Please click to read the first article of this article: Huang Zheng's behind-the-scenes logic of unloading CEO of Pinduoduo.

Why didn't Huang Zheng, the founder of Pinduoduo, who refused the honor brought by wealth, give up his CEO position and release his equity to his employees, and instead became obsessed with money and power, thinking about philosophical issues from a scientific perspective?

Although the new species model of e-commerce initiated by Pinduoduo surpassed JD.COM and caught up with Alibaba Taobao at a rocket speed, is its commercial and social existence value criticized by public opinion really so unbearable? When we restore its historical growth track and explore the logic of each step, especially when we interpret Huang Zheng's Three Annual Reflections on Pinduoduo and One Reflection on the World, we may be able to truly restore a real Pinduoduo.

Source | Manager Magazine

"If you go out to the suburbs on a clear night, please remember to look up at the night sky, where there are stars shining with river sand. Then, find a pair of binoculars and head for the Milky Way in the night sky, so you will understand that the ability to capture reality with the naked eye is limited, and I don't know how many stars are outside the palace. Then, find another Andromeda nebula photographed with a high-powered telescope, and you will know that even binoculars have missed too many stars. "

This passage comes from jared diamond, an American evolutionary biologist, physiologist, biogeographer and non-fiction writer, in his The Third Chimpanzee-Human Life and Future. What he wants to say is that people who think they are smart are not unique in the universe.

In the vast business world that is constantly changing the general trend, who knows whether the neglected startups hidden behind the giant companies will suddenly create the impossible at some point?

In the field of e-commerce retail, JD.COM, founded in 1998, began to compete with Gome and Suning in 2009 with the self-operated mode of self-built logistics, and completed a complete victory over Dangdang in the subsequent e-commerce competition, thus establishing an industry position that keeps pace with Ali Taobao. Who would have thought that Pinduoduo, who just started his business five years ago, took "sharing" as a model tool, which not only lowered JD.COM. COM's position in the industry today has also begun fierce competition with Alibaba Taobao.

However, during the five years of Pinduoduo's rise, most of the market comments and analysis were "short selling" of Pinduoduo's business model and social value.

Especially after the listing of Pinduoduo, its own negative constantly. First, Zheng, the "fairy tale king", issued a micro-report on the sales of pirated Pipiru books by Pinduoduo platform franchisees, then six American law firms announced that they would file a lawsuit against Pinduoduo, and then the Network Supervision Department of the State Administration of Markets took the lead in an administrative interview, demanding that Pinduoduo platform operators strictly perform their main responsibilities, strengthen the management and audit of platform operators and commodities, and actively cooperate with market supervision departments at all levels in various places to investigate and inspect.

However, Pinduo persisted. So, we have to ask: Why does Pinduoduo, which looks so absurd, still exist?

One thing is clear: without Huang Zheng, there would be no Pinduoduo. In addition, if Tencent hadn't given WeChat to Pinduoduo as the bottom of its business model, Pinduoduo wouldn't be here today. What is the logical relationship between WeChat and Pinduoduo?

Zhang Xiaolong has always insisted that WeChat originated from kevin kelly's Out of Control. In the "Future 12 Trend" put forward by kevin kelly, the "sharing" explicitly mentioned coincides with Pinduoduo's commercial motives. Besides, there are "interaction", "tracking", "filtering" and so on. I believe that Huang Zheng is also a believer in kevin kelly to a great extent.

"Sharing" is the commercial motive of Zhang Xiaolong and Huang Zheng, so the starting point of WeChat and Pinduoduo is essentially the same. However, five years ago, how should we understand the application of "sharing+socialization" to "sharing+e-commerce"? There is no precedent. Huang Zheng made such an experiment-this is also the premise to discuss and trace back the existence and development of Pinduoduo.

Back to/kloc-0.5 years ago, in 2002, after overseas Ebay invested 30 million dollars in Yi Bei, C2C e-commerce rose rapidly. Under the double superposition of B2B business profits and the interruption of physical retail by SARS, Ali set up Taobao for C2C in 2003, and released Alipay at the same time, in order to ensure the payment security of online transactions, greatly reduce the transaction link and channel costs, and improve the efficiency of commodity sales.

In 20 10, Taobao's GMV reached 400 billion yuan, successfully surpassing its biggest competitor, Ebay, thus becoming a giant of C2C e-commerce in China.

In 2008, the Beijing Municipal Administration of Industry and Commerce issued an opinion on the supervision and management of e-commerce, banning online stores that were not registered with the Administration of Industry and Commerce, which sounded a policy alarm for tens of thousands of individual businesses on Taobao platform. At the same time, Taobao search traffic began to tilt towards big businesses with higher reputation value, which promoted the growth of Taobao brand. Later, Ali took the opportunity to launch Taobao Mall (later renamed Tmall). Due to the entry of traditional brands, a large number of offline buyers have successfully transformed into online shoppers, which has further promoted the development of Tmall and become a new growth engine of Ali's retail business.

