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the "payment wall" that has stood in the e-commerce landscape for more than a decade has been torn down again.

taobao recently announced that it willafter the 12th of this month, wechat pay will be gradually opened to all taobao and tmall merchants.at present, many merchants have received invitations to open the service.

after taobao announced its integration with wechat pay, other e-commerce platforms’ payment channels also received a lot of attention. one consumer exclaimed, “pinduoduo even supports qq payment.”

opening up new payment channels is the latest way to play the game in the e-commerce industry. this round of game started in early 2023. as the competition in the e-commerce industry becomes increasingly fierce, major platforms have come up with new tricks.how to become more like pinduoduo and achieve pinduoduo-style rapid growth?become the "main mission" of the main players, either explicitly or implicitly.

however, after many rounds of competition, the growth problem of e-commerce platforms still exists, and the exploration of models has not yet reached the end.the new solution that major platforms are trying is to stand in the shoes of consumers and put user experience first.

in the past few months, major e-commerce platforms have repeatedly mentioned user experience and regarded it as a top priority.

in the last quarter's earnings conference call, alibaba executives said that taobao's current priority is to improve the user's purchasing experience and drive up purchase frequency and gmv. jd group ceo xu ran said that jd will continue to focus on user experience, price competitiveness and platform ecology. pinduoduo also said that the company will continue to increase its ecological construction and support new quality merchants to bring more good products at good prices to consumers. douyin e-commerce said at an internal meeting that improving consumer experience is the basic skill of e-commerce platforms and is the direction of douyin e-commerce's long-term efforts.

after more than a year of zero-sum game, major e-commerce platforms are stillwe have returned to the consumer-centric path.in this process, the e-commerce industry is incubating a new round of model innovation and has the possibility of completely breaking out of its internal competition.

existin the wave of collective learning from pinduoduo in the e-commerce industry,taobao put aside its past grudges and introduced wechat pay into its own territory in an effort to reach more long-tail consumers. this actually coincides with pinduoduo's "compatibility" with multiple payment tools.

in the second quarter of this year, pinduoduo's revenue increased by 86% year-on-year, and its net profit attributable to its parent company increased by 144% year-on-year. in contrast, taobao's revenue decreased by 1% year-on-year, and its adjusted ebita (earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization) decreased by 1% year-on-year; jd.com's revenue increased by 1.2% year-on-year, and its net profit attributable to its parent company increased by 69% year-on-year.

despite being rivals, pinduoduo's strong performance, which has significantly outperformed the e-commerce market for several consecutive quarters, still prompted taobao, jd.com and others to study and emulate it. with the overall industry slowing down, how to achieve the same high growth rate as pinduoduo is one of the key goals for major e-commerce platforms in formulating strategies and tactics.

the solutions previously provided by taobao and jd.com are simple and direct:whatever pinduoduo does, i should follow its example.

pinduoduo's most striking strength is its affordability, and the price is also the focus of learning for major e-commerce companies. previously, "10 billion yuan in subsidies" has become a standard feature of various platforms; taobao, jd.com, douyin e-commerce, etc. have all focused on white-label and industrial belt merchants, and are also trying to recreate a "small pinduoduo" within their own ecosystems.

in 2024, the e-commerce price war has become increasingly fierce. in addition to pushing platform merchants to move closer to low prices, the platforms themselves also use real money to subsidize, trying to seize the minds of "cheap" users.

however, in the process of price competition, affordability has gradually moved to the extreme of "absolutely low price", and many merchants are overwhelmed. the accompanying "refund only" function was originally an initiative to simplify the after-sales process and improve the consumer experience, but it has been used by some people for malicious "wool grabbing", deviating from the true purpose of this function.

on the other hand,the e-commerce platform’s low-price combination punch did not bring the desired results.

judging from the financial reports, taobao and jd.com did not achieve satisfactory revenue growth last quarter. according to multiple media reports, douyin e-commerce listed price power as its top priority at the beginning of the year, but its gmv year-on-year growth rate fell from 60% in january and february to less than 40% in march, and further fell to less than 30% in the second quarter, which was faster than expected.

over the past period of time, taobao, douyin e-commerce and others have changed the weights of their operating indicators and no longer use low prices as the only baton.

according to 36kr, at the beginning of this year, taobao group ceo wu yongming had already internally required gmv to be the first goal; taobao's assessment focus this year has shifted to gmv and aac (average purchase amount), and it will no longer pursue high dac (order volume) brought by low prices.

