E-commerce dual economy intensifies: Taobao JD.COM sucks away traffic
A few years ago, the e-commerce industry was still in the period of staking. E-commerce companies attract investment by making a single category first, and then expand sales scale through advertising and obtaining traffic patterns. However, with the further expansion of Tmall and JD.COM, the dual phenomenon of Internet economy is repeating itself in the e-commerce industry.
Since 20 12, the traffic of many vertical B2C websites has dropped. An e-commerce executive pointed out that e-commerce traffic has not actually declined, and new users are still rising, but more traditional enterprises come in to share e-commerce cakes, which makes the traffic of e-commerce websites less. On the other hand, JD.COM and Taobao absorbed more traffic. According to public information, the annual net sales of JD.COM Mall in 201/kloc-0 is 2 1 100 million yuan, and the sales target of nearly 60 billion yuan will be achieved in 20 12 years. Alibaba officially announced that as of the evening of 20 12,165438+10.30, the total transaction volume of its Taobao and Tmall in 20 12 exceeded one trillion.
Lan Ye, CMO of JD.COM Mall Group, pointed out to Tencent Technology that traditional industries are the first, with a share of 20%, the second 10%, and the rest are 8%, 7% and 6% respectively, but the characteristics of the Internet determine that users are only used to two or three similar websites. Two to three hundred million users of e-commerce will mainly form two or three online shopping portals.
"People can't remember so many websites." Lan Ye pointed out that after the e-commerce portal is formed, if it starts late or the category expansion and scale expansion are not decisive, it will be more and more difficult for e-commerce websites that have fallen behind in expansion speed to recover. This is determined by the characteristics of China people. "China people can't remember websites, so they are used to searching in search engines first. Some vertical websites have poor brand building, or the supply chain system is not fast, which will make consumers confused or uneasy, thus losing users. Many vertical websites are unable to change this situation. "
Take footwear B2C as an example. There are many products on large B2C websites such as Tmall and JD.COM. When traffic is imported, users can choose many commodities, even the unit price of a commodity is very high. And if the footwear B2C also advertises in this way, 200 people can't make a profit from buying a pair of shoes, which leads to high operating costs and unsustainable.
On the other hand, Tmall is also accelerating its transformation to the JD.COM model. Tmall held direct talks with Lenovo, LG, Skyworth, Philips and other companies in April this year, and went to war with JD.COM and Suning.cn. Since then, Tmall has reached a deeper cooperation with Haier Mall, and will further propose cooperation with well-known brands next year. After the Double Eleven, Tmall Mall introduced three measures: giving a full refund to unsold oversold orders; All consumers who oversold orders will receive 30% of the commodity price, with the highest 500 yuan Tmall points. If the merchant urgently adjusts the goods and delivers them after the delivery time stipulated by the system, consumers can also enjoy compensation. Tmall's series of measures can not only enhance its price advantage, but also ensure its service quality and compress the vertical B2C space.
Under the dual economy of the e-commerce industry, JD.COM even chose high-quality entrance positioning to avoid direct conflict with Taobao and the large and comprehensive positioning of Taobao. Letao completely abandoned the platform dispute, and B2C, including Dangdang and Youbu, began to choose to settle in the big platform.
E-commerce traffic is scarce: next year is the year of brand B2C reshuffle.
With the intensification of dual economy of e-commerce, there are three survival modes of vertical B2C at present. One is upstream branding: for example, Letao transforms into its own brand shoes and becomes an online brand, with the help of Tmall portal, platform and traffic development. The other is specialization, and large-scale B2C channels are contracted or settled. For example, with the help of Tmall, JD.COM, Dangdang and other platforms, Brewmaster. com developed, while Brewmaster. com gave JD.COM a commission, and everyone specialized in this field. The third is selling, such as Red Kids going to Suning.cn.
The big change of channel e-commerce this year is that the strong are strong and the weak are operating in precipitation. Youbu has also entered other platforms since the second half of this year.
Xu Lei, who bought CMO favorably, thinks that it is not a shameful thing to settle in Tmall, JD.COM and Suning, especially at this stage. Without core competitiveness, the performance growth brought by B2C enterprises will only be short-lived, because its supply chain advantage can easily be stifled by other enterprises. For Youbu, relying on Belle resources and having a strong supply chain, once it is done, it will get better returns.
Xu Lei emphasized that the strategy of purchasing on other platforms is a branch of the whole strategy, and most of the resources are still invested in the main station. "Looking at our advertisements, we can see that there will be more than 1 100 million excellent advertisements next year. This 1 100 million is for excellent purchase, and it is to shape independent brands and make orders and users of independent stations. " There are also some concerns about the big platform behind the preferential purchase strategy.
