As a national-level e-commerce platform, Taobao's every move affects most people's business. For example, the recently released "Interpretation of Tmall's Rules for Inducing Third Parties" said that Tmall will strengthen the rectification of "inducing third parties" violations. And this "inducing a third party" is the root of many e-commerce people. In this article, let's analyze it together.
1. Alibaba's new regulations have sparked heated discussions
Recently, a news released by Alibaba's Qianniu Toutiao has attracted widespread attention and discussion among e-commerce practitioners;
Here are some real comments in the comment section of the message, which are excerpted below:
- "I question the above rules, which is very unreasonable"
- "It's all about learning Douyin"
- "Tmall is doing this, let the bullets fly. From ancient times to the present, where can we hear that imitation can be surpassed. Now Ali has no innovation at all. Not as enthusiastic as it used to be."
There are more emotions of doubt and denial;
In addition to the skeptical emotions, there are also some rational criticisms:
- "Alibaba's wording defends itself, in fact, it is intended to control the spillover of traffic to other platforms."
- "This is illegal, and violates Article 24 of the Interim Provisions on Anti-Unfair Competition on the Internet, which was implemented on September 1, and the use of service agreements or rules to unreasonably set and withhold security deposits."
We will not discuss whether it is a violation here;
So what is the news that can attract such intense attention and discussion:
It turned out that on June 26, Alibaba's Qianniu Toutiao released the "Interpretation of Tmall's Rules for Inducing Third Parties", saying that Tmall would strengthen the rectification of "inducing third parties" violations.
"Inducing a third party" refers to publishing or pushing third-party goods or information that is likely to lead to transaction risks, or inducing consumers to jump to third-party websites or clients through other means.
The new regulations clearly state that merchants are not allowed to publish or push third-party products or information that may cause transaction risks in any interaction with consumers, such as store pages, product details, promotion channels, Want Want chats, live broadcast interactions, and physical packages.
Strict! It's strict!
Moreover, from July, Tmall will fine merchants who violate the rules by 2,000 or 20,000 yuan depending on the circumstances, and merchants with particularly serious circumstances (including three violations) will be removed.
(Picture from Qianniu Headlines)
In addition to increasing the punishment, a very important reason for this heated discussion is that the official has brought out [parcel card drainage] as a typical type of violation in the "common types of violations";
What is a Parcel Card?
Parcel cards are a common way to operate in the private domain, mainly used to attract users or increase user stickiness. When a user purchases a product and receives a package, the merchant will attach a card to the package, which usually contains some additional discount information, event information, or QR codes, etc., for users to scan to land in the merchant's own private domain traffic pool such as Official Account/WeChat.
As follows:
(Picture from Qianniu Headlines)
In the example picture of the type of violation given by the official, the logo of WeChat is clearly exposed, and its pertinence is self-evident;
And why did banning parcel cards cause such a violent reaction from merchants?
This needs to first explain a typical e-commerce scenario!
2. Public domain drainage, private domain transaction repurchase
After the new regulations came out, I communicated with a few business friends and asked them what they thought:
Merchant A, selling small daily commodities:
"In Taobao investment, simply can't afford to invest, the cost of a transaction user is much higher than his profit, and if he does not have a follow-up repurchase, then this single business is a loss, we used to set up parcel cards and other forms in the goods, guide users to add our WeChat group, in the group we do activities, this part of the user will have continuous repurchase"
Merchant B, doing whole-house customization business:
"We are doing whole-house customization, the unit price of the product is relatively high, and the user needs a relatively long-term decision-making process from demand communication to solution output to the user's decision to place an order, and at the initial stage, we will guide users to add our WeChat, and then whether it is in user service, or some follow-up problems, we can serve users well, and the transaction rate has been greatly improved."
