Send a blind box, for what

Blind boxes, at first glance sound like children playing things, what is there to manage? Not really. Recently, the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Market Supervision issued the first domestic blind box business activity compliance guidelines, put forward some compliance standards, such as a single blind box must not exceed 200 yuan, live animals, special foods, etc. can not be sold in the form of blind boxes, and prohibit blind boxes from carrying out gambling and lottery business in disguise, and so on.

Compliance guidelines are generally found in industries such as finance and pharmaceuticals, or in key areas such as antitrust. The marketing innovation of the toy industry has led the regulatory authorities to formulate compliance guidelines, on the one hand, it shows that the pre-regulatory threshold has been moved forward and the supervision is more refined, on the other hand, it also shows that the blind box chaos has a tendency to expand to other fields and needs to be guided in time.

Blind boxes are not new and are not unique to China. Japanese stores have always had a "lucky bag" business method, which packs several goods together and sells them at preferential prices, and consumers buy them and open them to know what is inside. This "lucky bag" can be regarded as the predecessor of the blind box. But it is essentially a means of promotion, consumers one picture cheap, two pictures of the actual use of the product function.

In recent years, the "lucky bag" has gradually become transparent, allowing consumers to clearly choose preferential treatment; at the same time, the blind box has appeared, and it has also joined hands with tide play to fully bloom in China, the United States, Japan and other countries. The blind box is not only a treasure box that stimulates excitement, but also a magic box that can be earned when bought, and the fun of consumer purchase is mainly reflected in the mood when opening and the impulse to make money by changing hands. Although it has become an "experience school" that only seeks to have, its ecology is still benign, and the tide play fan base can stand up on its own. However, as more and more speculators stare at the blind box circle, the blind box is gradually "blind", and the sky-high price is repeatedly speculated, which is staggering.

Industry linkage is another driver of the blind box out of the circle, ticket blind box, food blind box, hotel blind box so that consumers who do not care about the tide play are also familiar with this word. Some cross-border blind boxes maintain the "lucky bag" attribute, still focusing on promotion, such as in the blind box of tickets, the blind box is just an interesting carrier, and consumers want preferential tickets. This kind of stimulation and preferential treatment has effectively stimulated consumption, which can be regarded as a relatively successful innovation.

On the contrary, it is a business that sells blind boxes as the main industry, the blind box itself is the object of purchase, the stimulation is still there, but the discount is gone; coupled with some companies engaged in "hunger marketing", allowing scalpers to speculate, if it continues for a long time, it is likely that scalpers are still there, but the fans are gone. There are also some industries that inappropriately introduce blind boxes, such as pet blind boxes that cause the death of small animals, and fast food blind boxes that have been criticized by the China Consumer Association for wasting food, which have caused negative impacts. These are the main reasons why regulators cannot sit idly by.

The compliance guidelines issued by Shanghai first limit the operation of blind boxes to areas such as life consumption, literature and entertainment, and not "all things can be blind boxes", and guide blind boxes to play an advantage in driving consumption, so as to avoid disorderly cross-border and cause bad impacts. Secondly, the focus is on the risk of speculation, such as not inducing non-player users to join speculative speculation, deliberately causing sharp fluctuations in the price of the second-hand market. At the same time, merchants are also required to publish box rules, hidden money extraction probabilities, etc. It should be said that these measures have identified the risk points of disorder in the blind box market and reflected the purpose of promoting development with norms.

Mainland China has always been tolerant and prudent in its regulation of new formats, and this blind box compliance guideline is no exception: it is only a guiding document, not a mandatory standard. Scarce commodities naturally have investment attributes, and it is difficult to avoid speculation. The essence of the hype blind box is not much different from the hype of Dutch tulips and sky-high pu-erh tea. A paper document may be difficult to make the abnormal hype of the blind box dumb, more to play a role in showing attitudes and prompting risks, but as the country's first blind box industry specification, from scratch is itself a kind of progress.

At present, the head enterprise Bubble Mart has stated that it will gradually explore specific solutions that can be landed according to the compliance guidelines. Enterprises themselves also said that a healthy and orderly tide play market is not only conducive to protecting the rights and interests of consumers, but also to create a good space for enterprises to develop. Blind box is already a large industry of 100 billion yuan, and will also be linked with multiple industries, and it is necessary to adhere to the rules of transparency and openness in order to avoid blind development. (Source of this article: Economic Daily Author: She Ying)