CCTV Beijing, December 11 (Reporter Guo Jiali) The New Year is approaching, and the New Year's Festival has become a marketing node for many businesses. Many e-commerce platforms and anchors are also in full swing preparing for live streaming. However, recently, the topic of e-commerce platforms competing for "pricing power" with head anchors has rushed to the hot search many times, and the business experience behind the "myth" of live streaming has also attracted much attention.
On September 28 this year, the domestic shampoo brand Fengsi said on its official Weibo, "It is indeed difficult for domestic products, but it is not Huaxizi that is difficult, but those domestic brands that are diligent and pragmatic and put all steel hammers into R&D and production." In addition, Fengsi also broke the news on its Weibo that in the live broadcast e-commerce industry, "domestic products require 40% commission to start, and foreign goods start at 20%, which is just the start". If the brand wants to cooperate with the big anchor, it also needs to sign a "lowest price agreement".
This "lowest price agreement" reflects the "unspoken rules" of the live streaming industry. Recently, a reporter from CCTV found that in the crowded live broadcast track, data traffic is a key indicator to measure the popularity of anchors, but it seems that there are various "routines" hidden behind the data of "god-making". According to industry insiders, generally speaking, the pricing power of goods is in the hands of the brand, but the head anchor and the company will have a separate negotiation system, and they must "break the price" (referring to pressing the ** to the lowest), so it is not uncommon to sign a reserve price agreement.
Why is the commission of domestic products higher than that of foreign goods?
People are big brands, the brands are different, the treatment is not the same, and the market rules are like this. Cheng Dong, a domestic skin care brand manufacturer, said.
Cheng Dong's skincare brand sales channels are mainly online. In addition to selling in the brand's self-operated live broadcast room, the current sales method of live streaming accounts for more than 60%, and it has cooperated with large and small Internet celebrities.
He told reporters that he had found Internet celebrities to do many live broadcasts to bring goods, and the best one was a single product sales of about 600,000 yuan. But in this live broadcast, he lost 20,000 or 30,000 yuan.
We have to give the anchor a pit fee of 200,000 yuan, and we have to pay 20% of the commission, plus samples, travel and other expenses, and spend almost 350,000 yuan on the anchor. Cheng Dong said that he also has to bear the costs of packaging, delivery, logistics and transportation, customer service, return and exchange. Even if the production cost has been compressed to the extreme, it still does not make money.
If you have to lose money, you should advertise. Cheng Dong said that this is mainly due to two considerations. The first is to rush the sales of the store, the cumulative sales of the store on the platform are higher, and the organic traffic of the store will be more. The second is to let more consumers know about the brand, experience the product, and increase the repurchase rate.
Some foreign famous brands are well-known, so the sales volume is high. Xiao Jing, a beauty blogger on a short ** platform, said that some unknown domestic brands have less volume, and the share will be higher. For well-known foreign brands, the commission is not high, but the volume is very high.
Li Bo, the head of the operation of an MCN agency in Hangzhou, believes that the main factors affecting the commission of domestic and foreign goods are cost and brand premium. Foreign goods enter the Chinese market to charge tariffs, the cost is high, coupled with high visibility, sales are also high, and the commission is less. The cost of domestic products is controllable, the gross profit is high, and the commission is high.
In the view of Lin Hao, the founder of an MCN institution in Hangzhou, whether it is a domestic product or a foreign product, whether the product sells well is the key factor affecting the level of commission. "Big-name beauty products are not worried about selling, and even anchors will beg to sell in order to rush the entire transaction volume, and the commission will naturally not be too high. He said that behind this is not only the pursuit of sales by anchors, but also the current logic of the live broadcast delivery algorithm.
The cat behind the traffic.
9.9 yuan a box of small Coke, on the link!”
Knock it down, 179 yuan a box**, 80 pieces in hand, on the link!”
