After the barbaric period, social e-commerce can finally understand it

Social e-commerce, the dark horse that disrupts the situation, is finally not so incomprehensible.

The Internet era with BAT as the giant is so familiar that it is a bit annoying. Baidu, which once led the way, is now struggling on the verge of defending the game; the e-commerce giant led by Alibaba has always aimed at social networking and tried to encircle Tencent, creating a new way of playing Taobao live broadcasts and Internet celebrity e-commerce; Tencent, which is a social background, has never stopped trying to open up e-commerce channels.

With the trial and error of the giants, those who did not need to consider the innate genetic troubles gradually explored a pure social e-commerce path. In addition to the mobile social era, the maturity of information dissemination paths, consumer shopping habits and payment methods have provided the possibility for the outbreak of social e-commerce. Even in 2016, when capital tightened, investors were still generous in social e-commerce: Pinduoduo announced the completion of a US$110 million Series B financing in July; in December, Yunji Weidian announced the completion of a 228 million Series A financing.

不同于传统电商平台先行的思路，成长于移动电商之上社交电商最显著的特点在于其主要流量来源不是依靠广告、搜索等传统方式，而是依赖于社交关系网络而产生。

Information dissemination channels have always been commercial traffic entrances, and each change will give birth to corresponding business forms. Just like mail order, telephone sales, TV shopping, online shopping and other forms, with the emergence of different information dissemination channels, it is not surprising that social e-commerce emerges when the circle of friends replaces websites and news apps become well-known sources of information.

In 2016, domestic mobile payment business reached 52.71 billion, with payment amounts of RMB 157.55 trillion, an increase of 85.82% and 45.6% year-on-year respectively, with a growth rate of three times that of online payment transactions. From this point of view, it is not difficult to understand that most social e-commerce companies were established in 2015 after the express subsidy war and the red envelope war.

Social e-commerce with "Three-way Breakthrough"

Social e-commerce has also experienced a period of barbaric growth.

The "historical issues" left behind have made many people hear the first reaction of social e-commerce: aren't it those micro-businesses who sell facial masks in their circle of friends? Indeed, in order to make quick profits, mobile e-commerce adopted many simple and crude methods. A group of speculators used inferior products as good ones and priced huge profits, and pushed the goods to micro-businesses and individuals at all levels in the form of dealer qualifications or monthly tasks. In the layer-by-layer agency model, the "three-no products" finally appeared in front of consumers.

The market dividends of the early chaos were quickly consumed with the growth of traffic costs. Under the trend of consumption upgrading, users' demand for personalized and accurate recommendations is increasing, which has led social e-commerce to return to its essence.

At present, the typical social e-commerce that appears on the market can be roughly divided into the following three categories:

1. Micro group buying category: Pinduoduo

From early micro-stores and pocket shopping to later cute stores, we all took the micro-group buying strategy. Among these players, the most distinctive social e-commerce attributes is Pinduoduo, which uses WeChat friends to buy group groups and backends, which uses Pinduoduo to buy fine supply chains on the front end. Previously, it was said that mobile e-commerce just knocked on the social window and failed to touch the door. As a traditional promotion method, group buying has not caused much trouble in the past. However, in combination with mobile social networking, the small group buying discounts stimulate users' sense of participation, ignited the social network, and then exploded with amazing power, and the social communication volume successfully converted into Pinduoduo's sales. In January 2016, the daily transaction volume of the Pinduoduo platform exceeded 10 million, and it was only more than four months before it was officially launched.

Nowadays, the group buying model has become a marketing magic weapon for emerging e-commerce, and such information is common in the circle of friends and WeChat groups. Pinduoduo

Through innovation in front-end interactive methods, the dividends of mobile social networking are well grasped. Coupled with the innovation of the back-end C2B supply chain, Kuaishou has achieved the spread from fresh fruits to other categories in less than two years.

2. Mobile phone store opening category: Yunjiwei Store

Micro-group buying is the basis for the rapid growth of social e-commerce, but when users are not just a single passive choice of group buying, companies that meet new needs will emerge to do more refined things. One of the representatives of this type is Yunji Weidian mentioned above. Although it is similar to Weidian and Mengdian in terms of name, its operational ideas are still very different.

