share_log

拼多多品牌升级:离天猫越近,离阿里越远

Pinduoduo brand upgrade: closer to Tmall, farther away from Ali

晚點LatePost ·  May 8, 2021 12:10

Source: LatePost later

Author: Zhang Qin

01.pngNiuniu knocked on the blackboard:

Brand upgrading is the only way for e-commerce, Pinduoduo will eventually become more and more like Tmall. However, the process of realization and the results achieved may be very different.

Chinese regulators fined BABA 18.2 billion yuan and stopped "choosing one of the two". But the presence of the Pandora brand does not make it any easier.

Today you can buy iPhone, Huawei mobile phones, Nike Inc sneakers and Lancome skincare products in Pinduoduo. However, all these brands did not accept Pinduoduo's suggestion to open a brand flagship store to officially settle in.

Most brands are still stationed in the name of dealers, or refuse to participate in the "tens of billions of subsidies", or only provide low-end products. They keep their distance from Pinduoduo and use it more as an online OUTLETS.

Winning more brands has become one of Pinduoduo's most important jobs this year. "later LatePost" learned exclusively that Pinduoduo listed the proportion of brand sales (GMV) as the focus of this year.

Before the supervision issued a huge fine on BABA, the investment promotion activities of related brands have been accelerated. Pinduoduo gives flow support to cooperative brands, including promotions such as "Super Brand Day" and "Ten Thousand Group". In addition, it also designed a new "official" or "flagship store" gold logo to distinguish it from the "brand" black label of the dealer store.

Relying on Wechat's traffic dividend, low-priced goods and excellent user experience, Pinduoduo has enabled users in low-line cities and people who used not to use e-commerce to buy things online. In this process, 9.90 yuan a box of fruit, the fakes before and after the listing of the storm, also let Pinduoduo affix the "cheap" label.

But selling bargains won't capture the future. The post-80s and post-90s users in China's first-and second-tier cities seized by Taobao and JD.com have grown into the backbone of China's consumption today. In the past year, the total number of Chinese who spent money on Pinduoduo has exceeded that of Taobao, but the people who grew up with Taobao and JD.com did not trust it so much, and the people it initially caught on to have relatively limited spending power.

The "$10 billion subsidy" launched in the second quarter of 2019 is an attempt to alleviate the problem. It has indeed led to the growth of sales and users of the platform, raising the per capita consumption of buyers in Pinduoduo's fiscal year 2020 from 1551 yuan to 2115 yuan at the end of 2020. but this figure is less than JD.com 's 1max 3 and BABA's 1max 4.

Participation in 10 billion subsidies are mainly second-and third-tier dealers of brands, which can not improve users' trust in Pinduoduo. Pinduoduo's marketing campaign also focuses on goods rather than stores.

The variety of brand goods is relatively limited, which restricts the frequency of consumers' shopping, and then limits the realized value of Pinduoduo's flow. That's why Pinduoduo is now speeding up persuading brands to open official stores: dispel users' doubts about the quality of their products, have enough profit space to promote them, and sell advertisements to deep-pocketed brand merchants.

1、In-house horse racing and Ahambo B testEverywhere

By mid-2020, Pinduoduo's total investment team has more than 400 people, accounting for at least half of the 29th and 32nd floors of the Jinhongqiao International Center and the entire floor of the 31st floor of its headquarters.

According to the division of labor, they are divided into brand investment and industrial belt investment (that is, white-brand merchants). At the beginning of 2020, Pinduoduo set up an industry-wide brand investment group of 30 people to expand the brand, regardless of category.

Among them, the 30-member industry-wide brand investment team is divided into two groups to implement internal horse racing. No data or resources are shared between groups, and team members are required to rob brands.

The two groups are led by Cat General (Fancy name) and Mango (Fancy name), respectively, reporting directly to COO Abramovich. The former is the person in charge of Pinduoduo's services for the brand, while the latter was once the general head of human resources of Pinduoduo, and later voluntarily applied to be the person in charge of women's clothing category, during which he rotated in beauty makeup, mobile phone and digital group.

The process of horse racing is extremely intense. The performance of the two groups was evaluated every month, including the number of brand stores, GMV and GMV growth rate.

One month last year, the performance of Group A was much higher than that of Group B. after the results came out, Group B changed its supervisor. Although Puduoduo supervisors have a rotation system, the timing of replacement is somewhat subtle. Speaking of the working atmosphere at that time, a former investment employee said, "even if the two groups meet, they will not look up and say hello." Sometimes the two groups go to talk to the same brand and don't know about each other.

However, this pursuit of efficiency may hinder the efficiency of investment promotion to some extent.

