Edit | Sun Jing
Three years ago, Xiong Wei, vice president of Ding Dong grocery shopping, was particularly surprised when he saw that he bought Jingdong members and sent them to iQiyi members. "At that time, the price of Jingdong members was lower than that of iQiyi members. If you do this, who will buy Iqiyi members in the future? This is the loss of iQiyi. "
Now Xiong Wei doesn't see it that way. Responsible for buying vegetables in Ding Dong, and reached joint membership cooperation with JD.COM, Ctrip, Uncle Kai storytelling and other platforms.
This has almost become the practice of the e-commerce industry. Li Meiying is an old user of e-commerce members. She found that there are more and more e-commerce joint members recently, and the activity of "buy 1 send n" has been constant. Calculated, on average, about 20 yuan can win the annual membership service of an e-commerce platform, which is equivalent to a discount compared with the past 1.
On the second-hand e-commerce trading platform, JD.COM and Vipshop members sell 30 to 40 yuan everywhere. The seller claimed that there were special channels to get the goods. Some buyers left comments: the price is cheap, and the second charge has been renewed until 2030.
Why do e-commerce members who have been priced at hundreds or even hundreds of yuan become cheaper and cheaper?
Buy 1 get n, and the e-commerce membership fee is as low as ten yuan.
During this year's double 1 1 period, the first order placed by Li Meiying is a member of JD.COM Plus, and the price is 149 yuan's one-year membership service. After the discount, 99 yuan sends red envelopes to 30 yuan, which means that consumers only need to pay 69 yuan. After buying the membership, Li Meiying immediately emptied the shopping cart, which cost a total of 1500 yuan, and finally saved 50 yuan.
"If you buy something with double 1 1, you will soon earn back the membership fee." Li Meiying, an old member of JD.COM. Before, she thought the membership fee was too high to be worth it, but she stopped for a year. This time she saw an activity and recharged it again.
Figure/vision china
Compared with Li Meiying, Tian Jingjing is much smarter. As a housewife, I have long wanted to buy a super VIP member of Vipshop, so I have to be cautious. However, the price of 199 yuan for one year is too high, even for activities, I have to 129 yuan. Hesitant Tian Jingjing finally found someone selling Vipshop members in 20 yuan on Weibo, and immediately made a deal with the other party.
Later, Tian Jingjing studied it and found that the business of selling members was really good. On the second-hand e-commerce trading platform, many people sell their members at low prices, for example, annual card members such as Vipshop and Netease YEATION cost 20 to 30 yuan, and annual card members such as JD.COM and Suning cost 40 to 50 yuan. "I looked at it, and many of them are sold all the year round. The seller said that there are special channels to get the goods. "
Ai Caijing found that on the second-hand e-commerce trading platform, e-commerce members such as Tmall 88VIP, JD.COM Plus, Suning Super and Vipshop Super VIP abound.
As an old user, Li Meiying found that e-commerce members are doing more and more activities, and discounting has become the new normal. 165438+1October 30th, the annual membership of JD.COM plus card is still 99 yuan, which is 50% lower than the pricing of 198 yuan; The price of Suning Super Year Card member is 299 yuan, and 99 yuan, a member of Youku Year Card, will be sent after the discount; Ctrip member pricing 188 yuan, doing activities in 88 yuan; The daily fresh annual card is in 88 yuan, and it is in 66 yuan after discount.
This is still the price purchased separately, and it is even lower if you buy a joint member. Li Meiying said that there are more and more co-branded members promoted by e-commerce, and the activities of buying 1 getting N are constant. For example, during the double 1 1 period, 99 yuan, a member of Suning.cn Super Year Card, had seven super life cards, including Wanda Cinema, Suning Studios, Youku and Mango TV. He can buy movies as low as 19.9 yuan, and he can also grab the 0 yuan overlord meal of Haidilao and Yunhai cuisine. JD.COM buys 1 gets 10, including members such as Ding Dong Shopping, Meituan Takeaway, Didi Chuxing, Pizza Hut, etc., with a limited time discount of 102 yuan.
Gao Lu, who missed the double 1 1, recently bought a joint member on Keep. "Price 148 yuan, ordinary family 2 1 yuan, and I like Tencent Video, Vipshop, Cool Me, Dragonfly FM and other annual card members."
