The e-commerce price war is in full swing, and Pinduoduo will also officially launch the "digital home appliance consumption season" tens of billions of subsidies in April 2023.
In the first quarter, an additional 1 billion will be added to the 10 billion subsidy, and a full category of subsidies will be provided for various digital home appliances such as mobile phones and tablets. Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi, Midea and other major domestic and foreign brands will participate. The relevant person in charge of Pinduoduo said that most of this event is a brand flagship store, with official authentic guarantees, and "all activities are directly subsidized by the official", and there is "no fear of price comparison" across the entire network.
In addition to the full confidence in the price, the timing of the start of Pinduoduo's "consumption season" is even more intriguing.
April 6th is more than two months earlier than the traditional e-commerce shopping festival 6.18. It does not follow the trend and does not follow the hot spots. In addition, since June 2019, the uninterrupted tens of billions of subsidies, Pinduoduo's subsidies Promotional activities have actually become normalized.
This actually means that Pinduoduo is seeking to reshape the business logic of China's e-commerce: to develop daily consumption habits, instead of sports-style concentrated surprise shopping; to return to economic rationality, instead of festival ritual carnival.
In the past two decades, China's e-commerce platforms have experienced a period of rapid expansion rarely seen in the world. During this period of time, online shopping, as a new thing, has grown from nothing, from less to more, and has gradually become popular and become an indispensable way of life for many Chinese.
Dates such as 6.18 and Double Eleven originally had no special meaning, but by coincidence, they have become conventional "festivals". In terms of influence and number of participants, they have even surpassed many traditional festivals.
In the eyes of many people, these shopping festivals are not only promotional activities, but also have distinct ritual elements and connotations of consumer culture.
Some scholars once commented that the dazzling discounts, the publicity of big stars, the advertisements that constantly swiped the screen, and the numbers that broke the record again and again constituted the "society of the spectacle" conceptualized by the French thinker Debord.
In this landscape, the e-commerce platform has created an amazing consumer community through the construction of symbolic meanings, the instillation of online shopping pop culture and the collection of virtual fields, and guides the public to periodically join this game called "shopping" Festival" carnival.
Consumption is originally a private activity that is "not humane", but after the shopping festival, many people are very happy to show their "results" on the day, which proves that shopping festival consumption has transformed into a full-fledged activity . Collective behavior of "ritual sense".
Here, the role of the product itself is not important, but the behavior of participating in shopping is important; personal needs are not important, but being able to participate in activities and experience the "festival" atmosphere is the most important.
Some scholars criticize the shopping festival as a "fantasy service" that uses temporary illusion and enthusiasm to attract people to complete consumption.
However, this fantasy cannot last forever, and as time goes by, more and more people realize this.
Many people find that the prices of the products they fancy will suddenly increase before the festival, and when the promotion comes, they will "fall" back to their original positions. In order to cope with the shopping festival, this kind of business has become an open secret by "rising first and then falling".
At the same time, increasingly complex discount calculation formulas and time-limited flash sales of "no second" are constantly wearing down the patience of consumers.
Consumers stay up all night waiting for the flash sale to start grabbing, carefully calculating the full discount to collect coupons, and finally find that the price is not much different from usual. The excitement brought about by the shopping spree will naturally fade quickly, and will soon turn into disappointment and regret.
Therefore, the high sales volume on the day of the festival can only "look beautiful", and the high return rate on the next day has generally caused headaches for merchants in recent years.
And this coming and going, apart from idling social resources, did not bring any actual benefits. Therefore, in the past few years, some e-commerce festivals have shown signs of fatigue, and the total turnover has stagnated or even declined.
In fact, the concentrated surprise consumption created by the shopping festival itself is not sustainable.
For the vast number of users, although consumption desire can be influenced by external forces and mobilized in a short period of time, in the long run, everyone's consumption ability is limited after all. The Internet joke of "chic during the festival, eat dirt after the festival" is accurate, although it is ridicule.
The concentrated release of shopping demand within a day or two is actually a fickle numbers game, which suppresses the normal consumption demand in normal times.
It is also not good news for merchants. The pressure from customer service, delivery, and feedback exploded within a few days. The sudden increase in workload will inevitably lead to a decline in service quality and increase conflicts between buyers and sellers. This makes the short-term shopping festival no longer an opportunity for promotion, but more and more like an artificial burden.
According to relevant reports, several shopping festivals are the peak period of user complaints, and the number of complaints is about 1.5 times that of usual, which is equivalent to "3.15".
