**: Ebang Power Network.
In the past 2023, for the e-commerce industry, this year is known as the "first year of AI e-commerce".
The era of AI e-commerce has just begun, and it is both an opportunity and a challenge for everyone. Not long ago, Jack Ma said this.
In September 2023, Alibaba clarified the strategic focus of "user first and AI driven". At the 2023 Tmall Double 11 press conference, Dai Shan, CEO of Taotian Group, mentioned AI 20 times in a 20-minute speech and announced that 10 AI tools will be launched to merchants.
It is also this Double 11, a large-scale model native AI application"**Ask"Put into use for the first time.
Here we need to note a background, that is, in 2023, Pinduoduo's market capitalization will surpass Alibaba's.
The pattern of e-commerce in China and even in the world is undergoing new trend changes.
From the representatives of "shelf e-commerce" such as Tmall, Amazon, and JD.com, to the representatives of "interest e-commerce" such as Douyin and TikTok, major e-commerce companies have begun to regain low prices. Spending the lowest cost and promoting the greatest profit is becoming the key point of competition in the e-commerce industry.
In this state, AI has become the biggest grasp of e-commerce.
AI e-commerce is an opportunity
2023 is the year of the explosion of large models, and the e-commerce industry is fully empowering AI technology.
At present, there are layouts including Alibaba, JD.com, Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. Among them, Alibaba, JD.com, etc. are in 6AI technology has been used since the 18th period, and Double 11 is fully connected to AI technology.
Taking JD.com as an example, in July 2023, it released the AI model "JD Yanxi". During this year's New Year's Festival, "Yanxi" supported a user activity of intelligent outbound calls. This ** voice comes from the "Queen" commentary teacher Li Lihong of "A Bite of China". This campaign resulted in a 56% increase in attendance and a 51% increase in conversion rates compared to unconnected users.
Node Finance research found that the reason why this activity can achieve such good results is that AI technology has been able to understand and respond to users' emotional changes, and has a considerable degree of "emotional intelligence", which is a great improvement from the previous situation of only simple standard responses, which is very humane.
Moreover, AI technology already has a considerable degree of decision-making power. For intelligent conversations, it is a big challenge to determine when to take over the right to speak, and to move smoothly and naturally between the listener and the speaker.
For example, after opening Douyin and clicking "Search", the function option of "AI Search" will appear below. This option is juxtaposed with options such as Comprehensive, User, **Experience, Product, Anchor, **, etc., and users will get an answer after intelligent search through "AI search".
For example, search for "which brand of snacks is delicious?" AI will give a number of brand profiles and feature explanations. Judging from the results, the content it searches out should be from the site**content or a third party**, and the actual effect is average.
Ali's "**Ask" is similar to Douyin e-commerce's "AI search", and its beta version can pop up after searching in **site. The same question was asked to the AI, and the Q&A gave the text and the link, and gave a certain analysis. It can be seen that most of its information and data come from the ** site, which has a certain availability.
In addition, Xiaohongshu, a community e-commerce company composed of multiple small communities and small circles, is also testing its AI application "Da Vinci".
After using Node Finance, it is believed that "Da Vinci" can answer all kinds of questions about good things in life, such as travel strategies, food strategies, geography and cultural knowledge, life skills, activity recommendations, etc. Of course, as a social platform, Xiaohongshu's application of AI is more inclined to social functions, which is different from traditional e-commerce.
In addition to the AI application of text interaction, in the field of live broadcast e-commerce, various "AI virtual anchors" are more widely used. After selecting the character template and entering the lines in the form of text or recording, the AI virtual anchor can say the copywriting in a realistic tone, which is lifelike, and can even achieve the effect of being fake.
This aspect can be seen. Although its main business is not e-commerce, it has also carried out relevant research and development for the delivery scenario. On Double 11 in 2023, generative AI will be applied on a large scale, and its preferred will rely on the digital human live streaming model, and the live broadcast GMV will increase by 740% year-on-year.
After experiencing the AI technology of many e-commerce, in general, Node Finance believes that the AI products of the above e-commerce companies have certain limitations in terms of Chinese semantic understanding, and have not yet reached the level of disruptive innovation.
On the other hand, AI virtual anchors live broadcast 24 hours a day, which is low-cost, but they have the flaws of lack of interaction and inability to try out products, so most brands only stop at a superficial level, or use it for alternative broadcasts during unpopular periods.
After all, the outbreak of AI technology has just passed a year, and it will definitely take a while to really land, but the general trend of AI-enabled e-commerce cannot be reversed.
Now, what can AI do for e-commerce?
Let's take a look at the data of a national bureau of statistics, in 2022, the national e-commerce transaction volume will reach 4383 trillion yuan, an increase of 3 compared with 2021 on a comparable basis5%。Compared with the past, the entire e-commerce industry is gradually entering the competitive stage of the stock market.
Node Finance Research found that major e-commerce companies have long been aware of the changes in this trend, and when it comes to the empowerment of AI for e-commerce, there are two fundamental purposes: reducing costs and increasing efficiency and improving consumer experience.
At a time when labor costs are increasing day by day, any product that helps to save costs and improve efficiency will be valued by the industry, and AI technology that can almost completely replace humans is pinned on high hopes.
For e-commerce, in order to promote cost reduction and efficiency increase, AI customer service, AI anchors, AI models, etc., have become new attempts in the e-commerce industry. Node Finance believes that AI-based e-commerce operation assistance will become the standard configuration of e-commerce in the future.
In this regard, some independent AI e-commerce tools have emerged, such as the "Meitu Design Studio" applied in the field of e-commerce design, which covers multiple use cases such as smart cutouts, AI product images, AI model fittings, and AI posters.
