**: China Consumer Daily.
On January 18, the Ministry of Commerce, together with the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the State Administration for Market Regulation, the State Post Bureau and the China Consumers Association, jointly guided the "2024 National Online New Year Goods Festival" kicked off, and the activities will last until February 17. As the first online key activity of the "Consumption Promotion Year", this year's New Year Festival will "string beads into a chain" and "gather chains" of online activities from all over the world, e-commerce platforms and merchants, and welcome the New Year of the Dragon with more and more distinctive consumption activities. At a time when online New Year's goods consumption is booming, the staff of consumer organizations reminded consumers in an interview with a reporter from China Consumer Daily that due to the particularity of the New Year's Festival, consumers need to pay more attention when shopping for New Year's goods online and carefully choose "ultra-long pre-sale" products.
The online New Year's Festival is booming in sales and sales.
The online New Year's Festival is the first wave of merchants at the beginning of the year, and all platforms are also in full swing. The reporter noticed that Tmall, JD.com, Pinduoduo, Meituan Elephant Supermarket, Douyin, Kuaishou, etc. have launched a series of New Year's goods.
Online shopping for New Year's goods allows consumers to receive "big bags and small packages" of New Year's goods from all over the world while sitting at home, and they can also send blessings to distant relatives at their fingertips. The sales data of various platforms show that the supply and sales of the New Year Festival are booming: since the start of the New Year Festival, the order volume of Meituan Little Elephant Supermarket gift boxes has increased by 50% over the same period last year; *Tmall data shows that bracelets, Hanfu and musical instrument sparring are surpassing **, red** and practicing calligraphy books, becoming the "new three" of New Year's goods.
According to the data released by Tmall, among the users who place orders to buy New Year's goods, the post-95 generation is becoming the decision-maker of family New Year's goods, accounting for more than half. Compared with the "hometown taste", the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner dominated by the post-95 generation has made more cross-regional cuisines appear on the tables of many families, such as Zhejiang people who love to buy Inner Mongolia lamb the most, and "Southern Little Potato" loves to buy fish from the Northeast in addition to Harbin.
According to the "Dragon Element" Consumption Observation released by the Jingdong Consumption and Industry Development Research Institute, since January, the search volume of "Dragon" on the platform has exceeded 23 million times, of which the search volume of Moutai in the Year of the Dragon, commemorative coins in the Year of the Dragon, and clothing in the Year of the Dragon rank among the top three in terms of search popularity, and has received more than one million searches. Since the start of the New Year's Festival, more than 1,700 sub-categories on JD.com have launched "Dragon Element" products, and the turnover of "Dragon Element" products in more than 800 sub-categories has increased by more than 10 times year-on-year.
It does not close, but it will be delayed.
During this year's Spring Festival, many e-commerce platforms and logistics companies have successively announced that "the Spring Festival will not close", such as ** announced that 100 cities across the country will not close during the Spring Festival, and the emergency New Year's goods can be delivered to your home the next day; JD.com, Cainiao, SF Express, Yunda Express, Shentong Express, Deppon Express and many other express companies have successively issued announcements that they will launch the "Spring Festival does not close" service model.
However, the "E-commerce Consumer Rights Protection Index Report" jointly released by China Consumer Daily and Taotian Commercial Group shows that since 2016, the e-commerce consumer rights protection index has increased significantly during the Spring Festival every year. According to the analysis, the fundamental cause of index fluctuations is caused by the contradiction between service demand and supply.
During the Spring Festival, express delivery slowed down and stores closed, but people's enthusiasm for online consumption did not decrease. On January 29, the reporter placed an order to buy goods on the e-commerce platform and found that some orders showed that "the product is expected to be suspended from February 2, please place an order as soon as possible". Some stores posted announcements on their homepages announcing their closure for the Spring Festival.
Xiao Wang, the little brother of Jingdong, who is responsible for the distribution business of a community in Haidian District, Beijing, told the reporter of China Consumer Daily that the express delivery personnel in the station are on duty in turn during the Spring Festival every year, and this year it is his turn, due to the reduction of personnel, the daily distribution volume has increased significantly.
Although many enterprises provide a non-closing service model, it is the on-duty staff of the enterprise who insist on providing services during the Spring Festival, and the overall service capacity is not the same as that of daily life. Tang Jiansheng, deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Rights Protection Commission, told the China Consumer Daily that the probability of untimely delivery or wrong delivery will increase. "During the Spring Festival, the contradiction between service supply and demand is inevitable, on the one hand, I hope that consumers will not be too harsh and understand the situation of stores, logistics companies and staff; On the other hand, consumers should shop in advance as much as possible to avoid problems such as delivery delays affecting the holiday mood. Tang Jiansheng said.