In the strong development of Ali, JD.COM has sprung up everywhere. JD.COM, which initially focused on 3C category, announced in 2009 that it has developed into a full category B2C e-commerce platform and established its own logistics infrastructure. JD.COM faction believes that Alibaba Taobao's high dependence on third-party logistics hinders the improvement of logistics timeliness and consumer experience, while Alibaba faction believes that self-built logistics infrastructure consumes social resources, and the input cost will be added to consumption. As a result, JD.COM has continuously built its own logistics infrastructure, and quickly gained popularity through its efficient and high-quality logistics services, becoming the second largest e-commerce platform in China. Of course, in order to cope with the competition, Ali also changed his thinking, from relying solely on third-party logistics in the past to establishing a logistics alliance platform, which was later a rookie system.

Therefore, the status of Alibaba, Taobao and JD.COM is formed through the zero-sum game of mode conflict and interaction. As a result, there are only two strong players in the market, and other e-commerce companies can only sigh. This time basically lasted 8? In 9 years, it was not until 20 17 products were born that the competition balance between the two top players was broken.

Alibaba, Taobao and JD.COM. The platform business of COM mainly relies on consumers to search for goods online, but by 20 17, the dividend of searching for e-commerce traffic basically peaked. At that time, the competition for online stock users had entered a life-and-death stage, and the cost per customer of head search e-commerce climbed above 200 yuan. The marginal benefit of the platform driving user growth by increasing marketing investment continues to decrease. Therefore, opening up new traffic portals has become the key to maintaining high-scale growth. At this time, Pinduoduo, who has made many investments including Tencent, entered the field of e-commerce under the banner of "sharing". At that time, in the e-commerce industry, Ali Taobao and JD.COM couldn't even find Pinduoduo's market ranking with binoculars, but a year later, with the support of Tencent, one of the investors, Pinduoduo changed from an invisible star to a huge nebula.

Trustdata data shows that in the first half of 20 18, the average daily startup times of social apps were 19. 1 time, and the average daily usage time was 34 minutes. Compared with e-commerce apps (the average daily startup times is 4.0 times, and the average daily use time is 6 minutes), instant messaging software such as WeChat and QQ can meet the daily communication needs, and the user stickiness advantage is obvious. In 20 18, instant messaging users accounted for 96% of all netizens, and the penetration rate of online shopping users was 74% in the same period. There is still a lot of bonus space in the social traffic pool. On the other hand, the difference between the monthly active account of WeChat and the monthly active users of Ali e-commerce platform is as high as 400 million. However, the confrontation between Tencent and Ali made it impossible to directly open and purchase the product links of Taobao and Tmall on WeChat. In a relatively relaxed competitive environment, Pinduoduo has achieved the rapid rise of WeChat social traffic.

The most prominent B2C online shopping platform is SKU (stocking unit; ; Inventory unit), as a platform, the quantification of SKU depends on the number of settled businesses. From March 20 17 to the end of 20 19, the number of active merchants in Pinduoduo increased explosively, from 97,000 at the beginning to 5 157.73% at the end of 20 19, reaching 565,438+million+households. Where did these businessmen come from? In fact, it is formed by the spillover of merchants on various platforms including Taobao. From the merchant's point of view, the more platforms, the better, so that more channel users can be obtained.

In fact, in the historical process of domestic e-commerce development, there are constantly new platforms trying to seize the opportunity. The most typical case is Pinju Mall. The platform was founded by Ge Binbin, who has successively founded Wenzhou Online, China Sales Network, Aiku Supermarket, Lala Hand and other large-scale comprehensive websites, and invested by Shanda Group at that time. Pinju Mall was launched on 2011,claiming to challenge Taobao, but it was closed after only three months of operation. So, what is the reason why Pinduoduo won?

First, innovation in consumption patterns. Provide users with low-priced explosive products and interactive shopping experience in group mode, realize social fission by inviting friends to get discounts and other incentive modes, rapidly expand consumer groups, enhance platform visibility and seize e-commerce market share.

Second, assemble the low-end supply chain. Taobao launched a severe anti-counterfeiting campaign on 20 16, closing more than 200,000 low-end supply chain stores to get rid of the label of "low price and low quality"; On the other hand, because the search traffic distribution of Taobao is gradually tilted towards brands and big businesses, the living space of small and medium-sized businesses has been severely squeezed. JD.COM also gave up platoon. And focus on self-operated and high-quality third-party platform merchant services. Therefore, small and medium-sized businesses urgently need the market to create a space suitable for them. Pinduoduo's strategy is to provide channels for these small and medium-sized businesses, thus attracting a large number of businesses to settle in.

Third, save the transaction cost of merchants. Pinduoduo doesn't set trading commission, but only charges 0.6% of the service fee paid by WeChat, so online marketing service has become the most important source of income for Pinduoduo. Pinduoduo's advertising marketing planning has distinct levels. For small and medium-sized businesses, Pinduoduo provides low-threshold, fast-start CPC and CPS advertising services, improves push accuracy with distributed AI, shares product links through social channels, and effectively drains traffic inside and outside the station. Display advertisements such as banner pictures are helpful to quickly create explosions and achieve high-quality ROI.

Through these factors, such as group work, low price, giving others what they want, WeChat, no transaction commission, online marketing service, etc. The advantages of many products are finally condensed. What is intriguing is that "people give up on me" is precisely the market opportunity that Taobao and JD.COM gave up, and then it became a customer source in Pinduoduo. Therefore, Pinduo's position today must be attributed to these two strong players. Of course, now, it is not easy for Pinduoduo to continue to optimize "people give me and I take it", especially under the great pressure of Alibaba Taobao.

This article is not to be continued, and the wonderful will continue tomorrow. ......