Ai Caijing found that since JD.COM and iQiyi launched joint membership as low as 89 yuan in July 20 18, bundling members has become a common practice in the Internet industry, and low price and "buy 1 send n" are two major selling points. Recently, the Himalayas released a carnival activity of 123. Buy 18 yuan, get 10. This "10" includes the rights and interests of members such as Vipshop, Youku and Ding Dong.
"I also renewed the membership of Tmall 88VIP this year. There are Netease Cloud Music, Hungry, Youku and so on. It is especially suitable for people like me who eat takeout, listen to songs, watch TV dramas and visit Taobao. " Li Meiying said.
If there is a flow value that is not worth it?
From 20 15, JD.COM launched the first paid e-commerce member in the industry, and the e-commerce industry in China has been exploring member payment for five years. At present, mainstream e-commerce platforms have launched paid members, but the price of membership cards continues to fall.
Many people in the industry admit that "buy 1 send n" and other promotions and activities make the membership fee of China e-commerce industry lower as a whole. Take JD.COM as an example. The initial membership fee is 149 yuan. 2065,438+08, rising to 299 yuan, with a discount of 65,438+098 yuan. By this year, it has dropped to 99 yuan during the activity. This phenomenon is also reflected in other e-commerce platforms. Although Tmall 88VIP is still 88 yuan, this year it joined the membership rights of Netease Cloud Music, which is also a disguised price reduction.
Figure/vision china
At the moment of consumption upgrading, the price of e-commerce members is untenable. Why is it getting cheaper and cheaper?
Xiong Wei, vice president of the grocery shopping network, told AI Finance, "After we started doing it ourselves, we pushed back the practice of JD.COM and iQiyi, and found that because JD.COM is cheap, buying members from iQiyi is not the mainstream." Xiong Wei found that most of the buyers were not iQiyi users before, but this way of joint membership is equivalent to bringing new quantity to Aiqiyi.
At present, Ding Dong has reached cooperation with JD.COM, Ctrip, Uncle Kai and other platforms. Xiong Wei said that the cooperation with these platforms is mainly to change the turnover. For example, JD.COM bought 654.38 million+members for Ding Dong and Ding Dong bought 654.38 million+members for JD.COM. The cooperation between the two parties is mainly based on the consideration of traffic. "In the industry, joint members are settled by amount, and there is little cash settlement."
According to Xiong Wei, there is no financial pressure to settle accounts by changing the amount, and it does not involve the issue of caliber, so it is easier to operate. "What is scarce in the Internet field is not how much users pay, but the attention." The activity of Ding Dong members is 2.5 times that of ordinary users. If the cost of getting a member is lower than the cost of 2.5 new customers, it is cost-effective to spend money on it. What's more, it doesn't cost money to change the quantity.
"When we talk, we usually estimate how much we need. If it takes a week for JD.COM to give us 654.38 million+members, then we may have to pay them back for a month or two until we reach 654.38 million+members. " Xiong Wei said.
Lai Yang, executive vice president of Beijing Business Economics Association, told ai Finance and Economics that the current e-commerce companies are facing the bottleneck of new customer growth. Behind the enthusiasm for promotion and "marriage" is the lack of growth of new customers and the high cost of attracting new customers. "Those who should be absorbed as members are almost absorbed, and the rest are price-sensitive, and the willingness to buy activities will be stronger."
Hao Yunlong, head of Keep member operation, told AI Finance & Economics that the pricing of joint members is 148 yuan, which is also the result of his team's research. He thinks this pricing is more attractive to users. "The 12 companies in the joint membership were negotiated by my family."
According to Xiong Wei, at present, the e-commerce industry has almost given up the practice of making profits through members. Everyone is sticky through membership, which improves the shopping frequency of users. In this way, they make profits indirectly, rather than relying directly on membership fees.
According to JD.COM, JD.COM Plus members are much higher than non-members in consumption frequency, user quality and consumption stickiness. "The e-commerce industry has entered an inflection point, and the number of online shopping users and the overall consumption scale are slowing down. In the future, if enterprises want to tap the stock market, the member economy will undoubtedly play a very important role. " Meng Chunhui, head of JD.COM Plus membership business, once said.
This is also the fundamental reason why e-commerce platforms in China should be paid members even if they reduce prices, offer discounts and engage in activities.
Nobody talks about copying Amazon Prime anymore.
