With the end of the last big promotion at the end of the year, the final battle of the e-commerce industry has come to an end. 2023 can be called one of the few years of collective change since the emergence of e-commerce platforms. The founders returned, the organizational structure was adjusted, and the ...... of accelerating going overseasBehind a series of changes, it is directly pointed to the common dilemma faced by industry players - when the general environment is full of uncertainty, incremental users continue to decrease, and stock competition continues to intensify, how can we carve up more traffic and build a moat that belongs to the platform?
It is worth noting that in the past year, the market has paid the most attention to the battle for the best. Whether it is JD.com's "low-price strategy" or Taotian Group's "first-class force" campaign, all of them are aimed at "low prices". The rapid rise of Pinduoduo and Douyin e-commerce has made the market realize that ** is an important competitiveness of the platform. However, low price does not mean low quality, what the e-commerce platform needs to do is to knock down the high-quality goods, which tests the e-commerce platform's key capabilities such as chain control, consumer demand capture, and so on.
It is foreseeable that after a year of ups and downs, the competition in the e-commerce market in 2024 is bound to be more cruel. Although major e-commerce platforms have increased their efforts to target new tracks such as live streaming and going overseas, whether they can adapt to market changes, quickly adjust from organizational structure to front-line business, and use AI technology to find new business increments are still difficult problems for major e-commerce platforms. Who can cross the cycle and stand out at the time of the industry reshuffle is still worth the market's expectations.
Taotian and Jingdong "change the commander".
With the slowdown in the growth of the Internet and the rapid rise of social e-commerce and live broadcast e-commerce, the competition in the e-commerce industry has become more and more fierce.
The founders are even more blunt that the platform must change. Among them, Ma Yunming, the founder of Alibaba, made it clear that Ali will change, and Ali will change;Liu Qiangdong, the founder of JD.com, said that JD.com must change, otherwise there is no way out.
In March 2023, Alibaba announced the launch of the "1+6+N" organizational change, which is one of the few huge organizational restructuring changes that Alibaba has undergone since its establishment. The huge Ali is split into six business groups such as Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, **Tmall Business, and Local Life, as well as a number of business companies, each group will face market competition independently, Ali said that this is to make the decision-making link shorter and respond to market changes faster.
Focusing on Taotian Group, in May, Dai Shan, then CEO of Taotian Group, said that in 2023, Tmall's growth will start from three aspects: user first, ecological prosperity, and technology-driven, and it will expand the scale of users for merchants with "historical-level huge investment". Ma Yun put forward the "return" He believes that the severe competition situation that Taotian Group is currently facing is the opportunity for the future, not Tmall.
From June to December, Taotian Group has launched a number of adjustment measures in terms of human resource structure and operation strategy. In terms of human resource structure, Taotian plans to start abolishing the P rank sequence and appointing Wu Yongming as the CEO of Alibaba Group, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group and Taotian Group at the same timeIn terms of operation strategy, in addition to the establishment of the KA service department, that is, the key customer service department, Taotian should help small and medium-sized businesses hand in hand, and also launched the "1688 Strict Selection" to accelerate the coverage of small B user groups.
As another important representative of traditional e-commerce platforms, JD Retail has undergone the largest organizational restructuring in five years. In April, JD Retail returned to the business division system from the business group system, and the heads of its five business groups were uniformly changed to the heads of the business divisionsAt the same time, for the first time, self-operated and POP services were opened up to achieve "equal rights" in traffic. Xu Ran, who just succeeded Xu Lei as CEO of JD Group in May, also served as CEO of JD Retail in November.
In addition, in April 2023, Pinduoduo also carried out another major organizational structure adjustment since the founder Huang Zheng stepped down as CEO, that is, the implementation of the co-CEO system, with co-founder Zhao Jiazhen as the co-CEO, and co-managing the company's business with the current CEO Chen Lei.
Chen Tao, a partner of Analysys Analytics, believes that the e-commerce platform has started to change, which is not only driven by external factors, but also forced by internal changes in the enterprise. If the internal organizational structure and operating system of the enterprise cannot support the needs of high growth in the future, it is necessary to find breakthroughs and adjustments internally to find greater innovation and growth.
Heavy fight ** battle
Since the beginning of this year, the continuous adjustment of the head platform of e-commerce is precisely to hope that it can adapt to the current consumption trend that has undergone great changes. The sinking market still attaches great importance to low prices, but at the same time puts forward high requirements for quality;Middle-waist consumers have become more sensitive to **, they want products that can be comparable to big brands, but also products that are cost-effective;Consumers with strong purchasing power continue to pay attention to brand value.
