88VIP members upgrade, but members don't buy it?
April 22 is the first day of Taobao Tmall 88VIP membership upgrade.
First of all, let's talk about this 88VIP member, this is a new membership system launched by Ali, users can open 88VIP members after shopping on the platform and meeting certain conditions such as naughty value, shopping activity and credit rating.
Of course, for many people, the biggest benefit of 88VIP membership is that they can enjoy the membership rights and interests of Alibaba's various businesses, including Youku, Taopiaopiao, Eleme, Xiami Music, etc.
Source: Taobao
So, theoretically, this time the 88VIP membership rights have been upgraded again, and members should be happy?
In particular, 88VIP users can enjoy the new benefits of unlimited "return package shipping"!
Previously, Taobao has provided 88VIP users with 6 5 yuan return coupons per month, and after the upgrade of 88VIP membership rights, there are two major changes.
First, the limit on the number of coupons has been removed, and the previous 6 return coupons have become unlimited returns.
Second, the subsidy amount will be increased to 25 yuan per order, and it can be used in conjunction with freight insurance.
For the upgrade of 88VIP members, the platform said that this is really saving money for members: "It is expected to save 2,620 yuan throughout the year."
How is the result of this "expected to save 2620 yuan a year" demonstrated, another matter, of course, the premise is: save 2620 yuan a year, how many things do you have to buy on the platform?
As for the "greater benefits" after the upgrade of 88VIP members, it is the wisdom of the benevolent and the wise.
For example: "Arbitrarily grab Moutai", this credibility should not be very high - Ruyi can really grab Moutai at will, and let him charge the membership fee for 99 years, and someone will do the same.
For another example, "2 red envelopes a day", in a year, it is 730 yuan, and charging members is to make money, and this kind of good thing is basically impossible to happen.
So, not surprisingly, after the launch of this unlimited "return package shipping" service, some members really "went astray" in looking at this issue.
For example, their focus is that compared to Pinduoduo and Douyin, there is no shipping fee for shopping, and some products are directly insured when they are returned, and 88VIP members have to pay a certain cost for "unlimited returns". In other words, if the shipping insurance is lower than the actual shipping cost, the user has to pay the shipping cost himself.
For another example, while upgrading some of the rights and interests of members, some of the rights and interests they are more concerned about are actually downgraded.
For many 88VIP members, if there is no special request, return is not a frequent occurrence, so, the actual significance of this unlimited "return package freight" is not too big for them; Quark Cloud Disk VIP These things that are useful to them have been downgraded, and the original 88VIP membership rights and interests of Xiami Music have long been gone, and the platform has no targeted compensation plan, all of which make members a little uncomfortable.
It seems that the platform unilaterally announced the upgrade of members, which gave members not only surprises, but also frightening!
JD members are upgraded again, and the old members are confused?
Not only Taobao Tmall, but also JD.com's membership rights and interests have undergone several unilateral upgrades in recent times.
For example, last year, when the rights and interests of JD plus members were upgraded, all plus member coupons were cancelled.
This year,Jingdong once again to PLUS members to move the "knife":Originally,PLUS member members can get up to 3% rebate for shopping,The upper limit of the amount is5 million;After upgrading,The rights and interests of PLUS members have become exclusive and exclusive reductions,According to the official statement,It is the following points:No threshold reduction before purchase、Can be stacked discounts、Full product coverage。
A little incomprehensible? There are even more incomprehensible things!
Not long ago, JD.com announced that it would upgrade the original "Jingxiang Value" system to "Membership Level", and members with different Jingxiang Value points correspond to bronze, silver, gold and diamond members.
Then, different members can find the benefits they can enjoy from the table below!
Source: JD.com
I have to say that from "Jingxiang value" to "membership level", subjectively it brings more benefits to users, but the first impression is that the membership system has become more and more complicated. In addition, I do an evaluation every month, and I am looking for the rights and interests that I can enjoy, and the members are tired!
Moreover, from "Jingxiang value" to "membership level", because of the difference in standards before and after, it is inevitable that the accumulation of members in the past may not match the new membership level, which does bring a lot of trouble to users.
The most criticized part of the members is: after continuous education, it is not easy to understand some of the rules of the membership, and you suddenly say that you will change it, isn't this a toss?
The brutal truth behind e-commerce membership upgrades
So, why are domestic e-commerce platforms so happy to change the membership rules around? Like Pinduoduo, don't you directly use tens of billions of subsidies to smash low prices, and all goods are covered with freight?
Again, this is the difference in the underlying logic between platforms and platforms.
For example, Tao is a typical service platform, which collects service fees from merchants and users for each transaction, which is its basic service model, which determines that some services, such as membership services, can only be reduced rather than exempted, even if they are upgraded in the east and downgraded in the west.
As a member, Jingdong is obviously learning from the practice of public consumption on foreign e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, but in the process of learning, some practices have changed somewhat.
What's the problem?
First of all, there is too much fuss about membership fees.
Interestingly, foreign Amazon, Costco and other platforms have never discounted membership fees, and even continue to increase membership fees; the membership system of domestic e-commerce platforms has pushed forward future consumption from the beginning: "buy one year and get one year free", "buy two years in a row and get 7.5% off", etc., to put it mildly, it is a question whether you can live for 2 years, why let users advance 2 years of membership fees?
Source: Screenshot of the short video
Secondly, the sun rises in the east and rains in the west, where there is an upgrade of rights, there is a reduction of rights.
As a Netflix member, you can watch new and old movies and dramas for free at any time, while as a member of a domestic e-commerce platform, similar services are only "gifted" by the way, or as another entrance to the platform to expand income, and these services may stop at any time if you don't pay extra money to renew.
Also, how to discount and how to use coupons, the members themselves have no bottom.
Generally speaking, the platform will provide merchants and consumers with different platform coupons, such as store coupons, general coupons, festival coupons, category coupons, membership coupons, etc., which look like a stupefid and increasingly attractive eye. However, there are restrictions on the use of these coupons, including how to use them, what kind of purchase amount needs to be met, there are special regulations, users are tantamount to doing a difficult Olympiad problem when using it, if these restrictions are removed, there are not many that can really play a role.
So, it looks like the members of the domestic e-commerce platform have posted a lot of watercolor paintings on the wall, but only when you look closely, you find that these paintings are empty!
Of course, the biggest problem is that the platform will always unilaterally announce the "upgrade of membership rights" - saying that it is an upgrade, but in fact, it is actually changing the rights and interests at will, which is also the final blow to destroy users' trust in the platform.
It is not difficult to see that although the upgrade of the membership system is a good thing, in essence, the upgrade of membership is also an excuse to make up for the strategic mistakes of the platform, which is the cruel truth behind the upgrade of the membership system!
For example, Pinduoduo has never had the concept of membership, not even a shopping cart, but it is still doing well.
And some platforms are now promoting membership upgrades so frequently, a fatal reason is that the market competition situation is different, hoping to retain users by showing favor to users.
From the perspective of the platform, upgrading the rights and interests of members is an effective means to improve the user experience and strengthen user stickiness.
However, in the eyes of many, this is still a matter of sacrifice.
The path to truly improve the user experience is not complicated, that is, to provide good goods at the same time, the price to be the most competitive, and at the same time, the after-sales service really occupies the user's side.
Therefore, instead of Seiko in the membership system upgrade such a "last trick", it is better to return to the "right way" of unified products, services and prices as soon as possible, and users will vote for you with their feet again.
Author | Charlie