Source | Bohu Finance (bohuFN)
Author | Dreamed
On May 6, the Taotian Group promotion project team announced the adjustment of the rules of the 2024 618 promotion at the merchant conference, and the most important change is the cancellation of the pre-sale - direct sales at 8 p.m. on May 20, and the whole process is guaranteed. JD.com also announced the cancellation of the pre-sale two days later.
Prior to this, the pre-sale set of rules had been in place for 10 years.
Turning the time back to before 2022, the cancellation of the pre-sale is enough to prove that the platform has changed its direction. But today, it's just the aftermath of Taotian's personnel and strategic adjustments.
In the past few years, the pattern of the domestic e-commerce industry has changed. In the face of the fierce impact from Pinduoduo and Douyin, Ali entered a period of adjustment.
User experience is at the forefront of management. In an interview video released by Norway's sovereign wealth fund, Joe Tsai, co-founder and chairman of Alibaba, reflects: "We have forgotten who our real customers are. Our customers are the ones who use the app to shop, and we don't give them the best experience. ”
What users can see is that in the past two years, Taotian has improved the user experience: tens of billions of subsidies, the "refund only" policy that followed, and the restart of the web version of Taobao.
But it's not just the action itself that makes the conundrum of change. The pre-sale system has affected a considerable part of the big promotion income, and the merchant relationship that Taobao, which focuses on "large and comprehensive", needs to solve is far more complex than that of its friends.
From no longer obsessing with GMV to pursuing user experience, this is a choice made by Alibaba in the face of new competition, but the choice is obviously more than that.
01 In order to capture users, short-term income can be abandoned
Consumers have been suffering from "pre-sale" for a long time.
On the Black Cat complaint platform, there have been more than 80,000 complaints about pre-sales. For example, if an order for spot goods becomes pre-sale, the pre-sold goods cannot be delivered on time, and it is not uncommon for the price difference to increase in price. Even during the promotion period, the goods could have been received within three days of placing an order, but because of the event, it usually took more than a week from paying the deposit to signing for the express delivery, which seriously affected the consumer experience.
However, in the eyes of some insiders, pre-sale is the core gameplay of Tmall, and it will not be so easy to cancel.
For example, in the past, many pre-sale products were sold through Taobao live broadcasts, especially beauty and skin care, makeup and other categories.
And these categories are very important to Taotian. According to Mojing Market Intelligence data, in the pre-sale of Tmall 618 in 2023, the industry with the largest pre-sale amount is beauty and skin care, with pre-sale sales of 6.22 billion yuan. According to a report by LatePost, a former employee of Taobao Live said that the pre-sale of the Double 11 promotion in 2022 is the main force, and the pre-sale turnover of big anchors accounts for more than 50% of the total turnover.
At the same time, the turnover during the 618 pre-sale period last year accounted for about 5%-10% of the entire promotion.
But Taotian still canceled the 618 pre-sale.
The reason lies in the main theme of Ali e-commerce in 2024: users mean everything. In this regard, the management gave a path: everything is centered on the needs and experience of consumers, optimizing all business links, emphasizing "good goods", "good prices" and "good services".
First, Ali has made every effort to build resources and make efforts to develop Taotian's core e-commerce. For example, the wholesale platform 1688 opened a store on Taobao to provide cheap goods, and Taote's merchants and goods moved back to Taobao and so on.
Second, in order to come up with a "good price", the Taotian activities do not stop.
For example, starting at 8 p.m. on April 23, Taobao launched a six-day 10 billion seckill festival. Among them, the product portfolio subsidy of well-known brands such as Apple and Dyson is about three to seven percent off the original price; The prices of many subsidized items have also hit new lows.
On May 6th, a large number of Taobao users were suddenly exempted from orders on a large scale, and the official did not release any activity gameplay and game rules, and then the official announced that Taobao Anniversary Celebration opened the free order answering activity, it is reported that 1 million free places are expected to be issued during the activity cycle. Coupled with the promotion of various festivals such as May Day and Mother's Day, Taotian seems to have been "discounted" in the first half of this year.
Three, bend over and learn from competitors, such as "refund only" and "home delivery".
Pinduoduo's refund-only policy was launched at the beginning of 2021, users initiate refunds, no need to return goods, Pinduoduo directly refunds a single order of less than 20 yuan, and when it comes to orders with a higher amount, the system usually takes into account a number of indicators and takes the initiative to partially refund users with excellent credit records.
Even though it has received many criticisms from merchants, other e-commerce platforms still choose to follow up.
In September 2023, Douyin announced a "refund-only" policy, Taobao and JD.com followed up at the end of the year, and in January 24, Kuaishou also joined the "refund-only" team.
Ali also learned about JD.com's "home delivery" service. Jingdong logistics has always been well received, while Taobao's logistics has been complained by some consumers for many years.
