Cancel the official pre-sale of 618, Taotian will increase 88VIP, where will the e-commerce war burn?

National Business Daily

2024-05-07 21:47Posted on the official account of Sichuan Daily Economic News

Reporter: Chen Ting Editor: Liu Xuemei

On May 6, Taobao 88 VIP rights and interests were upgraded again, and points can be exchanged for cash red envelopes.

This is another benefit upgrade after 88VIP launched unlimited return package shipping two weeks ago. The reporter of "Daily Economic News" learned that since the beginning of this year, the rights and interests of 88VIP have been increasing. In March, a number of rights and interests such as the original price purchase of Moutai every day, 88VIP exclusive 100 supplements, and 5% off every day big-name in-house purchase will be launched, and in April, the unlimited return package shipping rights and interests were upgraded. Coupled with the addition of Mango TV membership rights and interests at the end of last year, and the launch of e-commerce "New Three Guarantees" shopping cards, Taotian is increasing its investment in paid members.

At the previous TopTalk super brand private meeting, Tmall said that it would add tens of billions of investment this year, increase the rights and interests of 88VIP members, and in addition, the scale of rights and interests cooperation brands will also be increased from 4,000 to 10,000.

In the context of "returning users", Taotian is trying to win a difficult battle, and 88VIP, which was born in 2018, has become one of the "weapons" that Taotian is trying to forge.

It is worth mentioning that before the big promotion, adding 88VIP is also a common action of Taotian. Also on May 6, the reporter learned that this year's Tmall 618 has accepted registration on that day. Compared with previous years, this year's 618 has canceled the official pre-sale link, and the first wave of sales will be directly launched at 8 p.m. on May 20.

In addition to Taotian, the reporter learned that in March this year, Jingdong PLUS members added a new "exclusive reduction" benefit, covering all categories, unlimited times, and unlimited degrees. Last year, JD.com announced a comprehensive upgrade of PLUS membership rights and interests, and launched the "unlimited free shipping" privilege.

At a time when the competition for stock is becoming more and more fierce, can the old thing of e-commerce membership bring new increments to the platform? 618 is coming, what new stories can e-commerce platforms tell?

E-commerce Paid Membership: New Wine in Old Bottles?

In 2018, Alibaba launched the 88VIP membership system, which, according to the public content at the time, covered all of Alibaba's online and offline core services.

At the beginning, after becoming 88VIP, users can not only get through the rights and interests of annual VIP members such as Youku, Eleme, Taopiaopiao, Xiami, etc., but also enjoy the annual 9.5% discount of 88 first-line brands, as well as the 9.5% discount of Tmall Supermarket and Tmall Global direct sales, and can also get the annual 300 yuan shopping coupon for digital home appliances and exclusive member day discounts.

There is a view that Alibaba's paid membership is more like a collective output after the integration of membership rights and interests in the ecosystem, and the industry describes it as "Ali All-in-One Card".

Over the years, every time there is a big promotion, Taotian will give some rights and interests involving 88VIP. According to the reporter's understanding, last year's double 11, 88VIP could receive large consumption vouchers, and Tmall also issued more than 10 billion platform red envelopes.

In December last year, Alibaba announced that Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group and chairman of Taotian Group, was also the CEO of Taotian Group. Taotian has entered a new period of change.

On April 2, at the TopTalk 2024 Tmall Super Brand Private Sharing Conference, Taotian revealed that 88VIP, as the most valuable group of people on the whole network, will have a significant increase in the number of members in 2023, with the number of members exceeding 32 million.

According to the reporter's understanding, Wei Shan, general manager of the FMCG Division of Taotian Group, also mentioned the role of 88VIP at the meeting. Twilight Shan said that 88VIP users are a very important part of the platform and the brand.

According to Twilight, this year, Taotian will incentivize members, combined with 88VIP to do the overall member introduction, member retention and member repurchase, there will be special incentives for merchants.

Obviously, without increasing the cost of membership, the platform should increase the rights and interests of members, and also increase investment. Gu Fan, vice president of Amazon China, once said that the core of the "membership economy" is that companies want to put resources on loyal users in pursuit of long-term effects.

However, compared with earlier years, as e-commerce enters the stock competition, the growth rate of the number of paid members may not be the first pursuit of the platform at present, and more value or retain users in the stock era.

Taking the classic Amazon Prime membership as an example, in 2021, the annual consumption of Chinese Prime members doubled compared to the previous year. Also in 2021, China's Amazon overseas shopping became the world's largest Amazon overseas shopping site, and Amazon's overseas shopping sales that year reached more than nine times that of 2015.

