Caixin Media | New Consumption Daily News, July 26 (Researcher Liang Youyun) - New Consumption Daily News has learned that today (26th), Taotian Group has successively released two e-commerce operation adjustments.

According to the New Consumption Daily News, from September 1, 2024, Tmall will cancel the annual software service fee for the platform. This means that new merchants entering from September onwards will not need to pay, while already paid merchants will receive a refund in batches according to settlement rules.

In addition, Tmall will fully refund the annual fee for 2024 to merchants who achieve their annual transaction targets from January to August. The New Consumption Daily News noted that under the previous rules, different category merchants on Tmall paid an annual fee of 300,000 to 60,000 yuan to the platform.

In the e-commerce field, Tmall is the operational main venue for brand merchants and large sellers, and also an important sales channel for many new small and medium-sized brands.

Some industry insiders believe that the main purpose of this fee reduction is to allow brands to continue investing in Tmall channels and to further attract more small and medium-sized entrepreneurial merchants to settle in.

While Tmall has reduced its annual fee, another rule adjustment by Taobao has also attracted more attention and discussion in the industry.

According to the notification, Taobao will optimize the current 'only refund' function for after-sales service, improve the merchant's after-sales autonomy based on the new version of the experience score, and reduce or cancel after-sales interventions for high-quality stores. The relevant strategy will be officially implemented on August 9th.

Under the latest rules, the higher the comprehensive experience score of the store, the greater the disposal power when facing 'only refund' requests. This also means that the merchant has the right to refuse the consumer's application, and the risk of malicious 'only refund' by the consumer will further decrease, and the after-sales service of the commodity will to some extent return to the traditional handling process of negotiation between the buyer and seller.

This move will not only affect the shopping and operating experience of both buyers and sellers but also hide the platform's operational strategy change.

Many observers believe that stimulated by pinduoduo's rapid rise, many platforms including Taobao have started to imitate its operating model, including following the 'only refund' mechanism. In the second half of 2023, Douyin, Taobao, and JD.com successively announced support for this function. However, in practice, even the small proportion of malicious 'wool pullers' in total transactions has become unbearable pain for many merchants.

When Taobao officially launched the 'only refund' function in December 2023, it was stipulated that this function would not necessarily lead to merchants encountering refunds without returning goods, but would be judged based on the merchant's historical consumer complaint situation, product quality perception, and other factors using platform big data. At the same time, the platform will also identify consumers who frequently initiate 'only refund' requests.

But according to media reports, after high-frequency transactions such as the 618 promotion and after-sales service, the complaints and dissatisfaction of Taobao merchants have increased. Although there is some 'backstop' for some consumer's malicious wool pulling behavior in the rules, it still leads to the merchant's thin-profit and bulk-sales businesses falling into operational difficulties and even losses.

In addition, it was revealed that after the 618 promotion, Taotian Group held a closed meeting with its merchants and revealed that it will weaken the 'absolute low price' strategy in the second half of the year. This includes adjusting the platform's linkage mechanism between low prices and traffic.

In the first half of 2023, Taobao launched the 'Five-Star Price Power' evaluation standard, which evaluates and adjusts the suggested retail price of a merchant's product based on the price of the same product across the web, encouraging merchants to offer lower prices on Taobao to get higher search rankings and product traffic exposure. The news revealed this time shows that Taobao will not force merchants to follow the 'Five-Star Price Power' standard in the future, but only allows suitable and willing merchants to participate.

This time, Taobao actively announced restrictions on the 'only refund' function, combined with the recent intense competition to withdraw from the 'absolute low price', perhaps also means that Taobao will no longer follow the 'pinduoduo model' and return to its own operational rhythm.