Recently, because of the sale of "1 cent promotional mask" on the platform but refused to ship, and insulted consumers as "mad dogs" in the live broadcast room, Watsons was pushed on Weibo hot search.
In the early morning of January 15, @Watsons China issued a statement apologizing for the "1 cent promotional mask" activity of the Meituan-Dianping New Year Festival.
Watsons said that due to system reasons, a large number of abnormal orders far exceeded the inventory were generated in a short period of time, and Watsons has paid part of the orders in the case of inventory support, and later suspended the redemption due to insufficient inventory, and Watsons decided to take the way of replenishment to fulfill the remaining orders.
Image source: Watsons China's official Weibo
Watsons also said that the anchors who scold consumers are personnel of cooperative third-party institutions.
According to Xiaoxiang Morning News, Li Xinan of Hunan Wanhe United Law Firm said that in this incident, consumers paid 0.01 yuan to buy goods through the platform link, and there was no fault for the non-malicious "shearling".
The merchant shall deliver the goods to the consumer in accordance with the agreement, and cannot refuse the delivery on the grounds of operational errors, insufficient inventory, etc., or suggest that the consumer refund because there is no stock.
In response to this matter, the Meituan customer service staff said, "It was the Watson merchants who set the amount of the activity incorrectly and caused the out-of-stock state." ”
Meituan customer service staff said that at present, Meituan is negotiating with Watsons on the "1 cent promotional mask" incident, and the results of the negotiation have not yet been agreed. "Even if the order expires automatically, Meituan will give a way to deal with this matter."
For some consumers who have received the 50 yuan no-threshold consumption coupon sent by Meituan, Meituan's customer service staff said that this is considering the consumer shopping experience, not Watson's compensation plan.
In fact, Watson's decline has long been apparent, because of missing the e-commerce dividend, revenue is also declining year by year, and now learn from other retailers to engage in preferential promotions and diversion online, and actually "overturned".
Online "1 cent promotional mask", offline but can not pick up the goods
Because of the 1 cent mask, the Watsons anchor scolded the consumer as a "mad dog", what happened?
It is understood that on January 11, Watson launched a promotional campaign online, and some of the brand masks can be bought for only 0.01 yuan. As a result, many wool parties have been triggered to go to "wool".
However, many consumers who go to wool to pick up the goods offline, but are told that "no goods", some stores also posted a notice, indicating that due to the hot order activities, some penny mask products have been out of stock, can not pick up the goods, hope that consumers contact the official customer service to solve the problem, the store prepared a small gift to apologize.
But consumers are not satisfied with this, according to the black cat complaint platform, some consumers reflected that after receiving the SMS notification, the first to go to the store to pick up the goods, waited for more than 10 minutes to finally be able to pick up the goods, the clerk suddenly received a call not to let the goods pick up, suspected that the store is under the premise of the goods to refuse consumers to pick up the goods, think that Watsons official activities in the end but "can't afford to play", wasting their time and money.
At the same time, some consumers found that Watsons claimed that the goods that were out of stock and could not be picked up were still sold in the live broadcast.
Therefore, some consumers reacted to the matter on Watson's official live broadcast platform and hoped to be resolved, which also triggered a conflict between the anchor and the consumer.
Some consumers reported that they asked when the mask was available in the live broadcast room, and then they were blocked by the anchor of the live broadcast room, kicked out of the live broadcast room, and could not enter again.
According to a video clip of more than 20 seconds on the Internet, a female anchor accused consumers of wanting to bite like a mad dog for 1 cent of something, and said, "My live broadcast room, I want to kick and kick, I don't welcome you, you don't use it." I kicked you happy. ”
It is suspected that there are frequent problems such as write-off and food safety
It is worth noting that in addition to the use of the uncivilized word "mad dog", some consumers said that Watson anchors had scolded consumers who participated in mask promotions as "beggars" in the live broadcast on January 13.
According to the black cat complaint platform, in the past thirty days, the number of complaints from Watsons has exceeded 2800, and most of them are suspected of being in stock of masks.
