Pinmen, an Internet buzzword, refers to Pinduoduo's loyal disciples. When I was a child, I slandered Pinduoduo, but when I grew up, I understood Pinduoduo, and when I matured, I joined Pinduoduo.
A major event that has happened recently is that Pinduoduo has become the largest Chinese concept stock in the United States. According to Bloomberg, this is a "watershed" for China's internet industry, "and also marks the rise of a generation of upstarts from Pinduoduo to ByteDance, who are disrupting the traditional areas of social networking and e-commerce".
Pinduoduo, expected, unexpected
At the beginning of Pinduoduo's listing, based on understanding and cognition, I was more optimistic about its development prospects, and held Pinduoduo at around $18 until $170, although the total amount was limited, but it was also quite profitable. also used to argue with many peers in some ** groups because Pinduoduo was bearish, because the voice of Pinduoduo was the mainstream at that time, and most of them were contemptuous of its "low-end".
Although the results proved that his original opinion was correct, he never expected that Pinduoduo would reach the top of market value a few years later and become a new pole of China's Internet. At that time, it was believed that Pinduoduo could at most achieve a virtuous circle of independent survival surrounded by giants.
The previous views on Pinduoduo mainly focused on three aspects, one of which was that Pinduoduo discovered the sinking market, and therefore adopted a differentiated competition strategy to break through the shadow of the giant and stand out;Second, Pinduoduo took advantage of the new outlet of the rise of social networking at that time and seized the new traffic poolThird, Pinduoduo has adopted a new algorithmic recommendation technology to improve the operational efficiency of the e-commerce platform.
Looking back a few years later, there are many more reasons that supported Pinduoduo's ascension to the top.
From serving the "sinking market" to serving the "consumption upgrade".
Pinduoduo's initial success, based on a large number of affordable products, attracted a large number of people from grassroots consumer markets, including rural areas, and formed the basic traffic of Pinduoduo in its early days.
Some disdainfully refer to this as a consumption downgrade, but it's actually a misreading. Although these products are more competitive than the products of other platforms, for people who did not go online before, it is a consumption upgrade, for example, a village woman used to use old newspapers as toilet paper, but found that there is cheap and easy-to-use toilet paper on Pinduoduo for sale, is this consumption upgraded or downgraded?Upgrades, of course;Another example is that the villager will buy some counterfeit and shoddy goods in the grocery store at the head of the village every day, and now he has begun to consume white labels and brands online, which is actually an upgrade.
The further transformation of Pinduoduo is achieved in the process of attracting middle-class members like the author to long-term users, and its essence is reflected in service upgrades. At the same time, this transformation of Pinduoduo has also led to the improvement of the overall service level of the entire Chinese e-commerce industry.
You might as well use the author's "story" to interpret the number of online shopping clothes that have increased dramatically in recent years. In the years before Pinduoduo, although I was a high-frequency online shopping user, I rarely bought clothes on e-commerce platforms, because I was large and needed to try on many clothes to make decisions, and the failure rate of online shopping was very high, so I gradually gave up buying clothes online.
But the advent of Pinduoduo has changed that.
First of all, the credit of personalized algorithm recommendations, I don't know when it began to push me to a new world of plus-size clothing, I didn't know that there were so many professional stores on the Internet that cater to fat people, many of which can be called "treasure stores", and now they have surfaced and been included in the collection.
Secondly, these stores provide a seven-day no-reason return service with freight insurance, which is not available on the previous e-commerce platform, and the clothes can only be refunded if there is a quality problem, and the consumer has to bear the freight if there is no quality problem, but the emergence of Pinduoduo has changed this rule. In fact, it is equivalent to making the consumption experience of online shopping the same as that of offline trial and repurchase through service upgrades.
This is equivalent to opening a huge incremental consumer group for the e-commerce platform, and including consumers like me into the user group of Pinduoduo, and I am not because of whether the goods on this platform are cheap, just because he meets my consumption needs.
Later, all platforms popularized the seven-day no-reason return service, including on the live broadcast e-commerce, which has also become the standard, so that consumers can more confidently carry out "impulsive consumption".
Although the seven-day no-reason return service has become popular on various e-commerce platforms, Pinduoduo's various unique service details can still be seen everywhere, becoming a "hook" to retain consumers. For example, Pinduoduo requires the store to respond to customer inquiries within 5 minutes of no less than 70%, and later upgraded to the store 3 minutes response rate of not less than 80%, and it also takes technical measures to ensure this, for example, if I inquire about a merchant's goods within 5 minutes and do not get a reply, the system will directly push a message about similar products in other stores, "Because the merchant did not reply in time, we recommend that you can also buy other similar products", who can stand this?
