The so-called "special wine" under the banner of a special distillery costs only a few dozen yuan for a bottle, and the jasmine tea with a price of 460 yuan and a tael is only sold for 4.99 yuan......
Recently, the demand for various New Year's gifts has increased significantly, and live e-commerce has become an important channel for consumers to buy products. Some live-streaming e-commerce products seem to be affordable and sell amazingly, but the number of subsequent product quality complaints is also staggering.
How do these attractive "prices" come about, and are consumers facing "welfare" or "traps"?
Live broadcast e-commerce plays the "low-price card" and causes disputes
"The original price is 358 yuan, and the current price is 19.9 yuan", the discount is lower than 1% off!
In a typical case of live broadcast marketing previously announced by the Ningbo Municipal Market Supervision Bureau in Zhejiang Province, a car service company released promotional content through a live broadcast platform: "The original price of 358 is only 19.9 for the package". It was later verified that the package had never been sold at the advertised original price, and its behavior violated the provisions of the Price Law, which was an illegal act of using false prices to deceive consumers into trading with them.
In the live broadcast room of a live broadcast e-commerce, the merchant played signs such as "lowest price". (Network screenshot)
With the development of live broadcast e-commerce, a large number of e-commerce companies have poured in, and many merchants have resorted to tricks in the field of commodity prices in order to compete for traffic, such as "the lowest on the whole network", "the largest discount in the whole year", "special discounts" and "1% off goods...... The propaganda is dazzling.
However, price disputes ensued. Among the Black Cat complaints, there are more than 20,000 complaints involving live broadcast prices. Some top anchors have also repeatedly been caught up in the controversy over the lowest price of goods.
When the reporter searched on a live broadcast e-commerce platform, he found a well-known brand of liquor in multiple live broadcast rooms, with a box of 6 bottles only cost more than 400 yuan, which is much lower than the normal price. In a live broadcast room, the product showed that more than 10,000 pieces had been sold. The reporter's investigation found that this liquor sold in the name of a well-known brand was not produced by the brand distillery, but was sold by a third-party manufacturer who had produced products for the brand, making it difficult for consumers to distinguish.
At the end of 2023, the "2023 "Double 11" Consumer Rights Protection Public Opinion Analysis Report released by the China Consumers Association shows that during the "Double 11" period, consumer rights protection issues are concentrated in the chaos of live streaming and promotional price disputes. According to the monitoring data of the China Consumers Association, during the monitoring period, the negative information about "live streaming" accounted for 47.99% of the complaining information, with an average daily information volume of more than 55,000.
Zhao Jingwu, an associate professor at the Law School of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, believes that in live broadcast marketing, some teams or anchors use a variety of methods to carry out excessive marketing and even price fraud and consumer fraud in pursuit of profits, infringing on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.
There are many price routines, and consumers can't guard against them
Live e-commerce meets the diverse consumption needs of consumers and provides a visual and intuitive experience. However, with the expansion of the scale, there have also been illegal cross-border behaviors such as false price comparisons, price increases, discounts, and confusion of "famous brands".
-- Covert collusion and false price comparison. Comparing prices between live e-commerce and traditional e-commerce and offline store counters has become an important means to attract consumers. This kind of price comparison behavior is usually based on screenshots of the page where the product is sold in other channels as evidence, and there is no guarantee of authenticity.
According to the case released by the Beijing Municipal Market Supervision Department, during the "Double 11" period in 2023, the anchor of Beijing Fuqi Lianlian Culture Media Co., Ltd. used the page display price of the same product on a platform of Beijing Eater Home E-commerce Co., Ltd. as the compared price during the live broadcast. As a result, it was confirmed that the two companies joined forces to make a game and marked the prices that were very different, which were used for price comparison in live broadcasts, misleading consumers to buy products.
-- "Famous brand" confuses the public. The reporter saw on some platforms that some e-commerce anchors sold alcohol, watches, cosmetics and other products were shoddy through "famous brands", misleading consumers with low prices.