In addition, the logistics industry often "lays guns" because of this. It is not news that the courier brother "resigned as a refugee" before the shopping festival. The various delays caused by the backlog of express delivery have in turn increased the troubles of consumers.
In the end, consumers will find that the shopping festival has run counter to the original promise: the price of goods may not be reduced, but the service has deteriorated and the express delivery has slowed down. As a result, people's enthusiasm for the shopping festival has dropped again and again.
At the same time, the number of Internet users in China has peaked, and online shopping has become commonplace. And when each platform can't use freshness to compete for growth, then what method to use to keep the stock has become a question that every e-commerce must answer.
In this regard, Pinduoduo's answer is people-oriented, returning to the essence.
When we strip off the grand coat of the shopping festival, we can actually find that online shopping is essentially an economic activity. Consumers have certain needs, merchants provide products to meet the needs, and then the two parties complete the transaction through the e-commerce platform, and the whole process is nothing more than that. For consumers, the core focus is "affordable", "real" represents real demand, and "benefit" represents price concessions.
But in the past period of time, this most important point has been ignored.
Some platforms are keen to try their best to pile up sales data during the shopping festival, and continue to use record numbers to prove their success.
At the same time, these platforms also like to "thank" and "praise" the vast number of users in a sensational and story-telling way, as if this kind of collective shopping is some kind of sacred cause that urgently needs the participation of the whole society.
And the real intention behind it is to create user stickiness emotionally through ritualized fantasy services.
On the contrary, Pinduoduo proposed "every day is 618", choosing to return to the essence of commercial operation through tens of billions of subsidies in real money.
It can be said that Pinduoduo is unveiling the emperor's new clothes of e-commerce marketing in the most unpretentious way.
This "Digital Home Appliances Consumption Season" does not have intricate designs for full discounts, a digital game of first falling and then rising, only the most direct subsidy policy.
iPhone14 Pro Max, on the basis of tens of billions of subsidies, will be reduced by another 100 yuan to 7,299 yuan, Huawei Mate 50 will start as low as 4,049 yuan, Xiaomi inverter air conditioners will be as low as 1,599 yuan, and Midea French refrigerators will also be reduced by another 300 yuan on the basis of tens of billions of subsidies Yuan to 2199 yuan, these prices are more favorable than any platform.
Pinduoduo's direct subsidy policy is constantly winning the recognition of the market. Pinduoduo’s user scale and number of brands have continued to grow rapidly, and the number of digital home appliance brands has increased by more than 55% year-on-year. By the first quarter of this year, the number of Pinduoduo’s buyers exceeded 800 million.
In addition to price concessions, Pinduoduo also promises to let consumers "buy with peace of mind and return with peace of mind", and has launched a series of service upgrades in terms of logistics and after-sales service.
In order to allow consumers to get timely feedback and solve problems, Pinduoduo now requires stores to have a response rate of no less than 70% within 5 minutes, and a response rate of no less than 80% within 3 minutes. The delivery time of most categories has been shortened from 72 hours to 48 hours, and remote areas such as Xinjiang and Tibet have been upgraded to "free shipping areas", so that consumers in these areas can also enjoy the benefits of logistics development.
What's more valuable is that Pinduoduo has noticed the special disadvantaged status of the elderly in online shopping, and the after-sales policy has further favored them. In addition to the original shopping area for the elderly, an exclusive customer service function has been added to make it easier for the elderly to protect their rights and improve the shopping experience.
Various measures have allowed Pinduoduo to open up a new battlefield outside the shopping festival. E-commerce platforms must directly compete on service quality and discounts.
It can be said that Pinduoduo took the initiative to attack beyond the shopping festival, which proves that it has grown from a respondent to the original e-commerce issue to a questioner who actively sets the agenda. The catfish effect brought about by the "10 billion subsidy" is rapidly stirring the spring water of China's e-commerce.
On March 6, JD.com launched its own "10 billion subsidy" project, trying to regain its disadvantage. This time, Pinduoduo launched the "digital home appliance consumption season" to subsidize all categories of digital home appliances. It is also a head-to-head confrontation in the field that JD.com is best at. As for whether more players will participate in the future, we can wait and see.
Finally, as consumers, we are naturally happy to see Pinduoduo take the lead in changing the current e-commerce environment, and hope that more platforms can return to the origin of business operations. Work together to reduce online shopping routines and implement discounts, so that consumers and merchants can be less entangled and more calm. This is the healthy way for the development of e-commerce, and it is also the result we are most looking forward to.