There are only refund measures, this article has been resisted by many stores, but in the end it still survived, I once bought some strong sticky hooks on Pinduoduo, the store advertised that you can hang dozens of pounds of objects will not fall, but hang a ten pounds of things will fall, so apply for a return-free refund, the platform will support it. There are also some agricultural products and fresh products, and it is meaningless to return them after discovering quality problems, which can only increase the user's trouble, and only refunds are supported.
What impressed many people the most was the "10 billion subsidy" action spearheaded by Pinduoduo, which has now become the standard configuration of various e-commerce platforms. The so-called 10 billion subsidy is literally a platform subsidy to reduce the price, but in essence, it is also a service upgrade. Because the subsidy of 10 billion yuan itself is a kind of platform endorsement, the premise of which is not only a good price, but also implies that the platform has entered a review and screening of the goods in advance and bears joint and several liability, such goods, consumers will be more assured to buy, so several of my high customer unit price products are purchased on Pinduoduo from the 10 billion subsidy, such as iPhone, iPad, Lenovo laptop, etc.
Consumers used to buy this kind of products online and chose e-commerce***Pinduoduo made up for this shortcoming through tens of billions of subsidies, but in the end it became a long board, because the "tens of billions of subsidies" can cover a wide range of goods far beyond ***
Based on the platform concept innovation of "more affordable + good service".
I don't know if the outside world has paid attention to it, but since the beginning of this year, there are two words that have been frequently mentioned by Pinduoduo: "more affordable" and "good service". Pinduoduo calls them the two engines that activate consumption.
This actually implies Pinduoduo's understanding of the current macroeconomic environment and its countermeasures, and it is also a solution to how ordinary people can achieve consumption upgrading in the real environment.
Consumption upgrade is a relatively broad concept, if the rough understanding of consumption upgrade is to spend more money, for example, someone suddenly buys luxury goods must be a kind of consumption upgrade. However, in the macro environment of great changes unseen in a century, what should ordinary people do if they want to upgrade their consumption but do not want to spend more money?
At this time, spending less money to get better material satisfaction, or spending the same amount of money to get better material satisfaction has become a realistic solution, which is "more affordable + good service", in this dimension, consumption upgrading and benefits are combined, and the improvement of quality of life does not necessarily require a lot of expenditure. Consumption upgrade is not that merchants ask consumers to pay for their own upgrades, but that consumers pay for better demand satisfaction;Consumption upgrade is not a simple upgrade, but an upgrade of the quality-price ratio, and an upgrade of actual utility.
This kind of goal of "both" and "and" is of course very difficult to achieve, but it is not impossible to achieve, and Pinduoduo's success is built on this path. For example, the fat people's clothing online shopping demand I mentioned earlier is a typical example, the fat people actually have a very strong demand for clothing purchases, but this demand is stuck in some links, so that they can only suppress their own consumer demand, and once these stuck links are opened, these needs will be vigorously released, and even revenge consumption.
Similarly, there is consumer demand in remote areas, which is also "stuck" because of the problem of free shipping, such as Xinjiang has been upgraded to a "free shipping area" since this year, and the consumption there will also be released and upgraded. There are also the needs of the elderly, the needs of children, the needs of the disabled, etc., and Pinduoduo has done a lot of work in links like this.
This kind of industrial innovation based on "multi-affordable + good service" is actually an industrial innovation on the e-commerce platform side launched by Pinduoduo.
Several generations of e-commerce platforms in China have made great contributions to the evolution of the industry, to Pinduoduo, on the basis of the predecessors, began to make efforts to innovate services at the platform level, and made careful efforts in the subdivision of groups, and broke out of their own world, I believe that these successful experiences explored by Pinduoduo will soon be popularized in the entire industry and promote the overall service upgrade of the entire e-commerce.
Get ready to start again
Looking back on the past history, you will find that in fact, at the same time as Pinduoduo's efforts, other platforms did not do nothing, but from the results, Pinduoduo went faster, and the reasons behind this are very complicated.
If Pinduoduo were to come out of the same place with them, in the same context, maybe they would do the same thing, but history cannot be assumed, and time cannot be turned back.
Now, Pinduoduo still has a long way to go, and it still has to stick to its duty, stick to its original intention, and be down-to-earth, so that more consumers are willing to buy and buy with confidence.
Pinduoduo's successful experience actually has a strong reference significance for many domestic enterprises, not only its core ability and experience to understand, excavate and meet the needs of domestic consumers can be promoted, but also its path selection is also worth pondering, including what kind of interrelationship between enterprises and the outside world, enterprises and times, enterprises and time, where should our efforts be put in, and how should we change with the times?
Misjudgment is not terrible, it is a common thing in life, the key is what to do next. Charlie Munger replied to a question from shareholders at the last annual meeting of the Daily Journal: "Sometimes, the reality is so hard to accept that people lie to themselves and pretend that nothing happened." In business, if the general environment has completely changed, or stubbornly follow the old path and throw a lot of money into it, it can only end miserably. "It seems that everything is not settled yet, and everything is still possible.