Some products dress up an unknown brand as a famous co-branded product, or turn OEM products with similar packaging and origin into "genuine" sales, or set the cover of the live broadcast room as a well-known brand "grafting" to sell other products.
In a case previously reported in Wenzhou, Zhejiang, the figurative trademark of the clothing purchased by the party concerned was similar to a well-known registered trademark, and the business license of another person was stolen to publicize it on the online platform, and nearly 4,000 pieces were sold through live broadcast e-commerce, with an illegal business turnover of more than 200,000 yuan.
- False bid price and then discount. In the live broadcast room, it has become a common trick to discount the price of false bidding. According to the investigation and handling cases of market supervision departments in Beijing, Zhejiang, Guangdong and other places, some live-streaming e-commerce companies artificially set higher commodity prices for products that have never been put on the shelves or are difficult to compare prices, and then sell them at larger discounts during live broadcasts, misleading consumers with so-called huge discounts.
The clothes bought in the live broadcast room are hundreds of yuan more expensive than usual, but they are called the lowest price; the liquor of nearly 1,000 yuan cannot be proved by the original price; the event price is 99 yuan, and the 3 boxes are expired, but the daily sales are also the same price...... In the black cat complaint and related cases, the reporter consulted a number of complaints and punishment information involving the false price of live broadcast goods.
Xu Hao, a lawyer at Beijing Jingshi Law Firm, said that with the arrival of the Spring Festival holiday, consumer disputes in the field of live streaming e-commerce may show an upward trend, and consumers need to be wary of various price traps.
All parties work together to create a good market environment
Price manipulation routines emerge in the field of live streaming e-commerce, resulting in disputes and conflicts, which not only harm the rights and interests of consumers, but also affect the development of the platform and the live broadcast industry. The interviewed experts suggested that relevant departments and relevant platforms should further improve measures and strengthen supervision in the field of live broadcast e-commerce, and businesses and enterprises should also strengthen industry self-discipline to create a good market environment.
Zhao Jingwu introduced that the regulation of the price field of live broadcast e-commerce mainly involves the Price Law, the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests, and the Provisions of the Supreme People's Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in the Trial of Online Consumer Dispute Cases (1) and other regulations. However, due to the continuous innovation of the business model of the live streaming industry, it is difficult for the current legal provisions to respond to some new problems arising from live streaming in a timely and effective manner.
Shanghai, Zhejiang and other places are actively exploring to standardize live broadcasts and anchors with goods. Some live broadcast platforms said that they are successively issuing relevant regulations to strictly manage violations on commodity prices in the live broadcast room, and clearly limit the price display to ensure that the promotional information is true, objective and accurate.
Lu Yun, director of the Consumer Rights and Interests Legal Professional Committee of the Beijing Lawyers Association, said that live broadcast platforms have the social responsibility to maintain the business ecology, and should promptly discover and control the price traps in the live broadcast room, and comprehensively use governance methods such as deducting points and removing them from the shelves to stop behaviors that harm the rights and interests of consumers. Commodity operators should strictly implement the clear price marking system in transactions, reduce the problem of information asymmetry, and respect consumers' right to know, right to choose and right to fair trade.
Xu Hao believes that at present, the relevant laws and regulations on live streaming are gradually improving, but they mainly rely on measures such as fines and refunds and compensations, and lack of more powerful mandatory means, coupled with the huge scale of disputes in the price field, resulting in high costs for law enforcement and rights protection.
Xu Hao suggested that the punitive compensation mechanism should be further implemented, law enforcement inspections should be intensified, and the deterrent effect should be strengthened on the basis of typical cases, so as to increase the illegal costs of enterprises and maintain the market environment. Consumer associations can give full play to their public welfare attributes and better safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers.
Zhao Jingwu and other interviewed experts suggested that consumers should strengthen their ability to distinguish when purchasing goods on live broadcast e-commerce platforms, carefully understand the product situation, trading conditions, preferential activities and other information, and buy products rationally. When their own rights and interests are harmed, they should promptly retain relevant graphic and video information, and protect their legitimate rights and interests through legal and other means.
Transferred from: Half Moon Talk
Source: Xinhua News Agency