Whether it is the Meituan that crawled out of the "Battle of Hundred Regiments", the two oligarchs of e-commerce in the "Battle of Cats and Dogs", or Tencent, which treats all rival links as "inducing sharing", it uses its monopoly position. The threat of competitive advantage is the "unannounced secret" of platform giants for many years. Finally, before this year's "Double Eleven", the first rules for platform-based economic monopoly were issued, and the gameplay of the "giant economy" has reached the moment when it has to change.
On November 10, the State Administration for Market Regulation publicly solicited opinions on the "Guidelines for Anti-Monopoly in the Field of Platform Economy (Consultation Draft)" (hereinafter referred to as the "Consultation Draft"). And this signifies that the laws and regulations that restrict platform-based companies from using monopoly status to conduct unfair competition using methods such as "choose one" or "big data" have changed from the narrow e-commerce under the framework of the "E-commerce Law". , To extend its tentacles to the broad platform economy.
"Consultation Draft" pointed out that monopoly agreements in the field of platform economy mainly refer to agreements, decisions, or other concerted actions by platform operators and operators within the platform to exclude or restrict competition. It covers the determination of market dominance, unfair price behavior, below-cost sales, restricted transactions, differential treatment (big data), tie-in sales, or additional unreasonable trading conditions. Once the "Draft for Comment" was released, the capital market responded. The stock prices of Internet giants fell collectively during the day, and the stock prices of JD.com and Meituan once fell more than 10%. As of the close, Meituan fell 10.5%, Jingdong Group fell 8.78%, and Alibaba fell more than 5%.
The major e-commerce companies are currently in the "Double Eleven" promotion season. Although the behavior of e-commerce companies for coercing stores to sign "exclusive agreements" has been passed since the promulgation of the new "E-commerce Law" in 2019, platform-based companies continue to gain asymmetric competitive advantages through "exclusive agreements" in areas that have not been explicitly prohibited.
Previously, Ant Group was pushed to the forefront in the financial circle because of its exclusive agency agreement signed by its Ant Fortune in the process of selling Ant Group allotment funds. After that, it was rumored in the market that the China Securities Regulatory Commission was investigating the role of Alipay in this matter, and there were also rumors that Ant Group was suspended for its IPO.
Since the "E-commerce Law" framed "choose one out of two" illegally, the phenomenon of "choose one out of two" in the e-commerce circle has partially stopped fighting. However, outside the e-commerce circle, there are still platform-based economies such as taxi-hailing, payment, financial management, and food delivery as "outside the law." The promulgation of the aforementioned "Draft for Solicitation of Comments" will restrict the vacuum of laws and regulations in related fields.
In fact, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the Central Cyberspace Administration of China, and the State Administration of Taxation have issued "strict supervision" signals in advance of the use of market dominance to implement unfair competition.
It is reported that on November 6, the above three departments jointly held an administrative guidance meeting on regulating online economic order. Representatives of 27 major Internet platform companies including JD.com, Meituan and 58.com Tencent attended the meeting. The meeting drew a number of red lines for Internet companies and clearly pointed out that they must not abuse their dominant position to force merchants to "choose one of two", and must not rely on algorithm recommendations, artificial intelligence and big data analysis to conduct "invisible" unfair competition behavior.
In fact, the unfair competition behavior of various Internet organizations has been running for ten years.
Alibaba: Payment and e-commerce infrastructure, exclusive sales funds cause controversy
An obvious example is that before the listing of Ant Group, the five innovative future funds that participated in the strategic placement of ant new shares were exclusively sold by Ant Fund on the Alipay platform. Exclusive sales, the "exclusive sales" of 5 targeted strategic allotment funds have caused market criticism, and this is precisely because of the large size of its own platform, which has sufficient confidence to carry out exclusive sales. At the same time, because Alipay is highly tied to Tmall Taobao and its many payment scenarios, it will add a higher lock-in effect to users, which makes the time cost for users to switch between Internet companies higher, and it is invisible for users to make choices. The threshold.
In addition, in the field of e-commerce, it is mainly divided into Taobao Tmall and its affiliated logistics system. Among them, Taobao and Tmall accounted for nearly 56% of GMV in 2019, and are in a dominant position. Therefore, it has become possible to use their market position to conduct so-called "exclusive binding" with merchants. On October 9 this year, the Supreme People’s Court published a Judgment Dissent ruling on the China Judgment Document. The second instance found that the Beijing High Court had jurisdiction over the case, rejected Tmall’s appeal, and sued JD.com against Tmall’s “two The "choose one" lawsuit is placed in public view.
