Ali magnifies again! Fight against Pinduoduo, all by AI?

"Even though we weren't as confident as we used to be, Ali has returned. ”

In the past year, Alibaba's situation has not been smooth sailing: its market value was once surpassed by Pinduoduo, losing its monopoly of more than ten years as the Chinese e-commerce hegemon; The reform of the 1+6+n organizational structure is wide-ranging, Daniel Zhang is retreating, and the newly formed leadership will face the pressure of competitors such as Pinduoduo and Douyin. In this context, it is undoubtedly the right decision for Tsai Chongxin to come out to cheer up investors and internal employees.

According to Tsai Chongxin's plan for Alibaba's business territory, e-commerce and cloud computing will continue to be the two main focuses. Especially the former, as Ali's basic disk, will always be put in the first priority. When talking about the competition in the industry and Alibaba's advantages, Tsai Chongxin mentioned a key word: AI.

In Tsai's view, e-commerce is the scenario with the most abundant application of AI technology, and Alibaba is also increasing investment in technology research and development. It is said that AI will bring about a revolution in productivity and change the business thinking of various industries, is this logic also applicable to the e-commerce industry?

At least in Ali's view, the answer is yes. AI's comprehensive innovation of user shopping experience and merchant operation efficiency may provide another way to counter Pinduoduo and Douyin.

*From Unsplash).

As we all know, Alihe is the first Internet manufacturer in China to catch the AI large model express, and it is also the first to apply this technology to various front-end businesses.

For users, Tmall has launched a number of new features to act as a smart assistant for users, while shouldering the task of adding fun to shopping and creating a good interactive atmosphere.

As early as April last year, the ** festival launched the "ai buy" function, and the entrance is set on the main page of the ** Maker Festival, providing basic text generation image services. Users only need to enter the corresponding page to enter the product function, appearance, size and other information, and the system will generate the corresponding renderings.

It is reported that in order to promote this new feature, ** also launched an offline tour for the first time in ten cities including Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Xi'an, and Wuhan. The ** generated by the user through "ai buy" will also be automatically uploaded to the work square to participate in the interaction. In order to encourage users to actively participate in the interaction, the platform has also set up a ranking list of likes, and users with the most likes can receive up to 1,000 yuan of general red envelopes.

In September, the AI assistant "**Wenwen", which is trained based on the large model of Ali Tongyi Qianwen, was also officially launched. This function has been fully opened, but there is no special entrance in the submenu on the homepage, and users need to search for keywords in the search bar after upgrading the app to the latest version to enter the experience interface.

*Ask" page setup is quite concise, with no additional function menus, only scrolling recommendation functions and high-frequency questions, which is obviously a reference to the concept of ChatGPT. Users directly enter what they want to know, and the system automatically generates answers, product recommendations, and influencer notes.

In the later stage, "** Ask" is more proactive, and will take the initiative to invite users to interact, such as voting on products and fashion trends, and rolling updates hot news every day. It can be seen that the positioning of this new feature is similar to "smart shopping guide", aiming to further improve the user's product search efficiency and recommendation matching.

On the side of B-end merchants, Taotian Group has also prepared a lot of auxiliary operation tools, and carried out centralized promotion at major promotion nodes such as 618, Double 11, and New Year's Festival.

In May last year, Taotian Group launched the "AI Ecological Partner Program", which opened seven services to merchants: store decoration, product image creativity, marketing planning and promotion, content organization and creation, customer service reception, financial management and order management, to help merchants reduce costs and increase efficiency. During the Double 11 period, Taotian Group launched 10 AI auxiliary tools in one go for merchants to call for free.

After the end of Double 11, Taotian Group held the **Tmall Ecological Partner Conference in Hangzhou non-stop to continue to update a series of AI tools. This time, the AI revolution has penetrated into the whole cycle of store operation: new merchants can use the AI one-click store opening function to skip all the cumbersome processes; If you want to review, there are AI intelligent weekly reports and document interpretation; When goods are put on and off the shelves, there is also AI to help.

