under the new business framework, the value of "people" has been reaffirmed. From the perspective of Taobao's development in the past 20 years, caring for "people" instead of "traffic" and planning for the long term rather than indulging in short-term benefits is the temperament engraved in its genes.

Even in 2021, when traffic competition and price competition are the most intense, Taobao has also launched a small and medium-sized business inclusion plan, which is expected to cover 1 million merchants and help them do long-term business. The support of small and medium-sized businesses is Ali's long-term goal, which was, is and will be.

Compared with the much-watched structural adjustment, I think the most important sentence in the internal letter is, "I am both an operator and a consumer." ”

It is worth mentioning that attaching importance to user experience and creating customer value are also the distinctive characteristics of Dai Shan's 22-year career.

Dai Shan co-founded Alibaba in 1999 and is currently the only "Eighteen Arhats" who are still leading soldiers to fight on the front line of the business, and at Ali, she is a "generalist" existence.

Dai Shan has worked in customer service and sales, managed the "China Supply Iron Army", managed the B2B business, and also served as chief talent officer and chief service officer. In addition, she also incubated two new businesses in two years, Taote and Taocai, and led them to stand out in the fierce competition of the sinking market.

It is not difficult to find that most of Dai Shan's resume is spent dealing with people, which also makes her have a more thorough understanding and special feelings for merchants and consumers.

For example, in order for the business department to hear the voice of the customer, she set up a "nine-point radio", which is the original voice of the customer of various products, after classification and screening, these voices will be pushed to different channels, and the employees of the business department can hear the voices and feedback from the customers about their business before going to work at nine o'clock every day.

On another occasion, a subordinate thanked more than a dozen colleagues for their assistance in a work report and sent a group email. After reading the email, Dai Shan replied directly: "Please leave the time to express your gratitude to the customer." Seriously, sending such a war report, you need to @ a bunch of people, can not leak, can not be wrong, this time is better to leave it to yourself, to the customer. ”

Dai Shan has a mantra, "Defend our customer experience like a madman, defend our customer value like a madman." ”

It is no wonder that some people comment on Dai Shan, she will not leave Ali, she will not even retire, she will stand on her last shift, if you want to ask her why she continues the expedition, her answer may be the famous "fundamentalist Ali spirit" - so that the world has no difficult business.

I think that this business adjustment is not only a move to correct the trend and drive the industry back to a healthy track, but also a continuation of Ali's "original intention".

05

The era of "traffic worship" is finally gone, and the inclusive characteristics of the digital economy need to be further revealed. One of the most important goals of the digital economy is to enable talented and hard-working individuals and groups who do not have natural resources and financial advantages to enjoy the digital dividend, create their own careers, and pursue a better life.

The Internet celebrity Cao County does not break the circle by playing with the terrier, and the effective connection between the Internet and the local industry has supported it. Similar to Dinglou Village in Cao County, from 2009 to 2021, the number of Taobao villages in the country has increased from 3 to 7023.

The new proposition they are facing is how to use digital technology to promote the upgrading of traditional industries, which in turn can be transformed into a new driving force for long-term development. Alibaba's establishment of China's digital business sector, from a Taobao "super platform" to the construction of a "digital economy ecology" that integrates online and offline, needs to undertake a heavier mission.

As a large e-commerce platform and industry leader, is it addicted to "cutting cakes" and making quick money, or is it to drive small and medium-sized entrepreneurs to create more value and help explore more potential in the social economy? The answer couldn't be clearer.