spanned two months and the twenty-day 618 finally came to an end.
Author/Herry
Produced/New Excerpt Business Review
This week, the sales data of 618, known as the coldest in history, were announced one after another, and the results were unexpected.
Jingdong was the most high-profile. On the night after the event, it was announced that the cumulative consumption was 379.3 billion, an increase of 35.5 billion compared with last year. Subsequently, Tmall , Vipshop , Gome, etc. also successively released some sales data. Compared with last year, most categories have experienced large increases.
As the three e-commerce giants, and Pinduoduo were criticized for being "flat" in this "midterm exam". However, in Pinduoduo’s recent 618 sales reports, the sales of all categories of home appliances increased by 103%; the order volume of beauty products increased by 122%; and the sales of daily chemical products increased by 110% year-on-year.
It seems that in the coldest 618 times, Pinduoduo did not dive quietly as the outside world imagined. It was more like a white goose floating on the water. It seemed to be unmoving, but in fact it was vigorously shaking under the water.
1. Platforms compete secretly, Pinduoduo’s “minimalist” approach
This year’s 618, both on the consumer side and on the platform side, more or less presented a “dilemma” after the epidemic. Consumers have become more rational and stingy, focusing more on the practicality of products to improve their quality of life. Their strong consumer desires are concentrated in categories such as high-end home appliances, beauty and personal care, and entertainment digital products.
The first e-commerce platform echelon represented by JD.com, Tmall/Taobao and Pinduoduo seems to have kept a low profile. From the publicity point of view, under the dual influence of last year’s tightening of relevant policies on e-commerce platforms and this year’s epidemic, “cats and dogs” have lowered their voices. But if we look at actions, all the major platforms are trying their best to compete secretly.
The early bird catches the worm. JD.com has the longest pre-sale period and the greatest discounts. On May 23, JD.com took the lead in launching 618 pre-sales, extending the frontline to two months to give consumers enough time to warm up. We also generously launch discount strategies such as flash sales, flash sales, live broadcast hot sales, red envelope rain, and surprise coupons. It must be mentioned that JD.com’s discount policy has been upgraded from 30% off for purchases over 200 to 50% off for purchases over 299, surpassing many of its competitors.
Although this year’s Tmall 618 has made some subtractions in the gameplay, it still has a variety of tricks. The most fun thing is to cater to the hot spots of the Metaverse. During the 618 period, the main shopping venue of the Metaverse will be online to provide immersive virtual shopping services. In terms of profit sharing, consumers are given a 50% discount for purchases over RMB 300, as well as batch payment of deposits and three waves of batch rush. In addition, Taobao uses its advantages in live broadcasting to tilt traffic towards mid-level anchors, mobilizing the enthusiasm of anchors on all platforms to sell goods.
Looking at Pinduoduo again, the 618 gameplay strategy adopts a minimalist style, with "3 billion platform red envelopes", "10 billion subsidies" and "50 rebates for purchases over 300". The money is spread neatly and neatly, showing a posture of carrying out the counter-routine to the end .
Among the many subsidy categories, Pinduoduo is particularly generous in favoring agricultural and sideline products. It announced that red envelopes and traffic will be focused on supporting high-quality agricultural and sideline products and middle-income merchants. For the mobile phone category, Pinduoduo has joined forces with brands and operators to provide profits through tens of billions of subsidies, full discounts, and red envelopes. Especially for high-end electronic products such as iPhones, the subsidies are unparalleled.
Interestingly, on June 19, some media reported that a mobile phone seller who has been in the business for 11 years said that mobile phone sales have dropped by at least 50% this year, which is a huge headache for mobile phone manufacturers.
On the same day, Pinduoduo released a battle report on the mobile phone category "True Fragrance". During the 618 period, the sales of the mobile phone category on the platform increased by 148% year-on-year, and the order volume increased by 118% year-on-year. Stores with sales exceeding RMB 100 million have tripled their sales.
In addition to giving away profits without any tricks, Pinduoduo’s “Brand Special” that plays with new product strategies is also a highlight of this year’s promotion.
"Brand Exclusive" can be regarded as the launch of many brands created by Pinduoduo. Through the "Daily Big Brand" promotion event, an average of one leading brand is launched every day, with hot sales, cross-store rebates, and five single products. We continue to introduce "really good prices" through various methods such as discounts and limited-time order exemptions.
