This article**: Times Weekly Author: He Shanshan.
Through the storm of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, e-commerce platforms will kick off in the era of fierce change.
In the past year, traditional e-commerce giants such as JD.com have adjusted their generals to promote structural changes; and involved in Pinduoduo's "low price" strategy; Douyin e-commerce is catching up and actively entering the local market to face Meituan; E-commerce relies on technological advantages to open digital human live broadcast to help merchants; Pinduoduo rose in the overseas market at the end of the year, and its market value surpassed and ranked among the world's top 100 on the Hurun list; Cutting-edge players such as Xiaohongshu and Bilibili have also set a clearer strategy to attack the e-commerce cake.
At the beginning of 2024, ** announced the establishment of a live broadcast e-commerce company that aims to cultivate anchors without the purpose of profit, taking a key step in cultivating its own anchors; Jingdong announced the upgrade of services, Pinduoduo began to recruit troops, and Ma Huateng announced at the annual meeting that the key direction of the WeChat ** account this year will be live broadcast e-commerce; Restarting e-commerce, Bilibili announced that one of the key profit targets is e-commerce.
E-commerce has become an unavoidable word for Internet platform monetization, and live broadcast has become the most familiar tool.
Li Xinying, secretary general of the Hangzhou Live E-commerce Association, told the Times Weekly reporter: "In 2024, the development of the live broadcast e-commerce industry will show two major trends, namely the normalization of live broadcast and the innovative application. E-commerce live streaming integrates live streaming and e-commerce, meets the consumption needs of users in the Internet era, and has good marketing effects. With the continuous maturity of artificial intelligence technology, live broadcast e-commerce can realize functions such as speech recognition, image recognition, and natural language processing through the combination of AI technology, and improve the quality and interactivity of live broadcast content. ”
As live streaming becomes the standard and AI matures, how will the e-commerce landscape change in 2024?
The traditional triumvirate battle for offense and defense.
In the past, **JD.com was one of the leading giants in the e-commerce industry, and in 2023, both companies will experience the double shock of organizational structure changes and reshuffle of the senior management team.
In November 2023, Pinduoduo's market value once surpassed Alibaba's, briefly sitting on the throne, and JD.com's market value retreated to third. In the face of the slowdown in increments and the catch-up of latecomers, in 2023**, JD.com once joined Pinduoduo's "low price" strategy, and in 2024, it will further compete in services.
During the 2023 Double 11, Ali launched"Double 11 day low price"with"One piece straight down"preferential methods. This may be the most direct response to the "return to users" in Jack Ma's future strategy of "returning to the user, returning to the user, and returning to the Internet".
In 2024, Alibaba's approach will further correspond to the return to ** and the Internet.
The Spring Festival of 2024 has just ended, ** left hand to open a live broadcast e-commerce company to train itself to bring goods anchors, and the right hand to lay out the cross-border e-commerce industry belt in Guangdong. On the one hand, we will open channels through live broadcasting, which is a popular way to bring goods on the Internet, and on the other hand, we will strengthen the moat from the supply side.
On February 27, Ali announced at the "Guangdong Province Cross-border E-commerce + Industrial Belt" series of activities that it would support the development of Shantou's industry and launch the "** Live Broadcast Preferred" Shantou Station to provide support for live broadcast e-commerce. A few days ago, ** also announced the establishment of a live broadcast e-commerce company to provide "nanny-style" fully managed operation services for celebrities, KOLs, and MCNs who are interested in entering Taobao and start broadcasting. Yuan Ge, the person in charge of the company, introduced that the hosting model is equivalent to a new anchor incubation camp, and the whole project is not for profit, but the goal is to prosper the ecology. ”
Compared with the development of e-commerce platforms with content such as Douyin and Kuaishou, ** has been tepid in its attitude towards live broadcasts. However, after the structural adjustment in 2023, the new incumbent of Taotian began to adjust its direction.
In December 2023, Taotian Group, which leads the e-commerce business, will complete its independence, and Dai Shan, one of Alibaba's former "Eighteen Arhats", will step down as CEO of Taotian Group and hand over power to Wu Yongming.
At this point, Wu Yongming concurrently served as the CEO of Alibaba Group, Taotian Group and Alibaba Cloud Group, and 48 hours after taking over as CEO of Taotian Group, Wu Yongming immediately arranged for six young managers to be responsible for the key business of Taotian Group and report directly to him.