In April, it was reported that Amazon's Prime subscription service hit a new high of 180 million U.S. shoppers in March, up 8% from a year earlier, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting, said in an interview with the reporter of "Daily Economic News" that the data of Amazon Prime membership shows that the membership system of the e-commerce platform can better improve user stickiness and repurchase rate. It is precisely for this reason that he believes that the stock era is an important period for the membership system, and the membership system can play a greater value.

Zhuang Shuai mentioned that in fact, from Jingdong PLUS members to Taobao 88VIP members, the e-commerce membership system has always been highly valued, and the value in the stock market has been further amplified, and major e-commerce platforms will inevitably increase investment in the membership system.

618 is imminent: the e-commerce platform is ready to go

Also on May 6, this year's Tmall 618 began to accept registration. For merchants, this year's Tmall 618 simplifies the registration process, and merchants who meet the conditions can directly register for goods; For consumers, Taobao Tmall has also launched a series of measures such as full price protection.

It is worth noting that this year's 618, Tmall canceled the official pre-sale link, and the first wave of sales will be directly launched at 8 p.m. on May 20.

As early as April this year, it was reported that in 2024, 618, Jingdong will also cancel the pre-sale mechanism and switch to spot sales.

According to reports, in a document circulated online for JD's merchant ecological partners, it was mentioned that JD 618 will be opened at 8 pm on May 31, directly "off to a good start", spot sales, and then enter the special period, climax period and return period in turn. However, as of now, there has been no official announcement.

In this regard, Cui Lili, a professor at the Department of Digital Economy of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, told the "Daily Economic News" reporter that the cancellation of pre-sale is equivalent to the e-commerce platform directly entering the stage of "fighting bayonets", and the platform may hope to advance the time of sales as soon as possible and gain a competitive advantage by grasping the opportunity. She believes that this year, in addition to low prices, major e-commerce platforms will also compete for user service experience and improve the empowerment service for merchants.

These actions may indicate that the competition in the e-commerce world has entered a protracted war. This also requires e-commerce platforms to make greater investment than ever before in order to win the competition. In this regard, Zhuang Shuai told reporters: "This is an inevitable trend, and the e-commerce platform will also enter a period of low profits." ”

The upcoming 618 may also be a time to verify the latest strength of major platforms.

Taking Ali as an example, since the beginning of this year, its e-commerce business has made a lot of moves, and it has continued to increase its price power and user experience.

In April, it was reported that starting in 2024, Ali set up a small but complete team to optimize and upgrade the PC side of Taobao.

According to a report by LatePost, Zhao Kun, the head of the PC team of Taobao, posted on Ali's intranet on May 6 "Why do we want to redo PC Taobao? 》。

Zhao Kun said that mobile phones, pads, notebooks, desktops, on-board computers, AR/VR/MR, etc. will become a variety of carriers for users to access the Internet, "as long as we are determined to serve all Chinese consumers, we should allow users to have the right and convenience to choose a variety of devices to access, rather than let users be tied to a terminal."

It's clear that Ali is trying to capture every crowd as much as possible.

In addition, on March 26, 1688 officially announced that it would enter Taobao in an all-round way. For Taobao buyers, source goods, ex-factory prices, free shipping and free refunds will become the new normal of consumption. At the end of last year, Taobao Double 12 changed its name to "Taobao Year-end Good Price Festival", and the topic of "Taobao will support refund-only" once rushed to the hot search on Weibo.

On March 28, Cheng Daofang, general manager of Taotian Group's content e-commerce division, announced the growth target for the new year (fiscal year 2025): the user scale increased by 100% year-on-year, the number of anchors with monthly transactions exceeding one million increased by 100% year-on-year, and the GMV increased by 80% year-on-year. To achieve this goal, Taobao will add 10 billion yuan to promote content e-commerce operations.

In addition, in February this year, Taobao announced the establishment of a live broadcast e-commerce company to provide "nanny-style" fully managed operation services for celebrities, KOLs, and MCN institutions who are interested in entering Taobao and start broadcasting.

As for JD.com, before the launch of 618, the digital person Liu Qiangdong started broadcasting, which attracted a lot of attention. On April 16, Jingdong's live broadcast room achieved good results, with 100,000 orders and 20 million views in 40 minutes, and an overall transaction of 50 million yuan.

It is reported that this year, Jingdong 618, AI technology upgrade, is placed in the C position of the three core merchant side upgrades, as well as conventional traffic ecology and service capacity assistance.

Ali also attaches great importance to AI, and Jack Ma has mentioned the importance of AI many times. Will the next collective increase in e-commerce be AI? 618 this year, will Taotian come up with any new AI weapons?

In addition to these problems, as Ali increases investment in e-commerce business and fills in the gaps, this year's 618, can users really perceive the changes in Taotian? For Alibaba, who has made it clear that "returning users" is the core of its strategy, the answer to this question may be very important.

National Business Daily