As soon as this move came out, many first-tier brands such as Mengniu , OPPO , Xiaomi , Asus , etc. chose to release new products on Pinduoduo, and the proportion of new products on the platform increased significantly.
In addition, Pinduoduo also teamed up with brands to create a platform "exclusively available".
"Beili" is an exclusive product jointly created by the "Light of Domestic Products" Pechoin and Pinduoduo. During the 618 period, the sales of this series of products increased by 450% year-on-year; Neutrogena and Pinduoduo jointly incubated the second generation A Alcohol Night Cream; Dabao has specially developed Pinduoduo’s customized production line based on the needs of platform users in terms of ingredients, efficacy, usage, etc.
These customized “exclusive” products performed well during the event.
2. Side B of the report card, each platform shows its skills
Under the epidemic, it is difficult to answer the 618 answer paper beautifully, and the major platforms have tried their best to survive through differentiation.
Tmall deletes the complicated and simplifies it, focuses on the price, and tries its best to retain existing customers. It not only eliminates the brain-burning ways to save money, but also focuses on refined services such as price guarantees and refunds to improve user experience throughout the entire chain. JD.com has increased its investment in logistics, extended its tentacles to the lower market to seek more customers, and improved delivery accuracy and operational efficiency through comprehensive upgrades of its "three-in-one" supply chain technology.
For Pinduoduo, leveraging sales can either increase sales or increase unit price per customer. Pinduoduo’s response strategy is - uses subsidies to increase sales, and jointly launches "brand specials" to increase unit price per customer, jointly boosting the sales curve.
Currently, Pinduoduo has 880 million users. Faced with the reality that the traffic dividend is gradually disappearing and the user growth rate is close to peaking, if we want to maintain our performance growth, it is imperative to explore higher-quality user groups to increase the unit price and trading volume, thereby increasing profits.
Direct subsidies are the most immediate way.
Take the agricultural products category that Pinduoduo is “attacking” as an example. This year’s 618 Pinduoduo passed tens of billions of subsidies and on the basis of zero commission on agricultural products, continued to expand the coverage and subsidy intensity of high-quality agricultural products, and opened up the demand for agricultural product consumption. gap.
's "Duoduomaicai" and "Instant Sales Group" rely on preferential prices and use short-term sales to open up markets and find sales for unsalable agricultural products in a timely manner.
Another way for Pinduoduo to increase sales is to increase the unit price per customer through “brand special events”. As we all know, Pinduoduo started by focusing on low prices. Now, if we want to make greater profits as much as possible, we can only increase the price per customer as much as possible while ensuring sales volume.
In Pinduoduo’s view, locking in the brand strategy is the most effective way. After all, the current price advantage of most brand flagship stores on the platform is still obvious, and promoting the brand strategy can continue to increase the price per customer.
In another move, Pinduoduo teamed up with brands to create "platform-exclusive" hot products. was based on the consideration of brand penetration into high-end consumer groups and expanding the incremental market.
618 During the period, Pinduoduo’s sales of daily chemical products increased by 110% year-on-year. The reason why the daily chemical category on the platform has been able to grow against the trend is not only due to its attributes that are essential for life, but also the most important reason is that it is based on the concept of Pinduoduo shopping and uses user preferences to force product production, that is, it combines the quality, benefits and expectations of users. The industry hopes to integrate precise production and sales matching to produce daily chemical products that are "matched" to users.
Unilever adjusted this year’s 618 promotion plan based on the user portraits presented by Pinduoduo platform data. Data shows that a large part of the store's consumers are single white-collar workers and other young groups in second- and third-tier cities, and they prefer small-sized products.
So Unilever launched a variety of small-sized customized products to cover different customer groups and consumption scenarios. On that day, less than 10 minutes after the sales started for tens of thousands of people, Unilever's 2,500 items in stock were sold out, and the subsequent emergency replenishment of 5,500 items was also sold out within 30 minutes.
3. Behind the anti-routine, Pinduoduo insists on "industry" to break the situation
Dongfang Selection, which has recently become popular on Douyin, relies on feelings and talents to get out of the circle, and single-handedly boosted Douyin Agricultural and sideline products, books, etc. during the 618 period Category sales. This year, unlike Pinduoduo’s low profile, live streaming e-commerce companies Douyin and Kuaishou took advantage of the situation to increase their volume in an attempt to further encroach on market share.