Jingdong suedSince 2013, Tmall has continued to use methods such as "signing exclusive agreements" and "exclusive cooperation" to require that many brand merchants such as apparel and home furnishing stores in Tmall are not allowed to participate in promotional activities on JD.com, and are not allowed to open stores in JD.com. Conduct operations. This is undoubtedly proof that Tmall has used its volume advantage to bind merchants and engage in malicious market competition.
In the express delivery industry downstream of e-commerce, the logistics system of its Cainiao Alliance has grown larger because of its backing on Taobao e-commerce. The two together constitute the "infrastructure" of the e-commerce field, not to mention the live broadcast that has emerged in the past two years. E-commerce, Taobao Live is also one of the largest e-commerce live broadcast platforms. Putting aside the chaos of counterfeit goods in the early days of Taobao’s expansion, the double eleven rules that are becoming more and more complex every year have made users spend too much time and cost in order to enjoy small discounts, and the lack of choice of sales platforms is invisibly limited. Leeway for users.
Jingdong: Big data is familiar with negative scams, and Jingdong Digital’s "technological stock" attribute is suspicious.
For JD.com, it mainly consists of JD.com, JD Logistics and JD.com. However, due to its asset-heavy self-operated model, JD.com can’t compare with Taobao in terms of volume. It accounts for about 20% of GMV in China. However, the unique experience of JD’s express and self-operated products is its moat. From this perspective, the existence of JD.com and its logistics system and Taobao system constitute an oligarchic competition situation, which to some extent is a good thing for the healthy development of the market. Z1z
But Jingdong also has its own problems. Due to its technological advantages in big data, JD will implement price discrimination based on users' shopping frequency. Therefore, the negative news of "big data kills familiarity" often appears. Moreover, as the e-commerce field becomes increasingly oligopolistic, consumers have "nowhere to go" before they come out of the wolf's claws and enter the tiger's mouth again.
In addition, JD Baitiao and JD Gold Bars under JD Digital, on the 2C business side, recently appeared fraud cases in which fraud gangs pretended to be JD Financial customer service to deceive users to cash out; in addition, JD Baitiao was stolen and brushed one after another. Although JD Digital's external publicity mainly relies on the digital transformation needs of traditional enterprises (whether merchants, financial institutions or the government), JD Digital's white bars and gold bars still account for nearly half of JD Digital's revenue.
Meituan: "Remove" Alipay and force "choose one"
. As a life service giant, Meituan has the absolute right to speak in areas such as food delivery, hotels, and in-store consumption. Its market value once surpassed ICBC, which shows the market Optimistic about its prospects. Z1z
But on the other hand, Meituan started to take advantage of its platform to grab some rights that belonged to consumers after "being overwhelmed by the cold".
In 2018, there were media reports that Meituan successively closed the service interfaces of service providers such as Yinhe Baocheng and Chensen on July 16. Most of these closed service providers have in-depth cooperation with other food delivery apps.
Previously, merchants could use the cash register system platform provided by these service providers to manage and count the orders of various online platforms and offline orders in a unified manner. After these platform service interfaces are closed, if merchants want to continue to take orders at Meituan Takeaway, they must change to other methods. Meituan has opened the original merchant-end ordering method. But this also means that merchants cannot use a unified platform for orders, and work efficiency is bound to decrease.
As of the second quarter of 2020, Meituan and Ele.me have captured nearly 95% of the take-out market share, of which Meituan has a 64.1% share, and Ele.me and Xingxuan have a combined share of 33.7%. The dominance of the "infrastructure" level in the food delivery field has made it an issue in payment methods.
On July 29, 2020, when using Meituan Pay, some users found that Meituan monthly payment and bank card payment occupy the priority position, and Alipay payment is no longer displayed, while WeChat Pay and ApplePay are still on the payment selection list. This is not the first time Meituan has cancelled Alipay payment. In 2016 and 2018, two users reported that Meituan could not use Alipay to pay for meals.
It is true that Meituan has built a payment barrier in the face of Alipay's aggressive approach. However, it is also a fact that its method infringes the user's legal right of choice. Enhancing one's own competitiveness can be accomplished by improving user experience, etc., allowing consumers to make their own choices, rather than simply "physical elimination", so that they have to "choose one." Z1z
Tencent: Backed by traffic, build a high wall
Tencent as a social network and"Infrastructure" builders in the derivative field control the industry's unparalleled user traffic through QQ and WeChat. Therefore, at the level of information sharing derived from social relationships, there is also the phenomenon of monopolistic practices based on dominance. Z1z