For example, in the smart phone industry, where there are only six major brands left, Pinduoduo still set up an industrial belt investment promotion team and a brand investment team. As a result, not only the dealers in group An and B who compete for mobile phone brands, but also the investment staff for vertical purposes. A former mobile investment employee said that Pinduoduo's measure of the effectiveness of investment promotion in the mobile phone industry mainly depends on whether the category GMV growth rate exceeds the platform-wide GMV growth rate. "my KPI is to keep the dealers in my hands from being robbed by (Pinduoduo) brand investment promotion people in the whole industry."

In order to attract more official brands and improve operational efficiency, Pinduoduo, in addition to attracting investment in horse racing, also does a variety of Ascarb B tests on the product side to see which merchants are more attractive to consumers.

At present, in Pinduoduo's brand store suffix, there are "brand" black mark, "official" and "flagship store" gold mark, and "flagship store" label. Among them, Jinbiao is the official flagship store, while the "brand" black label and the "flagship store" label are nominal dealer stores.

图片

Photo note: Anta and Adidas are both official entrants, but they are marked with the gold standard of "official" and "flagship store" respectively.

The co-existence of the two gold marks is part of the Ascarb B test, and Pinduoduo is also considering removing the "brand" black mark. For example, when some consumers search the official flagship store of "three squirrels", they may not see the black mark of the store suffix "brand". The effect of ABG B test was measured by comparing the conversion rate of page visitors between the two experimental groups.

图片

Photo note: although they are all "brand" black marks, the three squirrels are actually officially stationed, while Tiantian Sports is the dealer.

2、Brands are worried about losing control of prices.Pinduoduo partial compromise

Previously, in order not to be punished by BABA, the brand either withdrew the store or settled in the name of the dealer. Pinduoduo could not do much at that time. While accepting the reality, he continued to push the "brand fight" and used the flow to support those manufacturers with low price increases, weak brands but formal production qualifications.

After the cancellation of "choose one of two", brands have been stationed in Pinduoduo, including three "Taobao Brand" squirrels that have come and gone in 2019.

But not all new brands accept Pinduoduo's low-price sales strategy, especially those international brands that have set up a multi-level distribution system offline and share stable profits. Pinduoduo's discount will damage their original price system and hit dealers who need to pay store rent and clerk salaries. A Pinduoduo employee said Pinduoduo hoped the brand would also participate in the 10 billion subsidy, but some brands refused.

Pinduoduo made a limited compromise on this, agreeing not to label "ten billion yuan subsidy" and instead issuing consumption coupons to achieve a discount.

Pinduoduo also relaxed some restrictions on brands that are willing to participate in the 10 billion yuan subsidy.

Previously, it had asked merchants to make special packages for the "10 billion subsidy", that is, printing a logo and a QR code on the package, and putting colored paper explaining the "10 billion subsidy" in the package to highlight Pinduoduo's own brand. Today, Pinduoduo is no longer forced to unify the restrictions on this kind of special materials.

In addition, there are some brands that are officially stationed but in the name of dealers, such as mobile phone brand Honor and XIAOMI. A domestic top three mobile phone brand channel manager told "later LatePost" that this is a performance of Pinduoduo's compromise and one of the terms that promised to give the brand "conditional" entry.

Mobile phone brands are cautious because they need to set aside stable profit margins for dealers in other channels. And dealers, regardless of the peaks and valleys of the industry, continue to undertake manufacturers' shipments, earn a little more when the market is good, and earn less when it is bad, sharing the inventory pressure of brands. If Pinduoduo disrupts the price control of mobile phone manufacturers, the interests of dealers will be damaged, which in turn affects the cooperation between mobile phone brands and dealers.

Pinduoduo has little say in the mobile phone industry. So far, more than half of China's mobile phones are sold offline, while 80% of online sales come from JD.com and Tmall-Pinduoduo is just a small channel.

Previously, in order to restrict dealers' shipments in Pinduoduo, some brands would determine whether dealers were selling in tandem by monitoring the location of mobile phones. At first, some distributors will activate it locally and then go to Pinduoduo to sell goods to other places. In response, mobile phone manufacturers, such as Huawei, will further trace the location and time of the second launch of the phone.

The merchandising team also has coping strategies. Because Huawei allows mobile phones to move within the province, but forbids cross-provinces, if they receive an order from Shaoxing, Zhejiang, they will turn to SUNING in Hangzhou to deliver the goods.

A former employee of Pinduoduo explained that the brand has a strong desire to maintain its price system, and the platform has no obligation to control "excessive prices". He believes that "random price" is very normal in the initial stage of a platform, and the platform price precisely reflects the most real supply and demand.

Among the categories that fully reveal the logo of the "official flagship store", home appliances are in the majority, followed by food and beverages, such as NONGFU SPRING CO., LTD., Yuanqi Forest, quality shops and so on. It is easy to tell whether these goods are true or false. As for beauty makeup, clothing brand categories, the former investment staff self-evaluation of the brand to do "shabby".