The excitement is always accompanied by doubts. Corn that costs 6 yuan a piece, moldy and rotten peaches... once pushed Oriental Selection to the forefront.
In fact, price and logistics have never been issues that need to be solved urgently for Oriental to choose a live broadcast e-commerce company. The short video e-commerce platform that live broadcast merchants rely on, although it is compatible with many sellers such as Pinduoduo, JD.com, Taoxi, etc., has an advantage in traffic even over WeChat, and the AI algorithm has to be more accurate in profiling users, but Without self-operated products, the inability to control the supply chain is always a fatal shortcoming.
So faced with the problem of rotten peaches, the person in charge of Oriental Selection said frankly that he will create more of his own products in the future and continue to work hard on the supply chain.
Although there are shortcomings, it has to be said that the content e-commerce platform represented by Douyin Kuaishou has given a powerful blow to the traditional e-commerce platform. As the cost of consumer decision-making becomes higher and higher, users are more inclined to directly enter the live broadcast room of the host to select products, which saves time and money. But for brand owners, under the attack of live broadcast e-commerce, if the traditional route lacks exposure, the products will inevitably be buried.
This is not only a problem faced by merchants alone, but also a problem faced by traditional e-commerce platforms. How to solve the problem of
? Pinduoduo chose to make a big fuss about "holding the low-price market" and "breaking through the high customer unit price".
In addition to using tens of billions of subsidies to benefit consumers without resorting to counter-routines, Pinduoduo also engages in "counter-routines" on the supply side - gathering users' massive shopping needs and using best-selling models to increase sales. Use C2M to realize reverse customized products.
Take the previously mentioned Unilever and Liby Group as examples. Pinduoduo’s data analysis was referenced in the product design and production process. It was found that user portraits are mainly young people in small towns who pursue cost-effectiveness and quality, and targeted this It specializes in the research and development of cleaning and care products for a user group, and launches dosage specifications that are popular among young people.
In this way, the procurement process has been greatly streamlined, the supply chain has been compressed to the shortest possible length, and circulation costs have been kept to the lowest level, thus holding on to the low-price market. It can be said that it kills two birds with one stone.
Pinduoduo, which started at a low price outside the Fifth Ring Road, has in recent years made great efforts to increase the price per customer through branding. In addition to spending their own money to invite big brands to settle in, they also go deep into the upstream of production, increase investment in research and development, and establish self-operated brands. Take agriculture as an example. In recent years, Pinduoduo has continuously invested tens of billions of profits in setting up the "Ten Billion Agricultural Research" project to invest in agricultural technology. It has also held the "Duoduo Agricultural Research Technology Competition" to develop high-quality, high-yield agricultural products. agricultural products to match market and user needs.
Continuously improving infrastructure construction and promoting the platform's contract performance capabilities are another means for Pinduoduo to retain customers.For example, flowers from Yunnan and coconuts from Hainan will be delivered to the door of Northeast Laotie in the shortest time, and cantaloupe from Turpan can go directly from the field to the dining table in 48 hours... This is due to Pinduoduo’s cooperation with more than a thousand domestic companies. Through cooperation between agricultural producing areas, most agricultural products can be shipped directly from their origin.
In the product circulation process, Pinduoduo has developed an "intelligent agricultural product processing system" that can accurately match various agricultural products to target consumers during their maturity period. This system inputs information about major production areas, including geographical location, specialty products, and maturity cycles. After system calculations, it will immediately open up a fast channel for scattered agricultural products to reach 880 million users. Fundamentally solve the problem of fresh food spoilage.
looks like he is lying down, but in fact he is practicing hard on his inner strength. It is not difficult for those who are careful to find that in recent years, Pinduoduo has moved from an e-commerce platform that relies on "burning money for growth" to the upper reaches of the industry chain, using one end to connect to the broadest consumer market, and the other to link to the digital advantages accumulated over the years. , firmly holding the ownership of products and supply chains in their own hands.
In this year’s 618, Pinduoduo never mentioned GMV, but successfully entered the fifth ring.
