In March this year, a female netizen in Chongqing bought a pair of underwear online, and when she opened it, she was shocked:
I saw that there was a large blackened and yellowish stain on the crotch of this underwear, "at first glance, it was worn by others". She immediately contacted customer service to apply for a return, but was asked to cut off the middle part of her underwear with scissors, shoot a video in detail, and send it to customer service for review and confirmation.
This kind of suspected encounter of buying clothes returned by others is only the tip of the iceberg of online shopping chaos. With shoddy, cutting corners, false prices, and wrong goods, more and more "low-price and low-quality" goods are full of tricks, so that consumers can't guard against it.
The e-commerce industry has officially declared war with "low price and low quality".
More than sixty percent of consumer complaints are online purchases of 500 grams of pistachio desiccant, accounting for 192 grams
"Speechless, disgusting." This Chongqing female netizen described this online shopping experience as follows.
Her experience has resonated widely: some people buy dresses online, and find that there are one or two dozen long hairs stuck to them; Some people spent more than 20,000 yuan to buy 6 air conditioners from an e-commerce platform, but they received a thermos cup, because they couldn't contact customer service, so they had to seek media exposure.
Also this year, a netizen in Shaanxi Province bought a bag of 500 grams of pistachios online, and found that the desiccant accounted for 191 grams, the packaging box accounted for 72 grams, and the actual weight of the pistachios was less than half.
INTERVIEWER If you were in this situation, would you still be happy?
Some e-commerce veterans have concluded that there are currently 6 common online shopping routines.
First, there is a shortage of catties and two. For example, some draws are marked with 80 draws, and when you buy a number, there are actually only 60 draws; Some toothpicks are labeled with 200 toothpicks, but there are only 122. The merchants who have exhausted these institutions are betting that the vast majority of consumers will not count them one by one.
Second, change the concept. For example, some notebooks have 240 pages advertised on the detailed page, but 120 are actually sold; Some cotton towels claim to be used 400 times, but in fact there are only 30 pumps.
Pressing the scale with packaging or accessories is the third common routine. For example, the 50-gram seaweed that someone buys weighs as much as 30 grams with a paper shell on the outer packaging.
Material fraud is the fourth routine, such as some cotton soft towels, plant fibers are actually polyester and cotton blends; Some steel wool balls are actually made of iron wire.
The fifth type of routine is false propaganda. There is a storage bag sold on the platform, and the business details page shows that it can hold the next person, but when you actually buy it, the capacity is only 120 liters.
The worst is undoubtedly the sixth type - there are low-cost electric sockets sold by e-commerce platforms, but there is no ground wire, which can be called a breakthrough in the bottom line. It is important to know that the ground wire is called the "life safety wire", which can effectively avoid electric shock in the event of electric leakage.
Such an act is tantamount to making a joke with the lives of consumers.
"The world has been suffering from online shopping routines for a long time." According to the analysis of the above-mentioned e-commerce veterans, although the public has developed the consumption habit of buying low-priced goods, what is different from the past is that at present, consumers are becoming more and more rational, and they have also noticed the quality problems behind the low prices, and it is becoming more and more difficult to tolerate low-cost and low-quality things.
"The extremely low-price routine of online shopping is, in the final analysis, an insult to the intelligence of consumers." The e-commerce veteran said, "The last thing consumers can accept is to be deceived." ”
More than 800 of the 1000 products have problems, and the low price of the unlimited volume causes the bad money to drive out the good money
In the stock era of e-commerce competition, almost all platforms are holding high the banner of "low price", and the fight is becoming more and more intense.
Looking back on the past year or two, Alibaba first listed "price power" as one of its five major strategies, shifted from Tmall to Taobao, implemented a daily low-price strategy, and tried to return to the low-price market; Then Douyin e-commerce launched the "0 yuan entry" activity to attract small and medium-sized businesses and shout out the low-price strategy.
Pinduoduo has been questioned a lot, but it is still insisting on the normalization of low prices; Kuaishou put forward the strategy of "low price and good things", and launched the core gameplay of "big names and big supplements".
Recently, according to 36Kr report, Jingdong has also made new moves for the sinking market and low-price strategy - after several ups and downs, Jingxi's business has ushered in changes again, and the new name is "Jingxi self-operated", which is regarded as an important grasp of Jingdong's low price internally.
At present, if you search for "Jingxi" on the Jingdong APP, you can find the official store of Jingxi.
Undoubtedly, the core competitiveness of retail is low price. However, the extreme of things must be reversed, and individual platforms infinitely squeeze the profits of merchants and factories, which is the fundamental reason for the concentrated outbreak of the problem of "low price and low quality".
There is a set of data that best reflects how shocking the "low price and low quality" problem of the industry is.
The person in charge of Jingxi's self-operated business revealed to reporters that before opening Jingxi's self-operated business, they had done a large-scale internal research - purchasing and selling 1,000 products bought on other different low-price platforms, and found that 80% of the things were either not on the right board, or were short of catties, and even had serious quality and safety problems.
"It can be said that the quality behind the low price is very worrying." She said.
According to an expert who has been observing the e-commerce industry for a long time, individual platforms regard low prices as the only baton, and the logic is that the lower the price of the product, the more it can get platform traffic, which leads to disorderly low prices and becomes more and more unprofitable.
