E-commerce "refund only" is in full swing, and Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo will start a war in 2024

Source: Liu Kuang

E-commerce should be one of the industries that have the greatest impact on people's lives, with the development of e-commerce, people can buy goods without leaving home, which brings great convenience to daily life. In the e-commerce industry, many well-known companies have also emerged, such as Alibaba, JD.com, Pinduoduo and so on.

Recently, another big thing has happened in the e-commerce industry. On December 26, Taobao officially implemented the latest "Platform Dispute Settlement Rules", which added a "refund only" provision, and then on December 27, JD.com added a new implementation standard for refunds and non-return in the "JD Open Platform After-sales Service Management Rules". So far, the three major e-commerce platforms of Pinduoduo, Taobao and Jingdong have implemented the "refund only" standard. As soon as Taobao and Jingdong supported the "refund only" standard, it immediately sparked heated discussions and appeared on the hot search. At the end of 2023, the e-commerce industry has once again set off a new wave.

2023 of the changes

Previously, affected by the "black swan event" of the epidemic, e-commerce companies did not have a good time, and reducing costs and increasing efficiency has become the key word for enterprise development, and all parties are also full of expectations for the recovery in 2023. Time flies, 2023 is coming to an end, and the undercurrent of the e-commerce industry has never stopped. In the past year, the e-commerce industry has also undergone a lot of changes.

First of all, due to fierce competition, the voice of vertical e-commerce has gradually decreased, and life has become more and more difficult. According to the different business scope, e-commerce platforms can be divided into comprehensive e-commerce platforms and vertical e-commerce platforms. Vertical e-commerce refers to e-commerce platforms that are deeply involved in a certain industry, such as "Huajia", which focuses on the field of flowers, and "Baby Grid", which is a maternal and child e-commerce, and so on. However, with the development of integrated e-commerce, consumers have more options, and vertical e-commerce focusing on subdivision has been impacted, coupled with the withdrawal of capital, vertical e-commerce is facing a variety of pressures. In fact, in 2022, many vertical e-commerce platforms will go bankrupt and shut down services. In 2023, the pressure on vertical e-commerce platforms is still there, and life is not easy.

Secondly, the popularity of live broadcast e-commerce has not decreased, but "de-head anchoring" has become the main trend. In recent years, the popularity of live broadcast e-commerce has continued to rise, and Douyin and Kuaishou have made a breakthrough in the field of e-commerce by virtue of their live broadcast mode, even Taobao, Jingdong, and Pinduoduo, which are the head platforms, are also continuing to make efforts in the live broadcast mode, which shows the high popularity of live broadcast e-commerce. However, this year's live broadcast e-commerce industry also has a big feature, that is, "de-head anchoring", for example, some time ago, the "small composition" incident selected by Dongfang attracted the attention of many parties.

Finally, with the change of consumers' consumption concepts, the e-commerce shopping festival has also become a little "cold". In previous years, every shopping festival will drive consumers' enthusiasm for shopping, and the war reports released by various e-commerce platforms often attract onlookers. But this year is different from the past, as a year-end carnival of the "Double Eleven" shopping festival has become deserted, and the e-commerce platforms no longer publish war reports, which is particularly low-key, and Taobao, the founder of "Double Twelve", directly announced the cancellation of the Double 12 event. The reason behind it is mainly due to the change in consumers' consumption concepts. Compared with before, today's consumers have become more rational, from the previous impulsive and passionate consumption to the current rational consumption and rigid consumption, and cost performance has become one of the most important factors for consumers.

Player "Open Book"

The e-commerce industry in 2023 is not calm, and many big and small things have happened, such as Alibaba's restructuring, Xiaohongshu's transformation into a buyer's e-commerce, and so on. In 2023, the competition in the e-commerce industry continues, and the participants have not stopped, but through a series of measures, they will continue to improve their own strength in order to have more say in the e-commerce field. While each player's strategy has its own focus, there are similarities.

1. Strong content

"Content", the keyword of the long video platform, has also come to the e-commerce industry, and the content of the e-commerce platform has become everyone's unanimous choice. Although the traditional shelf e-commerce is convenient, as long as consumers have a clear purchase goal, they only need to search and select on the platform in the future, but they cannot actively arouse consumers' desire to buy. Content e-commerce, on the other hand, can connect with consumers through content, tap consumers' potential interests, mobilize consumers' desire to buy through high-quality content, and ultimately achieve conversion. For example, platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu have taken content as an opportunity to cut into the e-commerce field, and now, these content platforms have achieved quite good results in the e-commerce field.