As Cai Chongxin said, the application of AI in the e-commerce scene is indeed very extensive, and there are many ways to try, and Tmall has also made enough attempts.

However, whether these attempts are really effective and whether they can create real benefits is not judged by the platform, but by merchants and users.

We all know that the e-commerce industry is huge, and there are countless upstream and downstream enterprises involved. But the protagonists in this industry chain are always the three backbones: platforms, merchants and users. Needless to say, as the leader of AI technology promotion, the platform must be full of confidence in the prospect of technology application. But on the side of merchants and users, the attitude is a little more complicated.

Let's start with the merchants. Stores of different sizes, industries, and targets have different views on AI tools.

Taking the scale of merchants as an example, for small and medium-sized businesses that have been operating stably for many years, back-end management tools such as intelligent weekly reports and business consulting are not very attractive. Because these businesses have a simple internal organization and limited staff, they can be well managed on a day-to-day basis without the help of AI tools.

On the other hand, there is a steady demand for the above tools from large-scale, complex, and fast-changing fashion apparel and beauty and skin care merchants. For new merchants, the one-click store opening function can save a lot of trouble. It's a pity that one-click store opening is a one-time function and does not have the basis for repeated calls. Moreover, it is a platform dominated by small and medium-sized businesses, which greatly reduces the necessity of AI-assisted operation tools.

According to Alibaba's financial report, 5.12 million new merchants were added in fiscal year 2023 (the 12 months ending June 2023), the vast majority of which were small and medium-sized businesses. For these merchants, AI tools are new, and only a few busy nodes such as free trials or big promotions can pique their interest.

The AI-assisted content creation function vigorously promoted by the platform is indeed very helpful for marketing-oriented categories such as sportswear, beauty and skin care, and jewelry. However, it is also limited for daily necessities and other categories that do not rely on communication, rely on cost performance to win and have low gross profit margins.

According to official data, the AI tools provided by the platform during the pre-sale of Double 11 last year exceeded 200,000 times, which is a good result. But compared with the huge number of merchants on Tmall, this proportion is inconspicuous. How to make more merchants fall in love with AI tools is the next problem for the platform to think about.

On the user's side, attitudes also vary from person to person. Most of the opponents think that the AI functions of **Tmall are too chicken and do not help much for purchase and shopping guides.

*Ask "Although it has been as concise and convenient as possible, it still has some conflicts with users' shopping habits - the biggest problem is that there are too many words. Looking through the reviews of various social platforms, you can find that this is the biggest criticism of this feature by most users. After all, after getting used to **, short**, live broadcast and other forms of communication, it is difficult for the vast majority of users to calm down and read a large number of recommended texts.

As for the AI** generation and AI digital human models that can help businesses reduce their budgets and improve creative efficiency, they have also aroused the disgust of some consumers - the reason is simple, distortion. Consumers accept that the ** is repaired, the model's makeup is well-designed, and it is expected that the clothes bought have color difference and the cosmetic effect is not as expected. However, the application of AI has exacerbated the sense of separation between physical objects and promotional materials. In addition, cookie-cutter modeling and makeup and hair design accelerate consumers' aesthetic fatigue.

Interestingly, after the large-scale application of AI technology to assist in the creation of materials by **Tmall merchants, there are many posts on platforms such as Xiaohongshu that teach people to distinguish between real people and AI models. This also indirectly shows that consumers are still resistant to the application of AI, and AI promotion has a long way to go.

Of course, there are also many people who enjoy the convenience brought by AI, especially the AI fitting and AI matching functions that can help Xiaobai solve the trouble of dressing and understand the effect of the upper body of the clothes.

These two new functions were officially launched in August last year, and in order to assist in promotion, ** launched a full 200 minus 20 trendy clothing ** activity, covering millions of products. Users only need to upload their **, select the body type, and the system can automatically generate an AI digital human to show the upper body effect of the clothes. In addition, the AI matching function trained based on the large model can also match other accessories for users across stores based on their past purchase records and dressing styles.

