When Dangdang.com throws itself into the arms of its former opponents, can the book business still be saved?
On January 10, JD Books and Dangdang.com announced the signing of a strategic cooperation agreement, and Dangdang.com officially settled in JD.com. In addition, the two parties also plan to carry out in-depth cooperation in goods, supply chain, marketing, and services.
After more than 10 years of killing, Dangdang.com finally threw itself into the arms of its old rival JD.com, a former rival who is now smiling and revenge.
For this marriage, Dangdang.com and Jingdong library official Wei also came to a wave of mutual prodding. However, the low number of comments and the discussion of related Weibo topics seem to reveal a certain bleakness - who remembers Dangdang.com?
Nowadays, many people have long been accustomed to buying books from JD.com and Tmall. From the perspective of variety richness and express delivery efficiency, comprehensive B2C e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Tmall are no less than vertical book e-commerce platforms such as Dangdang. In the torrent of e-commerce platform development, Dangdang.com gradually moved away from the center of the stage, and gradually became a noun, a symbol living in the history of e-commerce.
Back 20 years ago, for the online book market, it was the golden age of Dangdang.
When Tmall and JD.com launched a fierce attack on B2C e-commerce, Dangdang.com found the precise positioning of "book e-commerce", took low prices and standardization as the spear, and constantly attacked the city, and in just 6 years, it became the largest book retailer in China.
In the past 6 years, Dangdang.com has become the darling of capital including Tiger Fund and IDG Group. Thanks to the lack of strong competitors, Dangdang.com's development can be described as smooth, not only surpassing JD.com's sales, but also becoming China's largest online shopping platform in 2009, with a market share of 40%.
In 2010, Dangdang.com successfully went public in the United States, not only becoming the first Chinese B2C e-commerce company, but also reaching a market value of US$2.6 billion. At this point, Dangdang.com also ushered in its own highlight moment.
However, what people did not expect was that after that, Dangdang.com went all the way down, not only lost in several price wars with JD.com, but also missed the possibility of turning over because of strategic research and judgment mistakes (refusing to acquire and sell themselves, not accepting Tencent's shares, sticking to book e-commerce, etc.) and husband and wife infighting.
However, JD.com, under the promotion of capital and the leadership of Liu Qiangdong, has soared and has increasingly become one of the three major e-commerce giants today, competing with Tmall and Pinduoduo.
For the current situation of Dangdang.com, Li Guoqing has also reflected many times and vowed to strive for strength. Even if he was forced to leave Dangdang later, he made a bold statement that he wanted to create another Dangdang network.
However, after losing control, Li Guoqing was just one of thousands of anchors with goods. The time that belonged to him is gone, and the era that belonged to Dangdang.com is also gone.
In the years when Li Guoqing and Yu Yu were repeatedly discordant and family infighting continued, Dangdangnet gradually fell behind. After the husband and wife completely broke off and staged the "grand drama of winning the official seal", Dangdang.com was completely chicken feathers, not only the daily operation and management were affected, but also the brand image and market share continued to decline.
According to the Analysys report, in the mainland online retail market, in the fourth quarter of 2021, Tmall occupied 63.5% of the market share, ranking first; JD.com's market share was 28.8%, ranking second; Vipshop ranked third, with a market share of 3.4%; and Dangdang's market share was only 0.5%.
Specific to online books, in the third quarter of 2017, JD.com ranked first for the first time with a market share of 36.2%; Dangdang ranked second with a market share of 35.1%; Tmall ranks third with a market share of 17.5%.
According to the "2021 China Book Retail Market Report" released by Beijing Open Volume, Taobao Tmall's share of the online book retail market has further increased in 2021, exceeding 60% of the online book retail market share, and Dangdang.com's market share has been further compressed.
In the context of limited users and the attack on all sides of the integrated e-commerce platform, Dangdang.com urgently needs to find a way to live water. Becoming a member of an integrated e-commerce platform and diverting traffic to your own platform may be a feasible path. So in the past 10 years, we have seen that Dangdang.com has successively entered Tmall, Pinduoduo, Suning and other platforms, in order to take advantage of these comprehensive e-commerce and open up traffic openings.
Judging from the results of entering Tmall, the effect seems to be good, when the first "Double Eleven" participated in after entering Tmall, it ranked third in the book category.
This time, Dangdang.com abandoned its previous suspicions, entered Jingdong, and was willing to be the "green leaf" of Jingdong, and also had an infinite desire for new traffic. But although the traffic is good, entering other people's platforms is undoubtedly "drinking and quenching thirst" for Dangdang.com.
Become a member of the thousands of merchants of Jingdong, Dangdang.com is handing over the "worth of life" to others, while obtaining JD traffic, it has undoubtedly brought a huge impact on its own channels. Let's ask, with the Jingdong flagship store, who will go to the next app alone or open one more webpage to buy books?
When Jingdong "boiled frogs in warm water", tamed Dangdangnet, I am afraid that Dangdangnet will no longer have the confidence to be tough in the future.
In fact, the successive operations of entering the integrated e-commerce platform also reflect the development difficulties of Dangdang.com over the years.
Once upon a time, with "low prices and rich variety", Dangdang.com once became the preferred platform for users to buy books. However, in the face of the general trend of the times, under the cruel competition between the 28 rules of the market and fast fish eating slow fish, Dangdang.com, which sticks to book e-commerce and lacks advantages such as price and logistics, is destined to become a martyr of the times.
Weak, arrogant and stubborn, doomed to the epitaph of the loser.
epilogue
Dangdang.com's rout is multifaceted, but in the final analysis, its own moat is not wide enough, and it has gradually been broken through by competitors such as JD.com and Taobao relying on advantages such as price, channels, and logistics.
In the winner-take-all business world, only if the moat is strong enough to be invincible: either your intangible assets are rich enough and the user switching costs are high enough; Either your cost advantage is obvious enough and the price is low enough; Either your network effects are strong enough and scale enough, or you are not destined to go further.
- Of course, in addition to this, a little luck is also important.