Zhuan Zhuan was exposed to the issuance of a yin and yang test report
As a major vertical market for e-commerce, second-hand e-commerce is becoming more and more mature, but the identification of non-standard products and the existing trust crisis are still the biggest obstacles to second-hand e-commerce.
In the past few days, the second-hand e-commerce platform has turned around. When the Douyin blogger "Monkey Big Wrist" turned around buying and selling second-hand mobile phones, he issued a yin and yang quality inspection report, which caused a lot of turmoil on the Internet.
For the same mobile phone, when buying and selling, the two quality inspection reports are inconsistent.
"Monkey big name" reflected that it bought 4 mobile phones on the transfer platform, spending a total of 13,610 yuan, but when it was transferred **, it could only be sold for 9,567 yuan. The quality inspection report issued when transferring and selling mobile phones shows that there is no problem with the mobile phone, but when the same mobile phone is less than half an hour apart and then passes through the transfer**, various defects such as "the camera takes pictures" and "the screen is slightly scratched" can be found.
Although Zhuan Zhuan has issued an apology for this matter, the blogger provided the news of internal employees in the latest **, and switched to using the "double standard machine" to save the yin and yang contract. It is mentioned that there are two sets of ** mechanisms set up by Zhuan Zhuan, if it is found that the ** mobile phone is bought from other retail stores or platforms, it is an "exempt machine", according to the original quality inspection report, if not, go according to the normal process.
Screenshot of Douyin. The problem of "yin and yang quality inspection" has been widely recognized by many netizens. Some netizens said that the second-generation rescuer tablet bought for 2,600 yuan was sold for less than two months, and it was resold for 1,658 yuan, but it was sold for 2,400 yuan.
Some netizens pointed out that the Bluetooth headset that was almost never used did not even open the packaging of the charging cable, but after a few months of sale, they were told that there was a problem with the power.
Source: Weibo.
And such a similar thing is not a turnaround. Jingdong's helping, Xianyu, love ** and other platforms have quality inspection problems that have been complained by consumers. For example, some netizens said that the mobile phone had obvious scratches of 2-3 cm after the quality inspection of Ai**.
The controversy caused by the transfer of quality inspection is that the second-hand e-commerce platform will have the problem of quality inspection fraud when the second-hand product is the second-hand product, and the platform will greatly discount the product on the grounds of various machine damage, and obtain greater room for price difference by lowering the price.
From the perspective of the second-hand e-commerce industry, quality inspection fraud will not only encourage bad money to drive out good money, but also make the platform lose the trust and reputation of users. The questioning of the buying and selling of yin and yang test reports this time will undoubtedly bring a new crisis of confidence to Zhuanzhuan.
Second-hand e-commerce is facing a crisis of trust
Under the prosperity of the second-hand economy and circular economy, buying second-hand products is gradually accepted by more and more consumers.
Especially under the trend of consumption downgrade this year, cheap, cost-effective products have become the common pursuit of consumers, and second-hand platforms are favored by more and more users by virtue of their cost-effective advantages, and even become the "special pet" of young people.
Taking Xianyu as an example, in September this year, the average monthly active users of Xianyu reached 36.68 million, a year-on-year increase of 186% and the age group of users is mainly the young group of post-00s and post-90s.
Judging from the overall trend, second-hand e-commerce is also on the rise. Data shows that in 2022, the scale of second-hand e-commerce transactions in China will exceed 480 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 20%;It is expected that the scale of second-hand e-commerce transactions will reach 550 billion yuan this year, a year-on-year increase of more than 14%, and by 2025, the market size will exceed 800 billion yuan.
However, while second-hand e-commerce is developing rapidly, it has also exposed many problems. In addition to the above-mentioned chaos of yin and yang quality inspection, there are also false publicity, poor after-sales service, difficulty in returning and exchanging goods, and so on.
First of all, we need to understand the two business models that are common in today's second-hand trading platforms. The first is the C2B2C model, that is, the platform takes the second-hand items from the hands of consumers, and after identification and processing and reprocessing, they are sold to other consumers through the platform and undertakes after-sales service；The second is the C2C model, that is, direct transactions between consumers, and the platform only acts as a transaction "venue" to provide relevant information.