In the face of the stratification of consumer demand, e-commerce platforms are changing the operation strategy of the crowd and the division of the crowd. At the same time, price reduction has become a "killer feature" for e-commerce platforms to stimulate market consumption.
Jingdong took the lead in setting off a ** war. During last year's Double 11, Liu Qiangdong accused JD.com of losing its low-price advantage. Aiming at the "low-price strategy" In March 2023, JD launched the "10 billion subsidy", at that time, the senior management of JD Retail said that in the future, JD Retail will focus on the low-price target in every link to achieve "low prices every day". In the same month, Taotian also announced that it would continue to increase its efforts to the previously proposed "** force campaign". Wu Yongming said at the November financial report analyst meeting that Tmall takes "user first" and adheres to the strategy of consumption grading and strength.
By the time of the Double 11 promotion in 2023, the determination of major e-commerce platforms to pursue "low prices" has reached a high point, and the ** war continues to heat up. In Double 11, in addition to the original 10 billion subsidies and cross-store full reductions, Taotian Group launched a large-scale "official reduction" and added a new "Double 11 Daily Low Price" column. JD.com, which has returned to the low-price strategy, also shouted "really low price" on Double 11 in addition to the conventional full reduction and subsidy measures;Pinduoduo launched a single-piece discount campaign for the first time.
As consumer demand is differentiated, platforms need to change with it. This year, the platform has been further refined, not only from the consumer level, but also at the consumer demand level. This is reflected in the fact that e-commerce platforms have paid special attention to investing considerable resources in low-priced goods and low-price categories this year, which is also the way for platforms to respond to the stratification of consumer demand. Chen Tao said.
Zhuang Shuai, founder of Bailian Consulting, believes that the low-price competition between e-commerce platforms is related to the rationalization of consumption, consumers' willingness to compare prices and the improvement of their ability to compare prices. At present, low prices will continue in the future, and they will become more intense. Consumers will only consume more rationally, which puts forward higher requirements for the refined operation of the platform.
Live broadcast, go to sea,aior into a new increment
With the rise of mobile Internet and content ecology, live streaming has become a gold nugget. From entrepreneurs, entertainers, to amateurs, and brand owners, a wave of live streaming has been set off across the country in the past few years. According to the "Dianshubao" e-commerce big database, in the first half of 2023, the scale of the live broadcast e-commerce market will be about 199 trillion yuan, and it is expected that in 2023, the market size of the live broadcast e-commerce industry will reach 457 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 3044%
In 2023, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu aim to continue to increase content construction and anchor support, and JD.com is also continuing to change. From the point of view of location,After the revision,**live broadcast,**One of the three squares,Become one of the most significant entrances to the home page of the app,And Jingdong will also set up a fixed entrance for live broadcast on the home page of the app,Double 11The unexpectedly popular Jingdong procurement and sales live broadcast room has become a popular IP of JD.com,This shows the importance of the live broadcast business。
What cannot be ignored is that in addition to live broadcasting, in order to obtain new increments, "going overseas" has also become an important choice for e-commerce. In 2023, e-commerce platforms represented by Pinduoduo and Alibaba will continue to increase investment in cross-border business, and use high investment and low prices as a weapon to quickly open up overseas markets. Among them, Temu, which only officially went overseas in September 2022, has been launched in more than 40 countries in one yearAlibaba's cross-border e-commerce business has driven a significant increase in the overall revenue of Alibaba's international retail business.
On the one hand, some commodities are oversupplied in China, and the platform needs to find an outlet for digestion, and going to sea is a better way to digest supplyOn the other hand, enterprises not only have the need to survive at the top end, but also the need to continue to develop. In Chen Tao's view, the combination of these needs presents a relatively strong situation of going to sea.
It is particularly noteworthy that the popularity of large models has allowed all walks of life to see new development opportunities. Previously, Ma Yun once said that "the era of AI e-commerce has just begun, and it is both an opportunity and a challenge for everyone". In fact, in 2023, Taotian, JD.com, and Pinduoduo will all extend their tentacles to the field of AI e-commerce. Among them, Taotian launched free AI tools and AI intelligent assistants for merchants and users in the Double 11 promotion.
Chen Tao believes that in the future, the application scale of AI technology in the e-commerce industry will continue to expand. The platform can not only use AI to provide more accurate sales suggestions and technical support for merchants and brands, but also on the consumer side, based on AI, the platform can further refine consumer needs, and use AI technology to achieve more accurate push of thousands of people and even hundreds of millions of people, so as to improve transaction efficiency. He said: "If the industry confidence index rises, the platform that invests resources in advance will get several times the return." ”