Increased orders, and merchants' worries.

Core guide:

• The e-commerce platform introduces the delivery reward, it is not easy to get the reward.

• Under the epidemic, the contradiction between merchants and platforms is highlighted.

• Pinduoduo and BABA focus on the difference in service.
  

For the countless merchants on most e-commerce platforms, this Spring Festival is much more difficult than in previous years. In the past, e-commerce did not have a holiday, but this year they had to take a "long holiday" because of an epidemic.

Almost the whole people open the "squatting at home" mode, the growth of online shopping orders, villages and warehouses that do not have free access, factories that cannot operate, express deliveries with insufficient capacity, and the failure to deliver goods on schedule lead to customers' refund orders, all of which worry businesses.

Compared with 2003, the e-commerce system in 2020 is quite complete. This benefits from the maturity of various supporting facilities, as well as the mature operation assessment mechanism of the e-commerce platform. In this mode of cooperative operation of the whole society, when one of the links is broken, the whole link will go wrong.

The greeting of the merchant became "did you go into the warehouse today?" "" did you deliver the goods today? Businesses that used to worry about no traffic are not happy when they look at the new visitors and increased orders.

E-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo and Taobao have successively issued rules to encourage merchants to deliver goods. Pinduoduo merchants proposed to subsidize merchants who insist on bearing the cost of logistics subsidies and maintaining consumers of operation and delivery services during the epidemic. The reward will be 2-3 yuan for each order. And there is no upper limit on the subsidy. At present, the platform has allocated 1 billion yuan for the first batch of special subsidy funds.

Taobao also issued shipping incentive rules on the 9th and 13th respectively, and the benefit point is getting higher and higher: in addition to the reward, there is also an exposure reward.

The dilemma of merchants

There must be a brave man under the "heavy money".

On February 9, Zhicheng in Fuzhou, Jiangxi Province, pulled a truckload of 4.2 tons of goods to the delivery point early in the morning. The shipping reward of 2-3 yuan is tempting. To be normal, it is almost tantamount to not having to bear the logistics cost. It's worth sneaking out from the villagers.

But the success of going for the reward soon found that it was not easy to get the reward. Because the focus of the assessment is not on the delivery time, but on the actual receiving time:

1. Orders with shipping address and receiving address in the same city / province are required to arrive the next day.

two。 The shipping address and receiving address are both in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Anhui / Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

3. In addition to the above cases, if the shipping address and receiving address have reached the inter-provincial order requirements of 3 days, the shipping address and receiving address of Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia order requirements of 5 days.

"it doesn't count if you don't arrive, and there are ranking weights for delivery. It may not be possible to send Shunfeng now. Not to mention how many Pinduoduo merchants can afford to send Shunfeng? "said a Pinduoduo businessman.

Zhicheng also said that the delivery rate of his truckload of goods may be less than half. The distribution involves multiple outlets, and the situation of almost each network will be different. The preserved fruit he sells also has to worry about whether it will go bad because it takes too long to transport. When you think about it, the loss outweighs the gain in this risky delivery operation. The next day, the door of Zhicheng's house was blocked by villagers.

It is not convenient to get in and out of the village, so it is even more difficult to get into the warehouse. "without a certificate of return to work, you cannot enter the warehouse in the park. According to the regulations of the park, no one is allowed to enter unless there are special circumstances. Yang Qilin of Suzhou said helplessly. The opening date of the park has yet to be notified.

Seeing from the delivery deadline of Tmall's order-24:00 on the 14th, it is getting closer and closer, if you can't get into the warehouse and can't deliver the goods, there will be customer complaints. Looking at the increasing orders every day, he couldn't be happy.

Zhang Yongzheng's company in Weihai, Shandong Province officially resumed work on February 12. Only more than 60 workers can be reworked. He said that in addition to workers who are unable to return to Weihai from other places, workers who have just returned to Weihai have not been notified to go to work immediately, but have been quarantined for 14 days and wait for notice. "We have more than 400 normal employees, but now only 141 people have been approved to return to work. Tang Xi, a Nanjing businessman, said.

Compared with other businesses, Zhang Yongzheng and Tang Xi are lucky.

Many businesses have been informed that the factory will not be allowed to return to work before March. The goods hoarded a few years ago are no longer enough to sell. A sofa cushion merchant said that the express delivery had been delivered and the inventory could not be maintained for long because the supply chain was not open. White-brand merchants did not dare to stock up a few years ago. A merchant in Shandong sold a total of 120000 orders, of which more than 60, 000 were out of stock. As the factory is in Yiwu, we still need to be notified to resume work. We don't know when the missing goods will be made up.