Zhao Xin, director of the Supervision Department of the Jiangsu Provincial Consumer Rights Protection Commission, told the "China Consumer Daily" reporter that it is recommended that consumers ask merchants about the delivery time and delivery timeliness when placing orders before the holiday, understand the platform's adjustment of delivery and transaction rules during special festivals, and can also further understand the express delivery work arrangements of various logistics companies during the festival, and can choose to designate express companies if necessary. Now many consumers choose pre-made dishes Chinese New Year's Eve rice, semi-finished Chinese New Year's Eve rice is mostly cooked or semi-cooked food, the freshness time is relatively short, pay special attention to logistics or delivery time. Consumers should try to choose a merchant that is close to each other, agree on the delivery time with the merchant, and be sure to open the box and check it in person before signing for the express delivery.
Timely inspection of off-site orders.
In order to be a "hands-off shopkeeper" on the way to the Spring Festival, many consumers choose to place orders locally and return to their hometowns to receive goods. Some consumers who are unable to return to their hometowns will also order Chinese New Year goods online and send them to distant relatives. Every Spring Festival, the number of orders from various e-commerce platforms will increase significantly.
I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to deliver it if I bought it late, so I ordered an air fryer for the elderly at home in advance during the Spring Festival last year, and I plan to show my hand when I go home. Ms. He, a Beijing consumer who lives in Kunming, Yunnan Province, told the reporter of China Consumer Daily that the elderly had a "sense of awe" for the new product, and waited until she returned home to open the package, and found that there was a problem with the product display. "Although the merchant promised that it could be returned or exchanged after the Spring Festival, it could not be used during the festival. Ms. He said.
With the boom in tourism consumption, the problem of local orders and remote receipts during the festival has attracted more and more attention. Zhao Xin said that many consumers receive products in different places in their lives or in tourism, which avoids the problem of inconvenience on the road, but at the same time, it will also bring problems such as untimely inspection, damage on the way to logistics, and difficulty in protecting rights in other places.
Zhao Xin suggested that consumers should fully consider factors such as logistics time and product characteristics when choosing a local order to receive goods in different places, especially fresh food, fragile and other products that need to be inspected in person, and the receiving time should be connected. In order to solve the problem of consumers' difficulty in protecting their rights in different places, the market supervision department of the Yangtze River Delta recently issued the "Guidelines for Offline Return Services in Different Places and Different Stores in the Yangtze River Delta Region" to guide offline operators to carry out offline return and exchange commitment services in different places and different stores in the Yangtze River Delta region, and further build a consumer satisfaction area in the Yangtze River Delta. ”
Tang Jiansheng said that as a New Year's gift, consumers have low daily consumption frequency and little consumption experience, so they pay more attention to selecting products of well-known brands, but there is a large gap between the pre-packaged products sold online by some brands and the products purchased offline by consumers in terms of taste and appearance.
Ms. Zhang, a consumer in Beijing, told the reporter of "China Consumer Daily" that she had taken a fancy to a skirt on the Internet, and the sales page said "spot", and the customer service also confirmed that the skirt was in stock when consulting before placing an order, and the order showed that it was shipped before 18 o'clock on January 21, but the store had not shipped it until January 26.
From a marketing point of view, pre-sale can reduce the ineffective inventory of enterprises and alleviate the pressure of stocking and business risks. However, in recent years, problems such as too long pre-sale time, overtime non-delivery, inadequate notification, and failure to honor pre-sale orders have caused consumer disgust and trust crisis. Zhao Xin suggested that consumers choose whether to buy pre-sale products according to their own conditions during the Spring Festival, and do not believe the anchor's verbal promises when placing orders in the live broadcast room, but learn more about whether the product is pre-sold and the pre-sale duration through the details page, order page, and customer service, and carefully choose "ultra-long pre-sale" products. Pay attention to the delivery time after purchase, and negotiate with the merchant to solve it in time if you encounter false advertising of the delivery time, delay delivery, and do not inform the modification of the pre-sale time.
Tang Jiansheng reminded consumers that before and after the Spring Festival is often the time node for the flow of enterprise personnel, and for orders with a long pre-sale time and preferential feedback time, consumers should keep relevant evidence to avoid complaints in the future. Enterprises must also strengthen management to facilitate the smooth handover of work.