according to latepost, in late july, douyin e-commerce adjusted the priorities of its business objectives and no longer put "price power" first. it will focus on pursuing gmv growth in the second half of the year.

limited by the differences in business models, it is difficult for taobao and other online stores to match pinduoduo's prices in all categories;after all the operations of the platform and the merchants, the price is often still a few yuan higher than that of pinduoduo. when price comparison is very convenient on the entire network, it is difficult for consumers to perceive the profit-sharing strength of the platform, and there is no question of migrating from pinduoduo to contribute users and orders to the platform.

although jd.com reiterated its low-price strategy at its second-quarter earnings conference, the once turbulent e-commerce price war ended abruptly as taobao and douyin e-commerce faded out of the battle, and there was no real winner in this costly battle.

the underlying reason why the price war ended in vain is thatmajor e-commerce platforms imitate pinduoduo, which often leads to ignoring or even deviating from their own advantages, leaving merchants and consumers at a loss.

take taobao as an example. it has a huge and prosperous supply-side ecosystem. however, when taobao proposed the price power strategy in early 2023, there were many objections within the group, believing that this would cause taobao to lose its original advantages. "users are definitely looking for cheap prices, which is undoubtedly a very stable demand, but the pursuit of absolute low prices cannot be compared with pinduoduo, which is nothing more than adding pressure to merchants." said a taobao employee.

on the user side, the effectiveness of taotian's low-price strategy is also controversial. taotian previously attracted a large number of brands with the help of tmall and double 11, and locked in a large number of high-value users through the 88vip membership system. these users generally prefer high-cost-effective brand products. if they suddenly see a large number of white-label or factory goods, their experience will be obviously disconnected.

similarly, douyin e-commerce is centered on live streaming, and its strengths lie in its abundant traffic and integration of "planting and pulling out" but there are obviously more intermediate links than shelf e-commerce, and more entities share the profit pie. if the absolute low price is insisted, the profit space of merchants, anchors, mcn and other related parties will be continuously compressed until it is unsustainable; the "price power" under the framework of live streaming does not have the endowment to compete with other e-commerce models.

after an unsuccessful trial, the "low price competition" among e-commerce companies has become history. taobao and other companies have "copied" pinduoduo, but they are similar in form but different in spirit. the long-term growth problem still lies ahead for the entire industry.

there are many obvious reasons for the slowdown in the growth of the e-commerce industry: the new user bonus is gradually drying up, the cost of attracting new users is rising, consumers are more sensitive to prices and are more cautious in shopping than before, etc. this is also a challenge that all e-commerce platforms need to deal with.

looking at the longer term, the real problem that hinders the rapid growth of the entire industry is:the dividends from e-commerce model innovation are disappearing.

e-commerce is one of the sectors with the longest history of development in china's internet, and it has also experienced the most model innovations. from c2c, b2c to c2m, group buying models, from shelf e-commerce to live streaming, from community group buying to instant retail, new ways of playing, big and small, have emerged in an endless stream, driving the entire industry to continuously break through and gradually form its current appearance.

over the past two decades, taobao, jd.com, pinduoduo, douyin and other e-commerce companies have emerged one after another, and have all seized the dividends of model innovation.

taobao and its derivative tmall seized the first wave of the onlineization of physical business, jd.com believed that "whoever owns the brand will rule the world", pinduoduo filled the huge gap in social e-commerce and the sinking market, and innovated the model of supply aggregation and demand matching; douyin gave e-commerce the wings of live streaming.

however, the innovation of e-commerce model has a typical cyclical nature: pioneering enterprises develop business models, which, after being tested by the market, quickly become models for the entire industry to follow. latercomers try to "copy" leading enterprises in all aspects, which eventually leads to the similarity of major players and the industry entering a zero-sum game reshuffle period until a new model emerges, a new king takes the center stage, and enters the next wave of cycles.

this inherent cyclicality is destined to make the strategies and tactics of the e-commerce industry similar.today, the domestic e-commerce industry is at the end of the last round of model innovation, and the differences between platforms are getting smaller and smaller.

on the supply side, all major e-commerce platforms, no matter where they started, have now achieved comprehensive coverage of major categories, covering both branded goods and white-label products.

on the demand side, e-commerce platforms have long passed the stage of targeting a specific group of people, and now hope to attract as many users as possible. taobao changed its past practice and connected to wechat payment, which is essentially targeting the long-tail consumers who only use wechat to pay.

how to match supply and demand more efficiently was originally the core scenario for e-commerce model innovation. now the diversity of different platforms is gradually being eliminated.