In this case, in order to reduce costs, some businesses choose to sacrifice product quality, and create "fake low prices" by shoddy, lacking catties and two pounds, and stealing and slippery, resulting in damage to the interests of consumers.
And those businesses that operate in good faith are unable to compete with them, and the final outcome is that "bad money drives out good money".
Talked about more than 800 suppliers in 1 month, and the selection will be open from morning to night
Is "low price" and "high quality" necessarily contradictory, just like a fish and a bear's paw cannot be both?
JD.com's latest launch of Jingxi self-operation has been pinned on by the industry as a possible solution to this problem.
JD.com insiders revealed that JD.com's senior management attaches great importance to Jingxi's self-operation, and is also very confident in this model, "often guiding in person". At present, the main assessment indicator of Jingxi's self-operation is to help JD.com get more new users in the sinking market, as well as the retention rate of new users.
The person in charge of Jingxi's self-operated business said that Jingxi's self-operated business aims at the sinking market, mainly cooperating with white-label manufacturers, and reducing costs through direct procurement and direct delivery at the source, so as to obtain low prices.
Jingxi's self-operated full custody model is not the first of its kind in the industry. Usually, in the fully managed mode, the manufacturer is responsible for production and delivery, and the platform is responsible for pricing, operation, promotion, and after-sales, focusing on "letting professional people do professional things".
However, unlike other full-custody models in the industry, Jingxi's self-operated full-custody model, "Jingdong gene" is very distinct.
JD.com, which started as a self-employed company, attaches great importance to quality and service. Jingxi's self-operated business makes full use of JD.com's ability to procure and sell quality control goods, as well as the high-quality experience of official customer service and after-sales.
Jingxi's self-operated procurement and marketing will first go deep into various industrial belts to visit and investigate to find out what materials, processes, ingredients, and functional products are most in line with the needs of users in the sinking market, and the most cost-effective;
Find out what the unspoken rules of the industry are, where the price of the product is, and how to squeeze out the water;
Figuring out what costs are not necessary can be optimized.
A self-operated auto supplies buyer and salesman of Jingxi said that when she was researching the industrial belt, she once "talked to more than 800 suppliers in one month".
After formulating the selection criteria, the team also had to hold rounds of selection meetings, "often from morning to night". Only after layers of screening and quality testing, as well as negotiating costs and prices with manufacturers again and again, will the products be officially put on the shelves.
"The lowest price and reliable quality are the two most important criteria for our product selection." A Jingxi self-operated procurement and sales introduction.
It has stably cooperated with 50 industrial belts to help upgrade and double the production line of the factory
At present, there are 50 core industries of Jingxi's self-operated and stable cooperation, such as paper, headphones, underwear, fruits and other categories, all of which have monthly sales of more than one million single products.
What is the difference between the low price of Jingxi's self-operated platform and the low price of other platforms?
A JD.com insider revealed that Jingxi's self-operated low price is not based on the premise of sacrificing the experience of partners and squeezing the interests of partners like individual platforms. Instead, it relies on scale effect and technology to drive continuous innovation in the supply chain, squeeze out price moisture, and achieve low prices.
Before cooperating with Jingxi, a paper pumping manufacturer in the Wuhan Paper Industry Belt in Hubei Province had its main sales channels concentrated offline, and there was almost no sales online. However, after inspecting the factory, Jingxi found that from the perspectives of cost, quality control, transportation, production volume, and labor cost, this factory is the most in line with the standards of cooperation.
After the negotiation, the two sides hit it off. Jingxi's self-operated large amount of market research data and experience in creating explosive models came in handy at this time.
"We worked with the manufacturer to reformulate the size and number of sheets of the paper, redesigned the outer packaging, and helped them upgrade the industrial line. Previously, they only had 10 manual production lines, but now they have 20 machine automation lines. The person in charge of Jingxi's self-operated business introduced.
They also use their expertise to help manufacturers reduce the cost of raw material storage, production labor and logistics transportation.
In the end, the cooperation between Jingxi's self-operated and industrial belt factories withstood the test of the 618 promotion.
In the context of the decline in the overall turnover of the 618 paper industry this year, on the official store of Jingxi's self-operated products, this pumping paper became an instant hit, with an order volume of more than one million orders, becoming a star explosive product. As for other paper products that cooperate with Jingxi, the sales volume during the 618 period has also increased by more than 10 times.
The industrial belt itself is a circle. So far, Jingxi self-operated in the Hubei industrial belt word of mouth, more than 20 paper manufacturers, have taken the initiative to contact Jingxi self-operated to explore cooperation opportunities.
How to solve the industry problem that low price and high quality are difficult to balance? Jingxi, which has just started, is still exploring exploration, but the initial results are enough to excite them.
The person in charge of Jingxi's self-operated business revealed that in the future, Jingxi's self-operated model will be based on user experience and high-quality service as the engine to continue to enhance the industry competitiveness of JD's own products.
By the end of this year, they plan to expand the number of factories they have been working with to more than 10,000.
The team has a dream: "Putting things right, no longer letting bad money drive out good money." Together with manufacturers and consumers in the industrial belt, we will form a healthy business ecology. ”