With the entry of B2C such as Dangdang and Yougou into large-scale platforms, and the participation of traditional enterprises such as Haier and Seven Wolves in online investment, a major change is that the traffic of platforms such as Tmall and JD.COM becomes scarce, and B2C enterprises cannot obtain the expected traffic to support business growth, which also restricts the development of B2C that has entered the platform.
For example, the higher the sales scale of Tmall, the higher the traffic planning requirements. Merchants' orders consist of traffic. We know how many orders need to be generated in June 5438+1October and February, but how many orders are needed means how much traffic is needed. However, many brands can't give a traffic plan, so they can only take a conservative approach, that is, increase it slightly and dare not be radical, because radical inventory backlog will bring great risks to enterprises, making it difficult for these B2C enterprises to achieve a higher sales scale.
The early Taobao brand developed rapidly, giving people the illusion of good management, but the growth track of Taobao brand is closely related to the growth of Taobao. Taobao originally supported the Taobao brand, and as long as it is bold enough and has a clear positioning, it can achieve rapid development. However, when Taobao explicitly proposes to promote the brand and directly cooperate with the brand, the Taobao brand will also face challenges.
An e-commerce person pointed out: For example, brand A, Taobao used to attract the attention of brand A by cooperating with its distributors. When these dealers want to be big, what should they do without the support and recognition of brand owners? Brand merchants launched the brand city, and after clicking in, the brands were all there, and they were assigned to channel A, channel B or channel C. The relationship between Taobao and brand merchants was also closer, and the growth of Taobao brand merchants was also restricted. The traffic of industries and big platforms is still growing, but the total volume is no longer growing as before, which is not enough to grow to the traffic that everyone wants to grow. What merchants see is a drop in traffic.
"Amoy brand is so, independent B2C is even worse. For example, in the beginning, I started as an independent B2C. Later, the capital market deteriorated rapidly and the retail market was not very good. Many companies have begun to settle in the big platform. However, I feel that the first moment is not timely. If the capital will give financial support in 2008, 09, 20 10, but the capital has long been lacking, because there is no gene for amoy brands, as a new company and brand, it can't compete with these amoy brands, which also accelerates the dilemma at the first moment. "
In September this year, Ma Yun, Chairman of Alibaba's Board of Directors, launched the "two million" strategy, saying that Alibaba would make every effort to build an online store with an annual turnover of over 1 10,000. Ma Yun said it was to solve the employment problem of more people. However, senior e-commerce people pointed out that this also revealed Taobao's helplessness, that is, Taobao's traffic is not enough to support the medium and large-scale development of so many businesses.
An e-commerce industry executive told Tencent Technology that vertical e-commerce will continue to reshuffle next year. This reshuffle is not necessarily the closure of the company, but it may also be a sluggish sales or selling to others. The 20 12 channel e-commerce reshuffle has been washed badly. 20 13 is the reshuffle year of independent brands. At present, it has encountered difficulties at the beginning, and even well-known e-commerce companies will have similar shuffling.
Talking about the status quo of vertical e-commerce, Minglu, the founder of Haolebu, is not discouraged. He said that many vertical e-commerce companies have lived very hard, mainly because of the rapid development in the early stage. Next year is a very important year, and many vertical e-commerce companies are adjusting. If they adjust well, they will pass. If they don't adjust well, they may die. In the third and fourth quarters of this year, Haolemai continued to adjust, including internal control, supplier relationship, pricing model, etc., and strived for steady development next year, hoping to make a turnaround.
"There must be many opportunities for vertical B2C. Companies like Tmall, JD.COM and Suning are all platforms. Who will make the goods? " Minglu said that the essence of e-commerce is retail, and the traditional business model will definitely be presented online, and no one can get it all. For vertical B2C, everyone must make ends meet as soon as possible before the greater opportunity comes, and find the right specialty to do what they are good at. "When Vipshop went public, everyone said it was a shopping listing, but this year Vipshop is close to the breakeven point and will soon make a profit. The share price has doubled in the past six months. The value of vertical e-commerce will be proved. "
Xing Kongyu, CEO of Pai Loan Network. Com, and said that when the platform between Cat and JD.COM became bigger and bigger that day, it just meant the opportunity of vertical e-commerce. The bigger the platform, the more difficult it is to refine many things, and vertical e-commerce can seize these weaknesses of the platform and make targeted adjustments. Of course, the urgent task is to reduce our own costs and achieve profitability as soon as possible.