douyin has become one of the e-commerce giants by relying on live streaming to sell goods. however, in the past two years, as the growth rate of live streaming e-commerce has slowed down, it has vigorously developed shelf e-commerce, striving to increase its share to 50%. in march this year, douyin also launched the douyin mall app; latepost reported that the software's dau target this year is over 6.8 million.

more e-commerce platforms are rapidly filling in the gaps in content. jd.com has listed the "content ecosystem" that includes live broadcasts, short videos, and pictures and texts as one of the three must-win battles for the whole year; in addition to developing live broadcasts to bring goods, pinduoduo is also trying to improve the content ecosystem on the site with short dramas.

it can be said that in the case of transparent and highly similar gameplay across the industry, e-commerce platforms cannot rely on a certain business model to form a lasting barrier, let alone achieve a growth rate that exceeds the industry average. to fundamentally solve the growth problem, e-commerce players still needrethink platform value and put consumers first.

as the price war is in full swing, major e-commerce platforms have realized the unsustainability of absolutely low prices and are trying to make changes from a more fundamental level.providing more cost-effective products and better services is the core value of e-commerce platforms to consumers.

taking taotian as an example, it hopes to introduce more high-quality and low-priced white-label products by integrating the supply chain resources of different sub-businesses and poaching high-quality merchants from other platforms.

jd.com is known for its direct sales, but in the past two years it has also been promoting pop (third-party merchants) business and has achieved considerable results. in the second quarter, the number of transaction users and orders of jd.com's third-party merchants accelerated, and the gmv growth rate of pop merchants outperformed the market.

also,how to make the shopping process smoother and the pre-sales and after-sales process more worry-free?it is another focus of e-commerce platforms.

reflecting on the product side, the functional design of apps such as taobao and jd.com continues to iterate, and the recommendation algorithms supported by ai are also more accurate; in addition to vigorously developing shelf e-commerce, douyin has also launched the douyin mall app to further distinguish shopping scenes from content scenes.

at the same time, e-commerce platforms are also actively reducing the burden on consumers. one of the most striking changes is that in the past two years, during major promotional events such as double 11, double 12, and 618, canceling pre-orders, selling spot goods, and directly reducing prices by the official website without the need for placing orders or collecting coupons have become the common choice of all e-commerce platforms.

e-commerce players who could not learn from pinduoduo quietly shifted their focus to consumers, but pinduoduo, which was imitated, did not take it lightly.

in pinduoduo's development philosophy, consumers have always occupied a core position, and it has given rise to classic strategies such as "10 billion subsidies". but now, "10 billion subsidies" has entered a mature stage and has become a "standard feature" of major platforms; if pinduoduo wants to continue to highlight its characteristics of "standing for consumers", in addition to continuing to adhere to and expand "10 billion subsidies", it also needs to go further and come up with new measures.

sufficient profit margins for merchants are a prerequisite for consumers to buy high-quality and low-priced goods. at the second quarter earnings conference at the end of august, pinduoduo announced that it would invest 10 billion yuan to support new merchants and launch a transaction fee reduction plan. pinduoduo expects to reduce 10 billion yuan in transaction fees for high-quality merchants in the coming year.

in pinduoduo's system, benefiting businesses is actually benefiting the people. it helps high-quality merchants to increase efficiency and provide consumers with better services, allowing the entire ecosystem to achieve sustainable and high-quality transformation.

in addition to long-term policies such as "10 billion yuan in tax relief", pinduoduo is also tryingthrough refined subsidies, we can smooth out the terminal price fluctuations caused by the temporary imbalance between supply and demand.meet consumer needs in specific scenarios.

for example, in may this year, the production of litchi in guangdong, hainan and other places was greatly reduced due to weather reasons. the production of varieties such as feizixiao decreased by nearly 40% compared with last year, causing the market price to rise several times. pinduoduo cooperated with merchants in the production areas to promote the local litchi to receive 10 billion yuan in subsidies from the source, and through large subsidies and a full cold chain, it tried its best to meet consumers' demand for affordable litchi.

in other scenarios, pinduoduo has come up with many ways to serve consumers in remote areas.improve logistics and include areas that were previously difficult to deliver to in free shipping.for example, free delivery to villages in xinjiang.

compared with the eye-catching price war, the "refund only" controversy, and taobao's integration with wechat pay, the actions of taobao, jd.com, pinduoduo, etc. around consumer experience have received less attention. however, in the long run, continuously creating value for consumers is the long-term strategy that the e-commerce industry should adhere to.competition in the e-commerce industry is returning to the main line of "consumer value".