E-commerce rivers and lakes are rising again, who is Pinduoduo targeting?

01

E-commerce is on the rise

E-commerce is not very peaceful. Under the stock competition, although the giants' siege situation is not as good as the mobile Internet boom period, they are constantly trying to get ahead, or rubbing their hands behind their backs. Domestic e-commerce giants have set off a new round of battles.

Content e-commerce represented by Douyin holding a heavy traffic device, with one hand to power the shelves, the other hand to raid local life.

Alibaba's structural adjustment has opened the most important organizational change in 24 years, and core e-commerce naturally requires new changes.

Jingdong sacrificed tens of billions of subsidies, and after Jingxi's special price strategy did not achieve ideal results, Jingdong's main station wanted to reshape the low-price mentality. Pinduoduo is still synonymous with low price and cost performance, and the dual promotion of grocery shopping and overseas business is promoted.

Changjiang Securities issued a report entitled "Tens of billions of subsidies reappear, what is the impact of the industry?" The report mentioned that at present, the overlap between Pinduoduo and Jingdong channels in the first and second-tier customer groups is gradually high, in addition, the product structure of tens of billions of subsidies is also dominated by live appliances such as large appliances, small household appliances, mobile phones, and 3C, both of which have an impact on the pattern of JD.com's main live categories.

Analysts at Changjiang Securities judged that JD.com's launch of tens of billions of subsidies aims to strengthen the price competitiveness of advantageous categories and reshape the low-price mentality.

Under the undercurrent, Pinduoduo seems to be targeted again, especially the recent bombing incident.

Since March 29, the news of Pinduoduo's "bombed shop" has been continuously spread on social media and caused a lot of discussion.

The so-called "fried store" refers to the malicious order of the store being concentrated by a large number of accounts in a short period of time, and then flashing back the order, and in the later stage, there will be organized bad reviews and insults to customer service staff.

Up to now, the war has not stopped, some people have established a "united front WeChat group" to continuously absorb scattered small and medium-sized businesses, and some people share related stores on social platforms and publish "fried shops" tutorials. Dozens of brand stores have been bombed one after another, and even some brand stores have to temporarily close for self-protection, and some have hung explanatory text on the homepage of the store.

According to Zhengguan News reports, at present, this "hunt" is mainly aimed at brand stores and tens of billions of subsidized stores on Pinduoduo. Some shop-bombers said, "Bringing down tens of billions of subsidies for all stores, so that Pinduoduo has no trump card against XX and XX platforms." At the same time, a recently widely circulated "Letter to Million Merchants" directly pointed out, "Let the big brand home appliances return to the XX platform, let Pinduoduo all nine pieces of nine free shipping".

Of course, as soon as the wind opens, the formation is large, some users notice that something is wrong, and the voice of rebuttal also begins to gush out. And through the fog of bombing shops, "tens of billions of subsidies" seem to be the muzzle. In the news interview, some merchants said that the business competition between the giants is the real reason for the bombing of the store.

The PK between e-commerce giants will continue in the post-mobile Internet era.

From the brand stores that have suffered, to the small and medium-sized businesses that are out of control, to the C-end users who have questioned, the onlookers have their own positions, but their sorrows and joys are not the same. What is the mirror of facts, and what is the attitude of Pinduoduo living in the center of the whirlpool?

02

Why is Pinduoduo Xiaoer's reaction so tough

So, after the practice of "labeling" and "carrying the banner" of the shop-bombers has been partially successful, how did Pinduoduo react?

According to The Paper, after the "bombing store" incident, "the Pinduoduo platform has activated the protection mechanism for brands and merchants that have suffered malicious impacts as soon as possible, and arranged special teams to connect one by one to jointly deal with malicious "smashing" behaviors and cover the losses of merchants." At present, some brands' stores and links have been restored. ”

The details of the reaction also came from Pinduoduo's circle of friends, and screenshots showed that Pinduoduo and the brand store have fixed relevant evidence, and will resolutely resort to the judicial authorities to fight the "bombing of stores" to the end.

Why is Pinduoduo so tough? In fact, before the bombing of the store, there were already people who were legally liable for frequent orders and refunds. Dissatisfied with the lotus root powder purchased online, consumer Wang placed 1,209 bags of instant noodles, 781 packs of biscuits, 396 bottles of drinks and 94 cans of oatmeal in Pinduoduo's online store, and immediately applied for a refund and return when the merchant sent or was about to send the goods. The merchant believed that Wang had maliciously placed an order and abused the right to return goods, and sued him to the Xinwu District People's Court of Wuxi City.

After hearing, the court held that Wang's abuse of civil rights constituted infringement. Liu Liqun, an assistant to the judge, said: "Wang's frequent orders, the number and number of orders placed and the frequent initiation of refunds are subjectively malicious, in fact, there is no real willingness to shop, but only by entering into a false sales contract to achieve the purpose of retaliating and harassing the merchant, which actually constitutes damage to the reputation of the merchant." ”

Article 25 of China's Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests stipulates that consumers who shop online can enjoy the "right of withdrawal without reason within seven days"; However, at the same time, Article 132 of the Civil Code also stipulates: "Civil entities shall not abuse their civil rights to harm the legitimate rights and interests of others."

In this way, the behavior of individual people bombing stores has been done before, but it has not yet been fermented by short video platforms to become a topic. Pinduoduo's response is that there are already legal judgments to follow.