Merchant C, do early education:
"We sell early education boxes, the sale of the box is just the beginning of the service, we need to pull users down into the WeChat group, which has our early education teachers to guide students every day, we generally put cards in the early education box, or guide users to add early education teachers' WeChat through AI voice"
It can be seen that due to the rise in traffic prices and the involution of homogeneous goods, the profit margin of the business in the Taobao public domain scenario has become smaller and smaller, and even selling at a loss; Therefore, many merchants carry out drainage in the public domain and repurchase transactions in the private domain; In this way, the overall ROI can be tied;
Or, for many businesses, the private domain itself is an indispensable part of completing the fulfillment, such as the above-mentioned early education business;
In such a scenario, merchants often spare no effort to precipitate private domain users, and [parcel card] is often a very effective way to attract private domain users;
At present, it is not surprising that Ali has issued a notice to ban all parcel cards across the board, causing many merchants to complain;
Behind this, it actually reflects the platform's anxiety about traffic;
3. The platform's anxiety about traffic
With the peak of the growth of the number of Chinese netizens, it has shifted from the competition for incremental users to the competition for existing users, which is the consensus of almost everyone;
In this context, every platform wants users to stay under their own platform;
So it's not just Tmall!
As early as a few years ago, Douyin issued a similar regulation, deducting points for merchants who induce users to a third party, and taking measures including but not limited to public warnings, product removal/banning, and search demotion depending on the specific situation.
Pinduoduo has also issued similar regulations: as long as the merchant carries out illegal inducements, it will face penalties such as increasing the store deposit (an increase of 50,000), and even as long as there are two or more violations, the merchant may face the serious consequences of being deducted from the entire deposit and leaving the store.
It can be said that Tmall has actually done a lot of things that e-commerce platforms have already done!
Fourth, Tmall's traffic defense
As a national-level application, WeChat has built a complete closed-loop transaction infrastructure with a huge user base and strong social attributes, some are biased towards Taobao platform shopping, some are partial to Jingdong platform shopping, but few do not use WeChat;
Therefore, in e-commerce, whether it is Pinduoduo or JD.com, WeChat's private domain is an unavoidable traffic black hole;
This [new regulation] can be seen as Tmall's further defense of WeChat's traffic;
In addition to prohibiting third-party induced drainage, Tmall also has a series of upgrades and innovations in its private domain operation!
At the TopTalk 2024 Tmall Super Brand Private Sharing Conference in April this year, Tmall executives repeatedly mentioned the concepts of private domain, public domain and global domain, showing that they attach great importance to private domain operations.
Tmall made it clear that it will return real-time operation service capabilities to brands and merchants, and carry out large-scale upgrades in multiple areas of the store, including price reduction reminders, newcomer gift certificates, event prices, etc.
At the same time, brands can independently build store frameworks and page displays to create a diversified store space and a personalized store framework with thousands of people.
In such an upgrade, Tmall gives merchants a great degree of freedom in their private domain operations, and merchants can set prices and make decisions freely;
Brands are able to define different membership categories and set up different membership benefits to build closer customer relationships and loyalty.
In general, Alibaba's traffic defense policy can make more traffic stay on its own platform, and at the same time, the upgraded private domain operation policies and tools can help brands and merchants better operate their own member users, and the two complement each other!
Fifth, the brand in the whirlpool
However, for any brand, there will be more or less path dependence problems, after the [Tmall prohibits inducing third parties] policy was officially implemented on July 1, a large part of the link to the private domain was cut off, and the model of [public domain stream-private domain transaction] will definitely encounter a lot of challenges;
In the face of the new policy, while doing a good job in the operation of existing private domain users, brands can continue to expand their private domain traffic pool through fission and other forms;
At the same time, it is necessary to actively respond to the policies of the platform and embrace changes, and the bonus period often appears in the period of change;
After all, in the face of the platform, a single brand has no right to speak, and in the current market environment, it is impossible to form a unified merchant alliance to bargain with the platform!
This article was originally published by @吴可可 on Everyone is a Product Manager and is not allowed to be reproduced without permission
The title image is from Unsplash and is licensed under CC0
The views in this article only represent the author's own, everyone is a product manager, and the platform only provides information storage space services.