The price of goods is separated from the courier fee to help buyers choose their own express delivery

With the arrival of the double "11", Nandu reporters learned from the State Post Bureau that the peak season of express delivery business in 2021 has begun on November 1. Monitoring data from the State Post Bureau shows that on November 1, a total of 569 million express parcels were received nationwide, an increase of 28.54% year-on-year. The express delivery volume of Guangdong Province and Zhejiang Province both exceeded 100 million pieces.

While the rapidly growing express delivery business facilitates our lives, there are also some industry chaos: some express delivery face sheets are sold, personal privacy is leaked; consumers cannot freely choose express delivery, and some express delivery service capabilities need to be strengthened.

Have you ever suffered from these problems? And how will it be solved?

Some netizens complained: "With the online store customer service designated to send a certain courier, the reply is very painful, the result of the logistics information check, is a certain reach"; "my family here a rabbit express delivery is not delivered to the door, I specifically instructed the store not to send a rabbit, but there is no use at all, the arrival is still a rabbit." The reporter found that on e-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Pinduoduo, the choice of express delivery brands for slightly larger merchants is generally very limited, or simply said that "express delivery brands cannot be specified."

Survey Select courier company permissions basically in e-commerce

"We have signed cooperation agreements with express delivery companies, and at present, we only send two companies, Zhongtong or Yunda." A Guangxi clothing Taobao merchant explained to reporters that in addition to price concessions, the factors of cooperation will also consider the overall service quality and network coverage.

It is not difficult to understand that the fewer express brands selected by e-commerce sellers, the higher the efficiency of packaging and delivery; at the same time, the lower the unit price of express delivery under the scale effect. Therefore, this is the lowest cost way for e-commerce sellers.

A person in charge of an industry research institution who did not want to sign his name told reporters that at present, China's e-commerce express mail accounts for more than 80% of the express delivery business, but the authority to choose a courier company belongs to e-commerce. "Because the consumption habit of free shipping has been formed, and the express delivery fee is paid by the e-commerce seller, the e-commerce seller is the 'party A' of the courier company, and whoever is low in price will use whom." And the courier company is also willing to exchange the price for the volume, especially some low-priced standards, if the amount is large, it will be earned. The person in charge told reporters.

Due to insufficient demand differentiation, express delivery companies can only adopt a competitive strategy of competing for market share at low prices, which in turn has led to the express delivery industry falling into the quagmire of price wars. Since 2018, the price of a single ticket in the core areas such as Yiwu and Wenzhou, where small commodities are centrally shipped, has dropped lower and lower, and even once significantly lower than the cost price. The gradual reduction of delivery costs and the quality of service demanded by consumers have become increasingly difficult to reconcile the two ends.

Pain points Buyers face three major bottlenecks in choosing express delivery

The State Post Bureau, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Ministry of Commerce and other seven departments jointly issued the "Opinions on Doing a Good Job in Protecting the Legitimate Rights and Interests of Courier Groups" this year, proposing that the organic interaction between e-commerce and express delivery should guide e-commerce platforms and express delivery companies to strengthen system docking to meet the differentiated needs of users, and at the same time cooperate with relevant departments to promote the implementation of the requirements of separating commodity pricing and express delivery service pricing, so that consumers can choose express delivery services according to enterprise service capabilities, business reputation and express delivery prices.

After the opinions were announced, the expression of "choosing your own express" has attracted attention from the industry, but at present, this is still a "luxury" for most online shopping consumers.

To solve this problem, we have to mention the free shipping system that has been formed for a long time in the field of e-commerce in China.

Since 2013, China has become the world's largest online retail market for 8 consecutive years, and China's online retail sales reached 11.76 trillion yuan in 2020, an increase of 10.9% over 2019. At the same time, e-commerce express delivery has become the absolute main force of China's express delivery business.

Under the e-commerce express delivery mode, the first difficulty in separating commodity pricing from express service pricing first comes from online store sellers. In the C2C model such as Taobao and Pinduoduo, e-commerce sellers are mainly based on price competition, product homogeneity is high, and they belong to a perfectly competitive market, and they pursue the lowest cost in choosing express delivery company cooperation, while the consumer's self-selected express delivery model may lead to an increase in the total price of goods, thereby losing price advantages and pushing up operating costs.