The source of traffic to Yunji Weidian is not the user, but the owner of the broker. After obtaining the qualification of a store owner, the store owner can go to the product library to select products on the shelves based on the preferences of friends around him and his own expertise to generate his own store. After the user places an order through the shared link, the store owner will receive relevant commission income. Under the influence of the incentive mechanism, millions of store owners have become the source of vitality for gathering traffic.

In Yunji Weidian, the actual sales entity is Yunji Weidian, and the rights and responsibilities are very clear. It sells mainstream brand products, rather than limited to low-priced products such as fresh fruits. Consumers can compare product information with other e-commerce platforms online. Yunji will provide unified customer service services and have strategic partners such as Amazon, SF Express, and EMS in standardized logistics. The shopping experience is basically the same as that of mainstream e-commerce. If you put aside the business methods, Yunjiwei Store, which opens a mobile phone store, looks like a Costco membership store on mobile phones.

3. Corporate direct sales category: Haier, Gome

Some companies with strength or e-commerce foundation will naturally not let go of the emerging growth point of social e-commerce, and Haier and Gome are two of them. For Haier and Gome, which have deep offline retail genes, their current situation is actually not a matter of life or death, but they all hope to use social e-commerce to add icing on the cake; since the traffic cost is getting higher and higher, it might as well change some advertising fees to commissions to obtain traffic and transactions, so they both launched the WeChat store model at the same time.

Therefore, Haier manufacturers integrate online and offline resources in the new environment and lay out O2O; Gome launched "Gome PLUS" to try to connect offline and online, and do better in users, products, platforms, services, sharing and experience. At present, both companies are still in the exploration stage of social e-commerce. After all, social e-commerce may be the most direct and effective way for enterprises to communicate with users.

Different players have their own emphasis on their own advantages in starting a business, so it is difficult to directly judge which one is better, but everyone is adjusting and optimizing it bit by bit in accordance with market norms.

The "scrambler" who breaks in will accelerate the evolution of e-commerce

Since its birth, the development speed of social e-commerce has been amazing, far exceeding the average level of the e-commerce industry and the growth rate of previous e-commerce forms.

Pinduoduo was officially launched in September 2015. In January 2016, the platform's daily transaction volume exceeded 10 million. In February of the same year, the number of paid users exceeded 20 million. The latest data shows that Pinduoduo's monthly GMV exceeds 3 billion yuan. Based on this calculation, its annual GMV has exceeded Taobao's 16.9 billion yuan in 2006, approaching its 43.3 billion yuan performance in 2007, and is even much higher than Suning's online GMV in 2014. In less than two years, it surpassed Alibaba's 4-5 years of results.

Yunji Weidian, which focuses on opening mobile phone stores, also performed well. When the news of the A-round financing was announced in December last year, Yunji Weidian announced that the number of store owners had exceeded 800,000 and monthly sales reached 300 million yuan. The latest data shows that the number of store owners has exceeded one million, and monthly sales have exceeded 500 million. Based on this estimate, its sales in 2017 will be at least 6 billion yuan, higher than JD.com's 2.9 billion yuan in 2009. With the help of social networks, Yunji Wedian has achieved the scale that JD has taken 10 years to reach in the early e-commerce stage.

In recent years, Taojing and JD.com have been actively moving and socializing. In the e-commerce system where traffic is king, whoever has greater traffic can create greater sales and value. In the future, social marketing will become an important way for e-commerce, and the socialization of e-commerce will be the general trend. It is hard to say whether a simple social e-commerce company can surpass traditional e-commerce giants, but the share of the emerging new forces under social e-commerce will expand rapidly, and traditional e-commerce will also accelerate their evolution and iteration in this wave of socialization, completing the smooth transition of the "post-e-e-commerce era".

At present, the social e-commerce upstart circle seems to have not yet fully taken shape, and many players are also trying to get ahead. But just like when the O2O war was in the beginning, those who were deep and heavy had the chance to laugh to the end, companies in the social e-commerce field that could do more homework in warehousing, logistics, quality control, and consumer value-added services had a greater chance of winning. After all, the essence of social e-commerce is still e-commerce, and it also depends on service and experience to win.

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