Back a few years ago, major e-commerce platforms became paid members with great interest, thinking that they could replicate the success of Amazon Prime members in China. But now the platform is silent about the development of member business.
A related person of an e-commerce listed company said frankly: "The boss thinks that this matter of membership is particularly small and not worth mentioning." Two years ago, paid members were regarded as a highlight of the company's financial report, with prominent focus.
Figure/vision china
Behind this is that the overall progress of China e-commerce members is not satisfactory. Lai Yang said that the vast majority of consumers in China don't want to become members, and they don't think it is of much value. Although the platform will emphasize how much money is provided, consumers rarely use it all and enjoy half.
Some users who chose not to renew their fees said that as former paid members of e-commerce, they did not get their due rights, felt cheated, and finally did not choose to renew their fees. Some users also spit out: "I just wanted to buy two or three, but I suddenly stuffed more than a dozen, and many of them were completely useless." "Members should continue to provide value to users. Nowadays, many platforms regard it as a means to acquire customers at low cost and become a hammer sale. "
According to insiders, the renewal rate of domestic e-commerce members is generally not high. For example, the renewal rate of a head platform is only 50%, which is why major platforms are reluctant to come out for interviews.
Ai Caijing learned that although e-commerce paid members have been implemented for five years, the number of members of major platforms is not high at present, mostly in the order of hundreds of thousands and millions. Even in JD.COM and Alibaba, two major e-commerce platforms, the proportion of paid members to the total number of users is only single digits, which is completely different from international e-commerce platforms such as Amazon.
It is understood that as of June 5438+00, 2020, JD.COM Plus has 20 million members, which is not high among its more than 400 million active users. So is Alibaba. By the end of September, the total number of paying members of 88VIP and Taobao Money Saving Card was 35 million, accounting for only 3.97% compared with their total active users of 88 1 10,000, and neither of them mentioned their contribution to revenue in the financial report.
As for Wal-Mart, in the third quarter of this year, the membership fee of Sam member stores was US$ 654.38+05.8 billion, which contributed more than 10% to its total revenue, accounting for 654.38+02%, and the renewal rate of members exceeded 80%. Last year, Chen Zhiyu, senior vice president of China E-commerce and Marketing Department, a member store in Sam, said in an interview with the media that the paid membership system of many domestic e-commerce companies was biased. "They only talked about the total number of members."
"Compared with the number of members, the renewal rate and user activity are the core of paying member retail." Chen Zhiyu said that Sam never seeks the mass market, and doing too much marketing will attract many users who don't match the brand positioning. These people will return their cards soon after they are finally disappointed. It turns out that some people who used to be members may leave because they didn't enjoy the service they deserved.
Zhang Dongwei, a senior Internet person, said that the starting point of the e-commerce paid membership system in China is completely different from that of foreign countries, and almost all of them are limited to "price concessions" and "service priority". Under the pressure of innovation and income generation, it is easy to become a mere formality. To put it bluntly, the e-commerce platform has not figured out which money users don't want to pay.
Some insiders have observed that when Meituan first went public, it proposed to be a Prime membership system similar to Amazon. But now Meituan has been listed for more than two years, and it has not been mentioned in the financial report. "The main problem is cost. No matter how it is calculated, it is not the cost. If you push too much, it will affect the financial report. "
Han Rui, vice president of JD.COM Group, once admitted that members of JD.COM+ could not make ends meet. Jia Luo, vice president of Alibaba Group and general manager of Tmall Operation Division, said that although many businesses of Alibaba are driven by digital indicators, 88VIP is an exception, KPI assessment is the most Buddha, and there is no profit expectation.
"The core of the unsuccessful progress of e-commerce members is the break-even problem. It is easy to subsidize users with money, but how to continue and achieve a win-win situation is the most difficult. Xiong Wei analyzed that the European and American models didn't work in China. Because the competition in the domestic e-commerce industry is very fierce, many enterprises have extremely low operating gross profit, and it is difficult to invest infinitely to increase user stickiness.
Lai Yang cited an example: the logistics fee in China is extremely low, and anything with 5 yuan can be mailed. The degree of competition is completely different from that of foreign countries. Who will become a free shipping member?
(At the request of the interviewee, Li Meiying, Tian Jingjing and Gao Lu are pseudonyms. )