Due to the obvious problem of information asymmetry in the second-hand trading market, under the C2B2C model, the platform party has more information and occupies a favorable position in terms of the quality and sales value of second-hand products, and is often prone to fraud.
At present, second-hand e-commerce has not yet formed a unified second-hand commodity value evaluation standard, the platform's evaluation of the value of second-hand goods is too simple and arbitrary, and the actual valuation is sometimes very different from the theoretical value, such as "brand-new", "ninety percent new", "small flaws" and other descriptions, which may be different from the user's psychological expectations.
In addition, the seller or the platform party generally does not provide after-sales service such as product warranty, nor does it support return or exchange without reason, which will make it difficult to protect the rights and interests of buyers.
Behind the savage growth of second-hand e-commerce, the shortcomings are also constantly revealed. Problems such as online counterfeit sales, false publicity, poor after-sales service, and difficulty in returning and exchanging goods will limit the further development of second-hand e-commerce.
At present, the main platform players in the second-hand e-commerce market include Xianyu, Zhuanzhuan, Zhaoliangji, Paijitang, Hongbulin, etc. According to the data of Diansubao, the second-hand e-commerce platforms that have been complained about so far in 2023 are: Xianyu, Hongbulin, Zhuan Zhuan, Paijitang, Confucius Used Books Network, and Ai**.
Source: Appeal Treasure.
Among them, product quality, refund problems, after-sales service, online fraud, online counterfeiting, mismatch, overlord clauses, difficulty in returning and exchanging goods, freezing of merchant funds, order problems, etc., are the main problems of second-hand e-commerce complaints in the first half of 2023.
Source: Dianshubao.
Judging from the above problems, the chaos of second-hand e-commerce platforms has been repeatedly banned. However, when the market environment changes and the dilemma of stagnation of growth sweeps the entire industry, second-hand e-commerce must make changes.
Users are still the base
Looking at the entire second-hand e-commerce platform, the slowdown of traffic growth and the difficulty of business realization have always been unavoidable topics.
Second-hand platforms generally meet people's demand for the circulation of idle items, compared with the first such e-commerce platform that is supposed to sell goods, the audience range of second-hand e-commerce is relatively small, and the activity is generally not high.
From October last year to October this year, the number of monthly active users hovered around 20 million. The number of monthly active users of Xianyu successfully exceeded 1 in June 2021After 400 million, the number of users gradually declined. By January this year, Xianyu's monthly active users were only 97.39 million, and the monthly active users were nearly 50 million.
Therefore, second-hand e-commerce platforms such as rookies and Zhuan Zhuan are seeking a way out of transformation.
After organizing a press conference at Universal Studios Beijing last year, Zhuan Zhuan shifted its focus to the circular industry economy.
Source: Zhuan Zhuan.
Xianyu also intends to support operating sellers. For example, starting from October 8 last year, Xianyu requires sellers engaged in business activities to provide 7 days of no reason to return service, and at the same time, Xianyu also launched a "free shipping return mechanism that does not match the description" for mid-level sellers, and promised that merchants who open this service will receive corresponding resource preferential treatment.
But no matter how it is transformed, users are still the foundation of second-hand e-commerce platforms. Only by focusing on user growth and activity and expanding the scale of users can second-hand e-commerce achieve new breakthroughs.
In order to do a good job in user retention, it is necessary for second-hand e-commerce platforms to effectively safeguard the interests of buyers and sellers. More importantly, second-hand e-commerce platforms need to establish a trust mechanism among users. Because the second-hand e-commerce platform is always oriented to C-end users, the development and growth of the platform is also inseparable from word-of-mouth.
Nowadays, chaotic behaviors such as yin and yang quality inspection reports will make the platform lose the trust of users.
In short, for second-hand e-commerce platforms, building trust is a key core competitiveness. The platform needs to create a good platform ecology to ensure the normal trading of sellers and buyers in order to solve the trust crisis between the platform and users.
Author |Zhou Wenjun.