At the moment of fierce competition in the industry, whether it is to compete for more traffic or to achieve continuous growth in performance, e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo have increased their investment in content. For example, in May, Dai Shan publicly stated: "Taobao will promote comprehensive content with far more investment than before", and at 8 p.m. on July 17, Taobao officially launched the "Night Taobao" version to provide users with more entertainment content and interactive experience. JD.com has successively launched a series of measures such as the "SUPER Rising Star Program" and the recruitment policy for content-based anchors to support content-based anchors and strengthen its own content ecology. Pinduoduo has increased content through two aspects: Duoduo video and Duoduo live broadcast, and has launched a number of incentive policies such as "New Superstar Plan" and "100 Production Plan" to accelerate the content development of the platform.

2. The volume is low

Today's consumers are more rational when shopping, and price comparison has become a basic operation. Low price can be said to be a "sharp weapon" for the development of e-commerce platforms, for example, the head e-commerce platform Pinduoduo is relying on low prices to stand out and rank among the forefront of the industry. In the fiercely competitive year of 2023, other e-commerce platforms are once again using low prices as a "weapon".

Specifically, in 2023, Jingdong will first launch a 10 billion subsidy channel, a 9.9 free shipping channel, and launch services such as double compensation for expensive purchases, and then lower the threshold for free shipping, which shows JD's determination to promote the low-price strategy. Coincidentally, Ali also regained its low-price strategy, and in April, Taobao held a conference of 10 billion subsidized merchants, announcing that the 10 billion subsidy of Juhuasuan would be officially upgraded to Taobao's 10 billion subsidy. Not only that, Taobao has also introduced a "five-star price power" evaluation system, which will provide resource support such as search priority display for good-priced products.

3. Excellent service

As players from all walks of life continue to develop their e-commerce business, the competition in the e-commerce industry is becoming increasingly fierce. In addition to price, service is also one of the important factors for consumers to choose e-commerce platforms and whether they will repurchase in the future. If the user shopping experience is not good, even if the price is already very cost-effective, the likelihood of consumer choice will be affected. Even now, problems such as slow delivery and uneven product quality still plague consumers, resulting in a poor shopping experience. Therefore, continuously optimizing services and improving consumers' shopping experience has become the key direction for e-commerce platforms to attract new users and retain old users.

In the logistics experience, in order to improve the arrival experience of users after purchasing small and medium-sized items, Taobao has added a "door-to-door" service for physical goods, and JD Express has launched a number of commitments such as "compensation for failure to pick up within 1 hour", "compensation for overtime throughout the process" and "compensation for failure to deliver to the door". In terms of after-sales service, Taobao and JD.com recently launched the "refund only" service to further optimize the user's shopping experience. As a rookie in the e-commerce field, Douyin is also continuing to improve the user experience, not only launching many functions such as "service guarantee hall" and "fast retreat" to continuously optimize the shopping experience of consumers. In terms of logistics, Douyin also cooperates with logistics companies to improve consumers' logistics experience.

In 2024, e-commerce will enter the era of AI?

Since ChatGPT exploded out of the circle, the popularity of large models has continued to be high, and AI has also become the focus of attention of all parties. With the development of AI technology, more and more AI tools have emerged, and e-commerce is an important scenario for the implementation of AI tools, such as intelligent customer service, personalized recommendation, AI digital human live broadcast, etc. So, will AI become a new variable in the e-commerce industry?

On the one hand, the application of AI can further optimize the e-commerce consumer experience. The importance of consumer experience for e-commerce platforms is self-evident, taking customer service as an example, as long as there is a big promotion period, customer service has to connect with many consumers at the same time, manual customer service energy is limited, and once the message is not replied to in time, the consumer experience will be affected. Although there has been intelligent customer service before, due to the influence of many factors, the intelligence of intelligent customer service is limited, and sometimes it is impossible to identify user problems.

With the blessing of AI large models, the intelligence of intelligent customer service has been significantly improved, and it can more accurately identify consumer problems and provide answers. For example, during this year's Double 11, JD was equipped with the intelligent customer service "Jing Xiaozhi" that accessed JD's self-developed Yanxi model, and it is reported that within the first 10 minutes of the sale, the cumulative number of JD Cloud intelligent customer service consulting services exceeded 1.88 million. Taobao has launched the AI assistant "Taobao Ask", which can not only interact with consumers by voice, but also make more accurate product recommendations based on data such as consumers' shopping history.

On the other hand, AI technology can help merchants improve operational efficiency. For merchants, marketing is an important way to promote sales growth, but small and medium-sized businesses are often unable to spend more money on content production, and the application of AI tools can make up for this and help merchants achieve better operations. For example, this Double 11, Taobao Tmall has launched 10 free AI tools on the merchant side, such as intelligent generation of model images, intelligent data weekly reports, and video script generation, to help merchants improve business efficiency, while Xiaohongshu has launched the "AI Smart Note Assistant", which can help merchants and buyers generate titles, texts and pictures according to the product when publishing product notes, and realize the one-click release of product notes.

The new year is coming, but the competition in the e-commerce industry is not final. As AI and e-commerce become more closely connected, the e-commerce industry may undergo new changes again. Let's wait and see where the e-commerce industry will go and how the consumer experience will improve.