Wu Yongming also seized the key point of Ma Yun's internal letter that "the era of AI e-commerce has just begun, and it is an opportunity and challenge for everyone", and opened a new round of innovation in the e-commerce business in accordance with the idea of "AI + e-commerce". According to the surging and delayed ** reports, at present, Ali International Business Group has established an AI Business (AI business) business team in AI, and related technologies have been applied to AliExpress (AliExpress) and other businesses within Ali International.
Not only **, Jingdong's style of play is also on par with Pinduoduo, focusing on "low prices, rising services", and at the beginning of 2023, Jingdong will lower the threshold of goods ** and launch it"Tens of billions of subsidies"、"9.9. Free shipping channel", a strategy that runs throughout the year.
Although Liu Qiangdong has stepped down as the CEO of JD.com in 2022, his sense of control as the founder has also strengthened in the past year.
Previously, JD established a moat through logistics, but under the impact of Pinduoduo, JD had to re-examine itself. **Maybe it's not JD's advantage, but JD can increase its service. In February 2024, JD.com further launched a "refund-only" strategy to improve the user experience.
For Pinduoduo, the market value growth in 2023 has verified the results of the "low-price strategy" and "tens of billions of subsidies", and Pinduoduo has grabbed more cakes from ** and JD.com.
In 2023, Pinduoduo will first launch the Million Anchor Challenge, and then add a live broadcast column at the bottom of the APP's homepage to promote live streaming.
A few days ago, Pinduoduo began to further develop its offline business, and its Duoduo Grocery opened recruitment for hundreds of positions such as warehousing manpower and investment promotion operations in Guangdong. According to Pinduoduo's data, for the last mile of the community, Duoduo's grocery pick-up points have covered 70% of the administrative villages in China.
As of February 27, the market value of Pinduoduo has fallen, which is still far from the market value of Alibaba, but more than 4 times that of JD.com. Now, the first impact of live broadcast with goods, Jingdong further competes in services, Pinduoduo expands offline, and the battle of offense and defense on the layout of the three is about to start.
Eighteen kinds of martial arts of new players compete for the cake.
In 2024, in addition to facing strong enemies like Pinduoduo, Ali and JD.com will also have many latecomers eyeing them. Douyin officially established an e-commerce department in 2020, and after 3 years of formal layout, it has also won a seat in the market.
According to Douyin data, from July 2022 to June 2023, the number of global purchasers and orders on Douyin e-commerce increased by 43% year-on-year, GMV increased by 80% year-on-year, and the number of settled merchants increased by 111% year-on-year. This year, Douyin also announced an investment of 500 million yuan to promote cooperation between merchants and talents.
In 2023, Douyin will accelerate the traffic conversion between the content field and the shelf field, on the one hand, it will enter the local life market previously occupied by Meituan, and on the other hand, it will increase the number of goods to compete with Xiaohongshu.
On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2024, Douyin CEO Zhang Nan announced his resignation and turned to seek breakthroughs in AI-assisted creation related to the editing of Byte's products. Previously, Douyin Group not only established a new AI department, Flow, but also launched a tool for AI diversion to stores to empower e-commerce.
In addition to AI empowerment, live streaming has become a sweet spot for e-commerce platforms.
In Robin Li's business plan for 2024, the e-commerce business proposed for the first time to achieve leapfrog development and was ranked at the forefront. Unlike others, e-commerce starts directly with the "power of AI". On January 10 this year, at the "AI Reconstructing E-commerce" Ecological Conference, it leveraged the capabilities of AI digital human live broadcast and Wenxin large model to enter the e-commerce market, emphasizing "AI reshaping e-commerce".
Li Xinying, secretary general of Hangzhou Live Broadcast E-commerce Association, told the Times Weekly reporter: "The current hot virtual digital human live broadcast has broken the traditional live broadcast model in the form of high-quality, low-cost and more interactive live broadcast, and injected new vitality and opportunities into the live broadcast industry. ”
In addition, more cutting-edge players are waiting for an opportunity to share the e-commerce cake. Xiaohongshu will close its two self-operated e-commerce platforms "Little Oasis" and "Welfare Society" in 2023, and fully invest in the "buyer e-commerce" model. Bilibili has set advertising and e-commerce as the focus of its 2024 profit target; At Tencent's annual meeting in January 2024, Ma Huateng identified live e-commerce as the direction that WeChat ** account will do its best this year.