Luo Jing, an expert who has been studying the circulation of goods in China for many years and a professor at the School of Economics and Management of Guangxi Normal University, believes that Chinese consumers have become accustomed to the "arrival price" of "one price", rather than selecting and combining the "commodity price" and "express price" separately and combining billing, which has become the fundamental motivation for e-commerce sellers to choose the "lowest price" of express delivery. "E-commerce sellers simply focus on 'price advantage', and they are not motivated to pay higher prices in exchange for better services." Luo Jing said.

The second difficulty is that the e-commerce platform habitually stays in the thinking mode of "grabbing orders at low prices", "benefiting from scale" and "winner-take-all". In the early days of the industry, e-commerce platforms had to attract consumers and sellers at low prices to quickly launch the market. After the formation of the free shipping system, the consistency of the interests of e-commerce platforms and sellers determines that they have no incentive to risk rising the total price of goods and leave the choice of express delivery companies to consumers.

In addition, e-commerce platforms are inextricably linked to express delivery companies. An expert from a research institution told reporters: "Taking Taobao as an example, many express mails are received in the name of rookie wrapping, and express delivery companies can distribute orders through the system, thereby improving the 'hard connection' ability of e-commerce platforms to express delivery companies; but if the choice is left to consumers, this 'hard connection' will decline, and this is definitely what e-commerce platforms do not want to see." ”

A platform practitioner admitted that the service advantages and prices of each express delivery brand in various regions of the country are different, and the cost performance of express delivery brands is judged by the merchant, and the platform cannot intervene. Moreover, it is difficult to achieve price transparency for all express delivery brands at the technical level.

The third difficulty is the lack of voice of express delivery companies. The demand-side "free shipping" system leads to the failure of the express price signal, and the high-quality express delivery service cannot get a good price. At present, express delivery companies are still absent in promoting service differentiation.

"Giving consumers the right to choose is advantageous for courier companies, because under the same service demand, our price-performance ratio is advantageous." The relevant person in charge of a Tongda express delivery company told reporters: "Now Caught in the price war can be said to be involuntary, what we can do is indeed limited, unable to influence the situation, can play a decisive role mainly in the e-commerce side, that is, our upstream." ”

It can be seen that even if consumers are willing to pay higher prices for better express delivery services, there is currently no formal and convenient way to achieve it. In addition, for some consumers, although they cannot choose the express delivery brand under the free shipping model, the total price of the goods they purchase is also low because they do not need to pay additional courier fees.

sound

Implementing consumer choice is essential

For the future development trend, experts said that in the context of consumption upgrading, logistics experience has become one of the core competitiveness of e-commerce. Especially with the increase in the proportion of online shopping for high-value goods, the competition of e-commerce sellers will shift to quality and experience competition, and the hierarchical demand for express delivery services will become more and more urgent.

Luo Jing analyzed that in the past three years, there has been a small gap between the price of home appliances in traditional business districts and e-commerce platforms, and even the price of home appliances in traditional business districts is better than the trend of head e-commerce companies, which means that the living environment of the express delivery industry has undergone profound changes, and the practice of rapid capital "staking the land" has been attacked by the national anti-monopoly force, and it is inevitable to return to the "normal" economy, so the bundle of commodity pricing and express service pricing will be further stripped.

E-commerce and express delivery data need to be highly linked, mainstream express delivery companies to adjust the product structure, price system, in order to facilitate consumers to choose, for example, can be launched at the end of different prices to correspond to different services such as door-to-door.

At the same time, e-commerce platforms can open up value-added service options on the basis of the overall free shipping system and enhance the signal, transmission and resource allocation of prices. For example, consumers can choose a specific delivery time period, higher time limit requirements, green packaging materials, etc. when paying the corresponding premium.

Finally, after the separation of commodity pricing and express service pricing, consumers can slowly form the habit of paying express delivery fees, and promote consumers of goods to become consumers of express delivery services at the same time, so as to enjoy higher quality and more diversified express delivery services.

A04-07 Edition:

Co-ordinator Yi Fuhong Yang Cunhai

Written by: Nandu reporter Liu Miao, Fu Xiaoling, Wu Jialing, intern Zhang Mengyuan