Time flies so fast, the Spring Festival holiday is coming to an end in a blink of an eye. Although the impact of the epidemic has not disappeared, offline consumption in various places is still relatively strong, and there are many lively scenes in consumer entertainment venues. It is conceivable that "whether the consumption upgrade has been interrupted and whether it will continue to advance" will become a theme in the domestic investment circle in 2022. In fact, before 2017, there was basically no doubt about the concept of "consumption upgrade". At that time, Ali was talking about consumption upgrades, and JD.com was talking about consumption upgrades, but the definitions of the paths of consumption upgrades were different. However, the sudden emergence of Pinduoduo has broken the paradigm of "consumption upgrading". There are various explanations for the rise of Pinduoduo. The most popular explanation is that Alibaba focuses too much on “consumption upgrading” and ignores the sinking market, and as a result, it was defeated by Pinduoduo, which mainly focuses on “consumption downgrading”.
However, Huang Zheng, the founder of Pinduoduo, does not agree with the above conclusion, and believes that Pinduoduo is also a "consumption upgrade" - a consumption upgrade for users in cities and towns below the third tier. We especially need to avoid "concept first" when discussing specific issues in any industry, in any business. We cannot apply the theory to the actual situation, but must make the theory conform to the reality. "Consumption upgrading" and "consumption downgrading" are indeed a pair of irreconcilable and eye-catching contradictions, but does this contradiction really exist? Will the e-commerce market in the next 5-10 years really be determined by one of these directions? At the end of the Spring Festival holiday, it seems to be a good time to think about this question - looking at the bustling crowds in the streets and alleys, watching Phone Number List luxury stores, second-hand stores, and discount stores create dazzling sales at the same time, whether it is "consumption upgrade" or "consumption upgrade" Does "consumption downgrade" prevail? This article obviously doesn't answer this question completely, but tries to give some clues to it. 1.
Is the real reason for the rise of Pinduoduo a “consumption downgrade”? The so-called "Ali focused on consumption upgrades, but Pinduoduo, which was downgraded by consumption, was caught off guard", although there are certain facts, but it is by no means the whole truth. Senior consumers may recall that from 2008 to 2012, JD.com was the platform that best represented "consumption upgrades", while Taobao was often accused of uneven product quality, low genuine product rate, and poor contract performance. Since 2012, Alibaba has started a long branding process relying on Tmall (formerly known as Taobao Mall), especially in the lucrative clothing and beauty categories, which have overwhelmed JD.com, thus consolidating its market dominance. When Pinduoduo was established in 2015, the only resources it could rely on were the traffic distribution rules that were relatively fair and beneficial to small and medium-sized businesses, in addition to the group traffic of the WeChat ecosystem. As the largest e-commerce platform in China, Tao-based e-commerce is actually divided into two parts: Taobao, which makes money, and Tmall, which makes money. No matter at that time or now, the traffic distribution of Tao-based e-commerce is heavily inclined to big merchants and big brands, as shown in the table below.