Nike Inc, a bigger sports brand than Adidas, has no flagship store yet. In Pinduoduo's search for the word "Nike Inc", the banner "Adidas's official flagship store has been settled" will pop up under the search box.

图片

Photo note: Pinduoduo arranged the advertising banner for Adidas at the top of "my order" and search results.

Pinduoduo is also trying to find another way to bring in an overseas makeup e-commerce platform, bringing the latter's high-end cosmetic products sold abroad to buy more and sell more. However, the platform has been stationed in Tmall, and previously the effect of independent operation in China is not good, rejected Pinduoduo.

Most of the cosmetics brands stationed in Pinduoduo are local enterprises, including Peraia, ou Shiman, Shangmei, antelope and so on. "later LatePost" learned that Abramovich expressed the hope that light and extravagant women's clothing brands would settle in to the investment promotion department many times last year. However, in terms of the current results, the progress is limited.

Unwilling to sacrifice traffic efficiency and affect evaluation, Pinduoduo's promotion team was once unwilling to cooperate with the promotion request of the investment promotion team. A former investment promotion employee said that a colleague once took an email approved by Abt to the first-level supervisor of the product and technology level of activities such as "second kill", but the other person ignored it and asked, "you don't want GMV?" "

Now, as the "brand upgrade" has been raised to a higher position, the cooperation between Pinduoduo's investment promotion department and other departments has also gone much smoothly.

3、For brandsPinduoduo is just an online version of OUTLETS for the time being.

Adidas is this round of official residence in Pinduoduo of the brand, the largest brand, but also Pinduoduo to give the most resources tilted company. The "official arrival of Adidas" banner is not only hung at the top of the "my order-ready to receive" page.

If users search for sports brands that are not officially present, such as Nike Inc, the banner will also appear at the top of the results page.

Adidas received the most support from Pinduo, but it stayed in the name of "adidas's official O'Lay store"-OUTLETS has been synonymous with brand, authentic, low prices and tail clearance for many years. And Pinduoduo as a brand customer to get the original intention is to get rid of the impression of inventory. Even so, Adidas store still got the highest "tonality score" of 6 points within Pinduoduo.

However, insiders said that Adidas's current average daily sales in Pinduoduo are far below the brand's expectations.

The pursuit of consumption is nothing more than "how fast, good and economical".

Pinduoduo is good at "province", but blindly "province" restricts income and profit scale. To "more" and "fast" expansion requires a large amount of short-term capital investment, which is not suitable for Pinduoduo, who is betting on community group buying and heavy asset investment.

"good" is relatively easy-users naturally have a demand for consumption upgrading. Pinduoduo uses traffic to attract brands to settle in, enrich the categories of products on the platform, rely on the "good" of "province" to continue to get to customers, and improve the stickiness of stock users. and then improve the realization efficiency of the platform.

But it will take a long time to achieve these results. During this period, we should, on the one hand, prove to the brand that we have enough middle-and high-end consumers, and on the other hand, provide the other side with sufficient management tools to prevent disruption of the distribution system. This often means that low-price promotions are infrequent or non-full-category normalized low prices.

If Pinduoduo wants to attract brands to open stores and sell goods in order to change consumers' impression of the platform, he can only accept the positioning of the online version of OUTLETS-a special, low-cost but limited range of authentic shopping malls.

But when Pinduoduo began to be regarded as OUTLETS by brands, the road to brand upgrading, which began in 2018, had already taken a small step forward. It will also continue to expand the supply chain, build warehousing and logistics and even do payment systems, following the path of BABA. Finally, he looks more and more like Tmall.

China's large and multi-level consumer market environment gives Pinduoduo the opportunity to achieve consumption upgrading at different levels. But it will not simply upgrade the brand in the way of Tmall to realize the role of Tmall to BABA. One is that copy competition is difficult to beat each other, and the other is that the previous wave of Chinese e-commerce brand upgrade, consumption upgrade, more rely on the traditional offline brand digital realization, now the dividend period is no longer.

This may also explain why the new Pandora brand tilts traffic on the one hand and weakens brands and stores on the other, locking traffic in the platform. Thus, it can attract high-quality merchants and give consumers more consumption scenes, at the same time, provide soil for the birth of new brands. In the business outlook section of the latest annual report, Pinduoduo took away the "10 billion subsidy" and retained the "development brand".

The same destination, different process-the closer to Tmall, but the farther away from BABA.

Edit / Jeffy

The translation is provided by third-party software.


The above content is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute any investment advice related to Futu. Although we strive to ensure the truthfulness, accuracy, and originality of all such content, we cannot guarantee it.
    Write a comment