It's hard to reconcile, some people hate it, some people love it, Ali must have expected this result. It can only be said that AI tools are still a long way from becoming a necessity for merchants and consumers, but fortunately, some good signs have been seen now.

In the internal conversation organized by Ma Yun last year, he talked about the opportunities of AI e-commerce, as well as the general policy of returning to **, returning to users, and returning to the Internet, which largely determined a series of changes in Taotian Group this year. A few days ago, it was reported that Taote's merchants and commodities are gradually moving in, which also means that the former will officially withdraw from the historical stage in the near future, and the group's resources and talents will be fully concentrated in the first place.

In the final analysis, these changes are made because Alibaba's e-commerce business is facing huge pressure - this pressure is all-round, in terms of market share, growth rate, user scale, GMV and other dimensions.

Needless to say, Pinduoduo, Douyin e-commerce has also accelerated the pace of catching up with Ali. According to a report by LatePost, Douyin e-commerce set the first force as a priority strategy for 2024 at the beginning of this year, and set a GMV target of 3 trillion yuan.

Although these news have not been officially confirmed by Douyin, it can be seen from the achievements of the past year such as the increase in the proportion of GMV in the shelf field and the large increase in the number of dynamic sales goods, Douyin is indeed becoming more and more like a comprehensive e-commerce platform, and the head-to-head confrontation with Taotian Group will only become more and more frequent.

So on the road of AI + e-commerce, what is the attitude of other platforms?

In general, most of the platforms have layouts, but they are not as comprehensive and in-depth as Alibaba.

For Douyin e-commerce, the biggest role of AI now is to act as an auxiliary traffic distribution tool. The platform uses AI to decentralize, disrupt the original traffic distribution logic, and encourage users to use keywords for intelligent search. Stores can use tools to track the trend of platform traffic distribution, adjust products and pricing, and strive for more**.

However, the AI technology applied by Douyin e-commerce on both users and merchants has imperfections. For example, the "Worth Seeing" function upgraded from the little yellow car, users will receive a link to the system's related products on the short** page, but they need to press pause to trigger the recommendation. On the store operation side, Douyin also launched the short** automatic generation function in December last year, but the templates currently provided are limited and the number is limited.

In contrast, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Kuaishou are more cautious.

Jingdong's representative work"Jingyan"Intelligent shopping guide assistant,With product recommendation、Personalized customization、Basic functions such as price comparison,But it lacks characteristics,Compared with the intelligent assistant of other platforms, it can only be regarded as useless。 Although Pinduoduo and Kuaishou have established large-scale model teams, they have not launched products specifically for e-commerce business for the time being. The application of AI technology in the former focuses on some "old tools": dynamic algorithm pricing, traffic distribution, personalized recommendation, etc., which can be said to have not really entered the era of large models.

Speaking of which, Alibaba's advantages are obvious: as a comprehensive e-commerce platform with the largest third-party merchant scale and user volume, and with a dual core field of content + shelves, it provides the most abundant experimental field for AI. Other platforms either don't have enough conditions to do experiments, such as Pinduoduo's lack of technology and Douyin's lack of merchants; or lack of urgency, such as JD.com, which is still mainly self-operated, unknowingly lagged behind in this AI race.

But don't look at Ali's fast running on the road of AI e-commerce, in fact, he is just crossing the river by feeling the stones. AI+ e-commerce may not be a new concept, but it is the first time that it has been sought after and promoted on such a large scale. Whether this road can be accomplished, whether it can really realize the revolution of productive forces, Ali may not have the bottom in his heart.

The good news is that Tmall is going faster than competitors such as JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Douyin in this wave of AI. After missing the two major outlets of social networking and sinking, he finally grabbed the pole position again and regained the initiative. This is a positive change for Ali, who is often criticized for his bloated organization, slow decision-making and loss of entrepreneurial spirit.