Because of the price war, the delivery of a Taobao, Pinduoduo express, the express company usually can only earn a few cents a single order, in order to improve efficiency, couriers are used to send e-commerce packages directly to the post station, users have to go to the post station to pick up the goods, of course, it is not as convenient as home delivery. In this regard, Taotian took out the budget to recruit 100,000 outsourcing to rookie post stations across the country, which is responsible for delivering the parcels in the post station to consumers.
On the one hand, in order to capture users, Ali is constantly changing, and even actively sacrifices some short-term income in exchange for a better shopping experience and stimulates more consumption. But on the other hand, while "changing", confusion and doubts have also emerged.
02 Change and chaos are mixed
Not all of them have been well received.
For example, in order to improve the user experience of "home delivery", various social platforms complained. One is that the door-to-door delivery stipulates that you have to make a phone call, even if you don't like to answer the phone. The other is because of door-to-door delivery, in order to speed up the delivery efficiency, the courier often slides the package to the door of the room from a distance, which does not give consumers a good impression.
At the same time, feedback from merchants is more common.
A big seller on Taobao "Eagle Master" mentioned on his WeChat public account, "Now I feel that everything is messy inside Taotian, it stands to reason that at the beginning of each year, each brand has to sign a 'year frame' with Tmall, which is not only a means for Tmall to bind various brands, but also a big source of income, but the problem is that now it's April, and the docking of our little two has been changing, and no one cares about us signing the New Year's frame, and we can't find the temple gate with a pig's head." Eagle Ye said.
There are not many merchants with similar views, and some merchants said, "All platforms under the Tao system are messing around with policies, which is unstable and inexplicable." For example, a merchant shared that the rules were released at one o'clock in the afternoon on May 9, and from May 10, the processing time of the platform for merchants to generate reminder work orders was shortened from the original 24 hours to 30 minutes. Because the shortening of the time limit is too exaggerated, many merchants have stopped this rule after feedback.
A Taobao women's clothing store blogger who follows Bohu Finance also said that she is studying the gameplay and rules of other platforms, according to her, "Taobao is now responsible for the shipping insurance by the seller, regardless of whether the guest returns or not, the seller bears it." At the same time, he complained that Taobao loves to "fine money". Whether it is a consumer who asks for late delivery or fails to deliver on time due to express delivery, they will have to pay a fine.
And when it comes to "refunds only", the controversy is even greater.
But in fact, this is not just a problem of Taotian. The "refund only" policy must be good for consumers, but it will also inevitably attract abuse by some wool parties, and friend business platforms have also caused conflicts with merchants because of this policy.
At the same time, some consumers are also worried that merchants will pass on the increase in after-sales costs caused by refunds only, or even the losses caused by the wool party, to ordinary consumers and raise prices.
As e-commerce enters the stage of stock fighting, the game between platforms begins to revolve around several main dimensions: price, service, and the main line of all this is the user. In the past, Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo all had their own characteristics, but now they are becoming more and more similar.
03 Write at the end
Ali wants to change, Ali is changing, Ali has to change.
There are rising stars in the past, Pinduoduo. On November 29, 2023, Pinduoduo's intraday market value surpassed that of Alibaba for the first time; On January 3, 2024, Pinduoduo's market capitalization reached $197.893 billion, surpassing Alibaba's $195.058 billion and JD.com's $43.224 billion.
At the same time, Douyin is competing for Alibaba's source of profit - brand advertising. According to the "LatePost" report, an insider revealed, "The most troublesome thing about Douyin is like a hedgehog, and there are tens of millions of yuan for a random live broadcast, and it is difficult for Ali to have a solution to this kind of unplanned behavior, and it is impossible to make a content platform with 800 million daily lives." Many Alibaba employees believe that Douyin's growth has far exceeded expectations, and it is more difficult to deal with than Pinduoduo. It is understood that the turnover of Douyin's beauty and skin care categories approached Taobao and Tmall at the end of last year.
It is impossible for Ali not to be in a hurry.
At the same time, other platforms are racing against time. For example, Jingdong followed up with tens of billions of subsidies, only refunds, and Pinduoduo, which has been learning, is also making up for content construction. According to the statistics of Yuehu iApp during last year's Double 11 promotion, the user overlap rate of Taobao, JD.com, and Pinduoduo is as high as more than 50%, with Taobao and the other two platforms having the highest overlap among users.
Competing in the same position means that the situation of "people have and I don't" is the most avoidable. The current situation is that when each company has a deck of cards that includes low prices, supply chains, content, logistics, etc., it is difficult to achieve long-term victory by winning by surprise, and execution, endurance, and details have become the key.
Reference Sources:
1. New position pro: radical Wu Yongming "prepared ahead" 618, and the merchant shouted "I can't bear it"
2. Late LatePost: Ma Yun made three internal statements, and the real end of Ali's reorganization
3. All-weather technology: Ali made a difficult decision
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