On this side of the platform, we also need to ensure the richness of goods and the normal operation of e-commerce services, and merchants hope that the platform can agree to the request for the removal of goods in order to prevent the sales of out-of-stock goods from growing. However, the request was rejected by the platform operator.

The rapid refund aggravated the pain of the merchants. As the e-commerce platform has a quick refund, once the merchant fails to deliver the goods at the specified time, the platform will automatically initiate a quick refund. This also means that merchants who do not ship goods within the deadline are very likely to turn their orders into inventory.

Magical reality of e-commerce logistics

On February 10, many businesses came to the so-called "turnaround". On the same day, the State Post Bureau announced that 13 express delivery enterprises, including China Post, Shunfeng, JD.com, SUNING Logistics, Yuantong, Shentong, ZTO Express, Yunda, Best, Debang, Tiantian, Home Express, Crossing Express, and so on, officially switched from the "Spring Festival mode" to the normal operation mode.

However, although the "Spring Festival model" is over, the "anti-epidemic model" is not over yet.

On February 11, a businessman in Taizhou, Zhejiang Province, told the Retail owner Internal reference that there was only one person coming back to work at the Yuantong site near his home, and he was still a temporary worker, sending out less than 1000 orders a day. "I'm so tired that I can't finish it. "

On the same day, the Shentong Express Center in Yongtai, Baiyun District, Guangzhou, was suddenly closed because a suspected case of COVID-19 was found near the site.

A Shenzhen merchant was temporarily told that the Shentong courier in charge of delivery was arrested on February 12 because he started work ahead of time and did not wear a mask at the company. The goods originally sent on the tenth day can only be shelved for the time being.

Merchants in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province said that the express delivery had not been opened so far. The postal service is only by air, but not by land.

Guangzhou Shunfeng is still delivering goods during the Spring Festival, but since February 13, some businesses have found that Shunfeng has stopped sending. "the landlord has come to say hello and must stop." "

Even if the goods are delivered, it is difficult to ensure the timeliness of logistics. "there was a businessman in a small mountain village who said that he had sent the post and Yuantong. It was sent by the Post Office on the 2nd, but I haven't picked it up up to now. Yuantong has been sent to the transit center. "

There is still a problem with the delivery here, and consumers there have begun to return the goods. "there is a customer, return on the 7th, only 2 days of logistics information, to today there is no logistics. It was supposed to be here on the 12th. Now the customers don't know where they are. "

Some businesses inquire about the news of rookie logistics, but it is difficult to start because the price is too high. "I tried and returned it again. The postage is too expensive. "some merchants began to regret that they had not reached a cooperation with Shun Feng," and now the delivery price is also cheap. We haven't worked together before. It's expensive now. "

In order to avoid being punished by the platform for overtime, some merchants hope to place an order before shipping through consultation with the logistics company.

However, at present, logistics companies have strict collection time standards, requiring that parts must be delivered within 48 hours, otherwise they will face 10% of the order payment; under this risk mechanism, no express delivery company is willing to take risks. Unexpectedly, the practice of protecting the rights and interests of businessmen has now become a stumbling block to flexibility.

Differentiation Strategy of E-commerce platform

It is worth noting that the epidemic also fully demonstrated the differences between Taobao Tmall and Pinduoduo in the incentive and operating rules of users and merchants.

Pinduoduo hopes to maintain normal operation at this stage and win the trust of users. Fu Zheng, head of Pinduoduo's anti-epidemic working group, said publicly, "as an e-commerce platform with more than 500 million buyers, Pinduoduo's primary responsibility in the special period is the consumer's material supply." therefore, the platform can persist in on-duty delivery in a special period. Businesses that serve consumers will be subsidized, hoping to encourage more businesses to come forward and serve consumers.

BABA, on the other hand, paid more attention to pacifying merchants and issued six measures to support businesses with the consistent mission of "making the world without difficult business." In addition to reward delivery, once promised delivery will be able to refund in advance.

Although it has passed the final delivery date of Pinduoduo and Taobao, the merchant said it had not received a description of the penalty.

The rules of e-commerce, which apply both grace and power, cannot change the practical problems faced by businesses. Countless e-commerce merchants are waiting for the end of the epidemic and the day will come as soon as possible to serve consumers.