The use of AI tools like this will reduce the operational burden of e-commerce.
For example, a friend who does clothing e-commerce told Node Finance, "In recent years, the traffic of major platforms has become more and more expensive, and only good content can attract consumers. ”
In this case, AI tools will become a "rigid need" for e-commerce to reduce costs and increase efficiency.
Not only that, with the popularity of live streaming, AI digital human anchors have gradually appeared in live broadcasts. This kind of AI digital human can automatically explain products, reply to questions according to keyword prompts, and start broadcasting 24 hours a day.
The cost of traditional live broadcast rooms is very high, often starting at 100,000. In comparison, the cost of an AI anchor of two or three thousand yuan a month is much lower. According to the research of Node Finance, there are now many small and medium-sized businesses, brand merchants, and some MCN institutions have begun to try to use AI digital human anchors.
According to the data, at present, digital humans can reduce the operating costs of live broadcasts by nearly 80% of merchants; JD Cloud Yanxi Digital Human can intelligently "read" the details of the product, quickly "remember" the selling point of the product, automatically generate the script, and start broadcasting in 2 hours, with a daily cost of less than 100 yuan.
On the other hand, the empowerment of AI for e-commerce is also reflected in the improvement of the C-end consumer experience in many aspects.
First of all, in terms of transaction facilitation, AI shopping guides can achieve real-time Q&A, improve the user's consumption experience and transaction conversion rate, and reduce labor costs. Moreover, e-commerce platforms can use AI technology and big data to achieve thousands of people and thousands of faces. The "Jingdong Yanxi" intelligent outbound call project mentioned earlier in this article can achieve such a function.
Secondly, in terms of after-sales service, AI technology can optimize logistics and warehouse management processes. Even with the help of AI technologies such as machine vision and evolutionary algorithms, all kinds of intelligent robots have begun to play a key role.
Moreover, AI robots can achieve a higher degree of automation of logistics operations in the warehouse through functions such as self-perception, self-learning, self-decision-making and self-execution, so as to optimize distribution routes, intelligently distribute orders, improve transaction efficiency, and improve the user's consumption experience.
In general, with the support of AI technology, e-commerce platforms are changing many key links in the e-commerce system from reducing costs and increasing efficiency to improving the shopping experience. However, Node Finance believes that this is only the initial change brought by AI to e-commerce, and how AI will change the overall pattern of e-commerce in the future is actually more worthy of attention.
In the new cycle of e-commerce, is AI expected to break the game?
In the past ten years, from the perspective of the changes of domestic e-commerce giants, the overall experience of "cats and dogs" has experienced the hegemony of "cats and dogs", to the four-legged establishment of Taotian, Jingdong, Pinduoduo and Douyin e-commerce. From the perspective of supply and demand matching efficiency competition, its evolution path is roughly that "people looking for goods" has changed to "goods looking for people".
This change is taking place not only domestically, but also internationally.
In 2021, TikTok launched a small store in Indonesia, and in September 2022, Temu landed in the United States. For example, through the live broadcast room with goods anchors, Internet celebrity bloggers who plant grass, and relatives and friends who share links in the WeChat group to "cut a knife".
The relationship between supply and demand between goods and consumers is becoming more and more personified. Many consumers shop and consume through the channels of specific people based on love and trust, such as Dong Yuhui.
On the other hand, the problem of mismatch between goods and consumer demand has gradually become prominent, and low-price consumption is strong. The most obvious manifestation is "whoever lowers the price will buy whom", or emotional consumption, and the order is quickly refunded.
The reason why Pinduoduo can attract a large number of consumers with "low prices" and "refunds only" is that it hits this trend. In 2022, Jingdong and Taotian will regain their low prices**, and then follow the "refund only" on the shelves in 2023, and the underlying logic is also to cater to this trend.
However, Node Finance has also observed that this situation is also very painful for sellers and brands. For example, Amazon's old sellers gave up a large number of low-priced products because they couldn't get temu, which led to Amazon having to reduce the sales commission of low-priced clothing.
The emergence of AI may become a game-breaker for the homomorphic "involution" of e-commerce at low prices, and realize the efficient matching between "multi-layer supply of merchants" and "diversified needs of consumers".
Merchants can use AI to accurately understand consumer needs and produce and purchase goods on demand. Conversely, consumers can use AI to obtain personalized products that meet their needs.
Of course, current AI technology has not yet reached this ideal state. However, Node Finance believes that the reason why we should pay attention to AI technology is largely due to its "terrifying" development speed. Slow response or wrong direction to disruptive challenges that AI technology may bring can lead to irreparable damage.
In fact, from the earliest 8848, to **, JD.com, to Pinduoduo, and live e-commerce, the e-commerce industry will usher in an innovation cycle in as little as three years and as long as five years. With the continuous advancement of technology and business, the current AI e-commerce is expected to become the core of a new round of e-commerce innovation.
In the view of Node Finance, AI e-commerce is by no means a simple basic representation of AI customer service, AI anchors, AI models, intelligent recommendations, etc. The future of AI e-commerce must be to infiltrate data, algorithms, and user thinking into all aspects of e-commerce, deconstruct user data and behavior, shorten the back-end chain, optimize logistics efficiency, and truly reshape the efficient operation of the supply side through AI, and then transform the entire e-commerce.
AI e-commerce will be a new narrative and a challenge that could disrupt the existing landscape.
Note: Wen Sansheng, article**: Node Finance (**ID: jiedian2018), this article is the author's independent point of view and does not represent the position of Ebang Power.