Big update, Taobao joins the low-price war!

After JD.com’s 10 billion subsidies, Taobao finally couldn’t hold back the throbbing heart...

01. Increase the minimum price

Some media said that Taobao is internally testing the "same price comparison" function.

In the search page of Taobao APP, words such as "same model for sale", "same model for low price", and "go to compare prices" appear below some products. After clicking, you can see the price and real-time sales of the same product.

At present, this function mainly covers some 3C and electrical products , and is expected to cover all categories in the future.

In addition, the platform has also added a "comparison" function, which has an entry in both the search page and the product page.

After clicking, you can check several items that users want to compare, and compare them from three aspects: "comprehensive comparison", "parameter comparison", and "reputation comparison", to help users make purchase decisions more efficiently.

After testing, it was found that although this function can select several product comparisons, there are only two products that actually appear on the comparison page. If users want to change the comparison product, they need to click on the product name to change it.

However, these features are in the preliminary testing stage and are not the final version.

Compared with the past, when users need to compare prices, they can only manually select "Sort by price" or use the "Good Price" function to query, but the entrance is hidden deep and the link is cumbersome.

The emergence of new functions greatly reduces the user's operating costs and also shortens the user's decision-making costs.

02. Whoever has the lowest price and has the traffic

In addition to allowing the lowest price to appear in the most conspicuous position, Taobao's continued efforts to increase the lowest price are far from over.

It is understood that Taobao is testing a business tool called "Five-Star Price Power" .

This tool will rate the prices of goods on sale provided by the merchants, and can also evaluate the price power of the corresponding products, all of which are divided into 5 levels of price power star ratings.

As shown in the figure above, the price after the "eye protection desk lamp" is 238. The tool shows that its price competitiveness is "general", with three stars. The price force is evaluated as no traffic support and priority display opportunities, and it is recommended to adjust the price.

Click the "Price Adjustment" button, the system will give a recommended price and indicate that if the merchant adopts it, the product price will have a chance to increase to "4 stars", and you can get additional search traffic recommendations.

At present, four-star and five-star products are the main targets of resource support for the platform.

Supported products will be labeled as "low price across the entire network" and "low price for the same model" .

In other words, whoever has a lower price will get more traffic.

It is obvious that "price" is becoming the focus of Taobao's next stage layout.

After Pinduoduo and JD.com support the 10 billion subsidy, the e-commerce platform "big brother" Taobao is joining the competition in its unique way.

03 The one who is "optimistic" is king

All of the functions tested on Taobao this time are inseparable from the word "price", so some media speculated that this is a signal of its joining the "low-price competition".

However, Taobao did not use subsidy-style actions like Pinduoduo and JD.com.

This coincides with the remarks made by Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong at the company's financial report meeting in February this year.

"Looking back on history, no company can achieve the goal of changing the situation through its own continuous price subsidies. In the end, it depends on technological innovation and innovation in commercial mechanisms, so that merchants are willing to give the best products and the best prices to consumers."

From this point of view, the functions of "same price comparison" and "five-star price power" are what Zhang Yong called "innovation" .

Encouraging merchants to give concessions and provide consumers with better and more affordable products is a move that Taobao used in this price war.

This also explains what is the "price power" among Alibaba's five major strategies.

After all, "price" is the core competitiveness of the platform and the unchanging truth in the business world.

But purely low-priced products are not the way the platform needs to take. For Taobao, focusing on high-quality cost-effective products is the long-term solution for development.

But high-quality cost-effective products cannot be achieved by shouting a few slogans.

If Pinduoduo and JD.com use "low price" as a weapon, then Taobao uses another "low price" form - divesting low-quality merchants .

As a part of the triangle structure of platforms, merchants and consumers, the quality of merchants directly determines consumers' consumption sentiment.

If merchants want to make money at low prices, they will inevitably optimize the supply chain. At this time, merchants who do not have low prices will not get more traffic and will eventually be eliminated by the market.

Therefore, the future e-commerce market cannot be separated from these four words - "Excellent" is king!

After all, only merchants with excellent quality, excellent prices and excellent service can survive and develop in the turbulent waves of e-commerce.

As a merchant, are you ready?