In our eyes, such products belong to drainage products and transaction products, which are the data of the live broadcast room. Lin Hao said. "The same is true for the common 95 yuan charging 100 yuan phone card in the live broadcast room. Consumers think that they have a bargain, but the actual anchor does not lose at all. ”
He revealed that in a live broadcast, the anchor has a "layout" for the product. Some products are charged pit fees, but the products that cost pit fees are often not sold well because they are not well-known. In order to achieve traffic and transaction volume in the live broadcast room, it is necessary to choose products with strong shipping capacity to be sold together. "For example, if a recognized big-name beauty brand can make hundreds of orders, the whole data is better. ”
The data of "good-looking" is related to the income of the anchor and the traffic of the live broadcast room. The reporter learned in the interview that according to the algorithm distribution mechanism, the anchor with goods needs to convert the premiere traffic in the live broadcast room into orders, and the live broadcast room with more transactions and higher conversion rates can be pushed to more consumers.
The number of people in the live broadcast room, the number of viewers, interactions, stay time, order conversion rate, total transaction amount, etc. are all criteria for measuring the quality of a live broadcast room. If it is recognized as a high-quality live broadcast room, it means that it will get more traffic, attract more first-class businessmen, and get a better mechanism to enter a virtuous circle.
Under the coercion of traffic anxiety, in addition to the "routines" in product layout, data fraud such as buying fans and brushing orders is also common.
Lin Hao said that if the products of twenty or thirty yuan are usually sold for a few dollars for welfare, it is normal to be robbed in an instant, and this is usually called "holding orders" in the industry. If the price of this product in the live broadcast room is about the same as the usual purchase**, and the cost performance is not high, and the conversion rate suddenly exceeds 15%, this may have moisture.
The reporter found that if you enter keywords such as "popularity in the live broadcast room" and "fans in the live broadcast room" on a certain platform, there will be many "live broadcast room ** audience maintenance" and "popular" stores. The reporter randomly clicked on a store that had sold "3000+", and after sending the product link, the customer service staff sent a *** code.
After adding WeChat, the customer service said that the order depends on whether to send an empty package ("empty package" means that the merchant needs to send an express delivery after placing the order) or a refund order (the "refund order" does not need to be sent). In addition, the store also provides services such as real machine listing, real interaction, and live broadcast room likes, of which real interaction requires 25 yuan per person, starting from 20 people.
The selling price of the swiping business in the live broadcast room of a platform provided by the merchant (issued by the central broadcasting network).
According to the Measures for the Administration of Online Livestreaming Marketing (for Trial Implementation) implemented in 2021, livestream room operators and livestream marketers must not engage in the following conduct in online livestreaming marketing activities: publishing false or misleading information, deceiving or misleading users, marketing counterfeit and shoddy goods, infringing intellectual property rights, or products that do not meet the requirements for protecting personal and property safety, and fabricating or tampering with data traffic such as transactions, followers, views, and likes.
Li Baolian, a lawyer at Beijing Jingshi Law Firm, said that the behavior of buying powder and brushing orders is essentially data fraud, which constitutes false publicity, violates consumers' right to know and fair trade, violates consumer rights and interests protection, anti-unfair competition law and other laws, and will face administrative penalties such as fines and revocation of business licenses by the competent administrative department, and in serious cases, civil liability and even criminal liability.
The "tug-of-war" between the anchor and the brand
Live streaming is like a game qualifying. Lin Hao said that for example, if an anchor's live broadcast room can sell two or three million stably per game, the live broadcast room will be rated as A-level. If it only sells two or three hundred thousand after that, the rating will drop to C, and the traffic in the live broadcast room will decline. "It's very difficult to go up from C-level, and it may take 10 or 20 live broadcasts with millions of data to pull it up. Therefore, after many big anchors become famous, some product fields do not dare to connect randomly, and they will not hesitate to swipe orders to maintain a high transaction volume. ”
Some anchors sell 20 million, and maybe even 19 million are brushed out. Because the high and stable transaction data is the embodiment of the anchor's ability to bring goods, it also determines how much authority the anchor has. Lin Hao said.
Lin Hao revealed that this is the operation team's gameplay, and some brands do not know about it. **Chain supply will look at the transaction data of the anchor's live broadcast room for one month. Many people don't know how the amount of data rushes up.