According to the Phoenix Network, in July 2019, the Shanghai market supervision department issued an announcement that there were consumer complaints that "Kracie Cherry Blossom Scented Candy 32 Grams" expired at the Jing'an Hutai Road Branch of Shanghai Watsons Commodity Co., Ltd., and the on-site inspection found that there were "Kracie Rose Scented Candies" expired for sale. The regulatory authorities imposed an administrative penalty of confiscating illegal gains and fining them RMB50,000.
In 2020, a batch of three-fold automatic harvesting umbrellas produced by Watsons was exposed to unqualified quality, and the design length of the umbrella beadtail was short, which reduced the strength of the umbrella structure, reduced the service life, and even caused accidents such as umbrella bone spurs touching and hanging.
In October last year, the Minhang Dulu branch of Shanghai Watsons Daily Necessities Co., Ltd. added a new administrative penalty information, because its production and operation marked with false production dates, shelf life or food and food additives that exceeded the shelf life were fined 5,000 yuan by the Shanghai Minhang District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau and confiscated illegal gains.
According to Tianyan, in March last year, Shanghai Watsons Daily Necessities Co., Ltd. was repeatedly punished for the production and operation of non-compliant products for health and safety, and for the production and operation of products that did not obtain medical device registration certificates.
Among them, the second and third class medical devices that have not obtained the medical device registration certificate for the production and operation of medical devices were confiscated by the Shanghai Hongkou District Market Supervision and Administration Bureau, confiscating 10,400 yuan of illegal gains and fining 367,000 yuan.
Revenue is declining year by year, Watsons is being abandoned by young people?
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on the real economy, and Watsons has also been affected.
According to the 2020 financial report released by Watsons' parent company, Changjiang Hutchison, Watsons revenue for the whole of 2020 was 133.532 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 6%, the largest decline since 2016. At the same time, EBITDA (EBITDA) plunged 15% to $12.04 billion.
The profitability level in the Chinese market is also worrying, with Watson's profit falling by as much as 39% in 2020, far exceeding the 15% decline in the overall market.
In August last year, Yangtze River Hutchison announced its results for the first half of 2021. During the Period, sales of its Watsons Group were HK$82,621 million (approximately RMB68,775 million), up 12% year-on-year.
In the Chinese market, A.S. Watsons' sales were HK$11.599 billion (about RMB9.655 billion), up 32% year-on-year. Although it is the largest increase in the Chinese market in the past 5 years, it is actually its bottoming out rebound under the sharp decline in revenue in 2020.
Since 2015, Watsons' revenue in Chinese mainland has begun to decline year by year. In 2016, Watsons China revenue fell 4%, negative growth for the first time, while same-store sales fell by 10.1%, and in 2017, same-store sales continued to decline by 4.3%.
The decline was evident, and the performance of successive years of decline forced Watson to initiate internal reforms.
In 2017, Gao Hongda took over as CEO of China, and Watsons China ushered in internal reforms, but it was frantically opening new stores, and said that "in China, speed is everything".
From 2017 to 2019, Watsons stores expanded, the speed of transformation accelerated, and some Japanese and Korean explosive products were continuously introduced. In addition, we will gradually realize digital transformation and upgrading, launch lightning delivery, store pick-up, scan code purchase, member reservation free makeup, etc., and rush to launch the "cloud store" in 2020 to expand the online and offline customer community.
However, Watsons, which continues to open stores and actively transforms offline, still "perfectly missed" the dividend period of e-commerce.
Watsons bargaining power is not as good as before, if the emerging domestic brands want to enter Watsons, they have to accept its consignment model - both to pay a high settlement fee, but also to endure up to about 35% deduction points and up to 3 months of account period.
At the same time, the rise of new beauty collection stores represented by colorists and WOW COLOUR not only attracts contemporary young people, but also generally has more friendly account periods and discount terms, and often adopts a buyout model, and profits and losses do not have to be borne by the brand side but by the collection store.
(Titanium Media App Editor Liu Dafang Comprehensive China Fund News, Global Times, Securities Times, Phoenix Network, NetEase Digital Reading, etc.)