03

Pinduoduo's background color and position

Why is Pinduoduo being targeted? It still has to be discussed from the rise of Pinduoduo and the relationship between merchants, consumers and platforms.

Since its birth, Pinduoduo has had the background of the five-ring and sinking market.

This means that many of its users may not be powerful players in the Internet world. For them, there is a cognitive threshold for after-sales applications that need to be proven, so in order to protect the interests of these users, Pinduoduo has opened a refund only button for some small products from small and medium-sized businesses. In contrast, when facing some established brand merchants, it is much less likely that the refund will pass.

And this undoubtedly caused some small and medium-sized businesses to be dissatisfied, so they launched a siege against brand merchants, which was reflected in the widely circulated instigation blog post: "We want to concentrate, for the big brands in the platform, as long as there are no big brands to settle in, the market value of Pinduoduo's income will shrink significantly, so that the brands can not operate, they all consciously withdraw, which is a big blow to Pinduoduo." ”

But in fact, the "refund only" rule is not without constraints.

According to public information, Pinduoduo's "refund only" rule means that for the order goods that have problems such as wrong goods, unqualified quality, malicious fraud, etc., the platform will make a comprehensive judgment from multiple dimensions such as product value, product characteristics, information description, after-sales complaints, as well as consumers' shopping habits, consumer credit, etc., and support consumers' refund claims only as appropriate.

"If consumers have malicious purchases, malicious returns, etc., the platform will also record the consumer's in-platform consumer credit evaluation accordingly, reducing the frequency of providing similar service guarantee upgrade measures."

This means that if a user makes frequent refunds, not only will his refund success rate decrease, but it will also be difficult to get a shipping subsidy for return refunds.

The biggest feature of the new e-commerce represented by Pinduoduo is inclusiveness, which I think is determined by the era in which it was born.

This logic is still the case, 20 years ago when the Internet first started in China, most of the users came from within the five rings, and 20 years later, when Pinduoduo appeared, whether urban or rural, white-collar workers or farmers, the Internet has entered the lives of ordinary people equally.

However, the reason why Pinduoduo can develop rapidly at a rocket-like speed, quickly seize those sinking markets that are ignored by traditional e-commerce, and even counterattack the first- and second-tier markets at the core of traditional e-commerce, is not just pure business innovation, but a clear stand on the side of consumers.

In other words, its moat is to serve ordinary people, and "the only effective goal of business is to create customers", which sounds like a mouthful but is useful.

Of course, there are still people who are dissatisfied, believing that consumers and businesses are two sides of the same coin, and Pinduoduo's "overprotection" of users is actually conniving at the wool party.

And this is a focus issue to clarify, does supporting users mean compressing the business space, or even breaking with small and medium-sized businesses?

The answer is obviously no, this has never been a multiple-choice question, and not all users are wool parties. Moreover, in the longer term, Pinduoduo must stand as a consumer, otherwise it will break with the majority of merchants.

Generally speaking, in any business environment, a certain degree of refund, exchange, and after-sales guarantee are required for business development, which is conducive to safeguarding consumer rights and establishing brand image.

Moreover, merchants will only go to the place where the crowd gathers, and in the current increasingly expensive traffic, Pinduoduo opens a growth market with the ultimate cost performance, in this market, low-price and efficient although cruel, but not necessarily unreasonable, Pinduoduo's inclination to users, the essence is to improve the quality of goods, give more support to high-quality merchants, naturally eliminate low-quality merchants, and it itself is a typical product that captures the huge supply and demand relationship.

Recently, there was a post on Xiaohongshu with a 4.1W like, which also vividly interpreted the current e-commerce environment.

One ID is called "whyme?" Xiaohongshu users shared a shopping story from their mother:

"Mom bought a hairpin in the video number and wanted to send it to me, 2 99.9 yuan, I think the pit is outrageous, Pinduoduo on four only need 24.9, let her refund, she will not operate, tell her how to refund the process is still some, did not release, at that time felt a little tired, the tone was a little impatient, and also complained to friends about whether these platforms selling goods are specifically picking the elderly to pit money."

At the end of the story, the user struggled to help his mother return the expensive hairpin, and then used the red envelope given by his mother to buy the same hairpin on Pinduoduo at one-fifth of the price.

Of course, in addition to the trump card of cost performance, there are many shortcomings that Pinduoduo has to make up.

From the previous real money smashed tens of billions of subsidies to achieve word-of-mouth counterattack, to the later focus on agriculture, deep into remote areas to achieve e-commerce inclusiveness, the reason why Pinduoduo continues to increase the code is not only to discover new growth poles, but on the road of platform sinking, there is still a need to reconstruct the commodity distribution link.

For the participants in this "bombed shop", the "violent" act will not achieve the goal, let the bullets fly for a while, the commercial will belong to the business, and the legal will belong to the law.

What everyone did not expect is that in the post-mobile Internet era, the e-commerce industry is still smoking, from the previous "one of the two" to the new "one of the two" with the fried store as the incision. These competitive means may have some success in the short term, but in the long run, these means will inevitably be eliminated by the market.

After all, consumers can't be deprived of their choice of goods, services and platforms, and they vote through their purchases. Competition in the e-commerce industry will continue, but the one in the boom period will not work, and the trend will be to rely on more hard power competition.