Xiao Jing has 5 million followers on a certain platform. She told reporters that it is difficult to say how much authority an anchor of her level is, because the transaction data of each transaction with goods changes greatly, and the anchor authority and ** also fluctuate randomly according to the turnover and sales volume.
The reporter learned that at present, the anchor is divided into four levels: head, shoulder, middle waist and tail according to the number of fans and the amount of goods, and there are three forms of fees: pure commission, pit fee + commission and only pit fee. However, the specific method to be adopted depends on the anchor's coffee position and the brand's considerations.
The anchor takes the goods from the brand, and they all expect the lowest and high commission. But good mechanisms and low prices are limited to celebrities and big head anchors, and middle-waist anchors have no rights, because the replaceability is too strong. Li Bo said.
Cheng Dong told reporters that generally speaking, the pricing power of goods is in the hands of the brand, but the head anchor has a separate system. "Because the head anchor and the company occupy a large amount of traffic resources, they must want to 'break the price', so it is not uncommon to sign a reserve price agreement. ”
The reporter consulted a "live broadcast cooperation contract" signed by a star artist and a brand, in which the artist team required the brand to submit the minimum ** and sales details of the product on major shopping platforms in the past 30 days. In addition, the terms of the contract state that "the brand shall ensure that the ** of the cooperative product in this live broadcast within 30 days before and after the live broadcast is the lowest price sold on the whole network (except for fresh food, big promotions, official unilateral welfare subsidies, and ** adjustments caused by the breach of contract and price breaking by the artist or platform)".
The relevant clauses in the contract on the "lowest price" (issued by the Central Broadcasting Network).
In August this year, the Shanghai Administration for Market Regulation issued an announcement to solicit public comments on the "Shanghai Compliance Guidelines for Online Live Streaming Marketing Activities (Revised Draft for Comments)", which also clearly stated that live broadcast room operators should not require operators on the platform to sign "lowest price agreements" or other unreasonably exclusive mandatory terms.
Fu Jian, director of Henan Zejin Law Firm, said that similar agreements such as "insurance contracts" or "lowest price agreements" usually refer to the agreement between the anchor and the brand to ensure that the goods sold in the anchor's live broadcast room shall not be lower than a certain designation, otherwise the brand will need to pay liquidated damages.
He said that from a legal point of view, such agreements do not directly constitute a monopoly, but if the anchor uses its market influence to force or induce the brand to sign such an agreement to restrict the competition of other competitors, it may be suspected of violating the anti-monopoly law.
Build a new pattern of pluralistic co-governance.
According to the monitoring data of the China Consumers Association, during the monitoring period from October 20 to November 16, there were 156 negative information about "live streaming".50,000 pieces, accounting for 47 of the complaining information99%, involving ** monopoly, vulgar goods, false propaganda and other issues.
In March 2022, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the State Administration of Taxation, and the State Administration for Market Regulation issued the "Opinions on Further Regulating the Profit-making Behavior of Online Livestreaming to Promote the Healthy Development of the Industry" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"). The Opinions clearly point out that online live streaming platforms and online live streaming publishers shall not use service agreements, transaction rules, and technical means to impose unreasonable restrictions or impose unreasonable conditions on other business operators' transactions and transactions in live broadcast rooms, or charge unreasonable fees to merchants.
On October 30, the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Justice issued the "Compliance Guidelines for the Live Broadcast E-commerce Industry (Draft for Comments)", which mainly includes four chapters: General Provisions, Key Points of Compliance and Risk Prevention, Construction of Compliance Mechanism, and Supplementary Provisions, with a total of 46 provisions, listing rules and drawing red lines for the live broadcast e-commerce industry.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, in the first 10 months of this year, the national live broadcast sales exceeded 22 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 589%, accounting for 181%。
Huang Xiaohong, Secretary-General of the Hangzhou Live Broadcast E-commerce Enterprise Compliance Work Alliance, said that in recent years, China's e-commerce live broadcast industry has ushered in vigorous development, which has not only activated the consumer market, but also exposed many problems. E-commerce live streaming involves many stakeholders, and under the leadership of the leading department, we should give full play to the regulatory power of all parties, strengthen industry self-discipline, social participation, and public supervision, and build a new pattern of pluralistic co-governance.
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