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text丨shi tianhao

produced by shi tianhao observation (shitianhao01)

with xiao yangge being put under investigation, the public dissatisfaction caused by "hong kong meicheng mooncakes" has finally come to an end.

as the "top star" of douyin e-commerce, this is not the first time that brother yang, who has over 100 million fans, has been "hit". in the past, there were problems such as trough meat, beef rolls, hair dryers, meat grinders... a series of problems "exposed" by many netizens urgently need a response from the relevant parties.

just when the editor was chatting about the xiao yangge incident in the fan group, a senior internet practitioner who had known him for ten years started to criticize another live broadcast room in the group.

it turned out that she placed an order for a "blue dress" for her elder in the live broadcast room, but actually received a gray and "defective" dress. after complaining to the douyin platform, the douyin customer service staff replied that she could just return the goods and get a refund. as a real consumer (not a freeloader), she was speechless and indignant about this.

image source: provided by friends

during the private chat, my friend lamented that he was an "industry person" and was considered to know how to protect his rights, but he was made extremely "embarrassing" by this shopping incident (the problem has not been resolved to this day), and most ordinary consumers will experience even worse results.

as an observer of the e-commerce industry, i have been paying attention to the frequent problems of douyin e-commerce, from the high return rate of jewelry and jade last year to the high return rate of women's clothing during the 618 shopping festival this year. what is surprising is that with the slowdown of douyin e-commerce growth, similar problems have not only not decreased, but have become more and more serious.

for example, the "hong kong meicheng mooncakes" incident involving brother yang has been on the hot searches many times, and has attracted many major media outlets to criticize it, which is a manifestation of this trend.

we have to ask a question, why is it brother yang? why is it douyin e-commerce? douyin has always emphasized the dual-wheel drive model of content + e-commerce, which may be the root cause of all the chaos.

01

talking about the new strategy of douyin core

as one of the people who witnessed the golden decade of mobile internet, i am also a "non-experienced" user of douyin. when i first heard the concept of douyin interest e-commerce, i was also amazed by this "word".

in such a deeply pan-entertainment platform, focusing on consumption centered around interests is a very appropriate tone.

however, there is a natural gap between entertainment and consumption. the former focuses more on mobilizing people's emotions, while the key logic of the latter is rationality.

judging from the development history of douyin e-commerce, whether it is luo yonghao, xiao yangge, or later dong yuhui, this kind of commercial conversion brought about by personal charm and "talent show" in the live broadcast room will always encounter the problem of insufficient stamina.

there are three solutions. one is to leave after "playing around" like luo yonghao and say goodbye in a decent way. another is to be like dong yuhui, who maintains his popularity among the public through continuous "hot spots" and continues the cycle of his commercial value. the worst is brother yang, who wants to maintain his commercial value by constantly creating the image of "cheap and good goods". in the end, he had to take the "side door" until the incident was investigated.

what is the reason? the root cause lies in the fact that douyin is too rich in entertainment genes.

no matter how profitable e-commerce is, it must be based on the general tone of "high-quality content". under the low-price + content dual-round traffic distribution mechanism of the douyin platform, whether it is luo yonghao, xiao yangge, dong yuhui or the various "internet celebrity anchors" who make up the majority of douyin influencers, they must deeply entertain themselves and "package" their products in various forms.

this ecological structure, which clearly goes against the retail industry's pursuit of "efficiency first", is destined to lead to the outbreak of the various chaos mentioned above.

what is very interesting is that at the same time when the xiao yangge incident was brewing, the douyin platform releasednew core management methodologyan e-commerce practitioner communicated with the editor and believed that this was a wishful model that wanted to create an "impossible triangle", which laid the groundwork for the entire ecological crisis of the platform.

quoting from official reports, the core of the new core management methodology includes four aspects:comprehensive range of products at competitive prices, global content, marketing amplification and improved experience.these four aspects complement each other and jointly build the foundation for merchants to continuously expand their market on douyin e-commerce.

on september 9, at the douyin e-commerce author festival held in shanghai, douyin e-commerce president wei wenwen revealed that douyin e-commerce has upgraded its traffic mechanism. in the new environment, "good content" will become the primary productive force for business growth.

the concept of "e-commerce authors" was highlighted. wei wenwen introduced that in the past year, there were more than 2 million young e-commerce authors on the (douyin) platform, more than 7.53 million new e-commerce authors, more than 27,000 mcn agencies, and the average daily broadcast time of e-commerce live broadcast rooms increased by 33% year-on-year, and the number of e-commerce authors with gmv exceeding 10 million increased by 52% year-on-year.

simply put, why did xiao yangge invite zeng zhiwei to the live broadcast room to sell "hong kong meicheng mooncakes"? the original intention is directly related to "fitting" the pan-entertainment gene of douyin. even if it is a big anchor with hundreds of millions of fans, it is necessary to do entertainment first before it can have more sufficient traffic on douyin.

as for why they chose the knockoff "hong kong meicheng mooncakes", perhaps we should mention the first point in the new core business methodology: good price and good quality. in the distribution of douyin e-commerce traffic, high-quality content is the keynote, and good price (low-priced goods) is another factor that affects traffic distribution.

you know, in a highly competitive business environment, no platform or big anchor can get the lowest price for a brand for a long time. the frequent scandals of counterfeiting are just the inevitable result of a big anchor catering to the platform rules under the ecological characteristics.

this is not the first time that brother xiao yang has been involved in such controversy, from the "three-no hair dryer" and the wall-breaking machine with falsely labeled power in 2022 to this year's "fake moutai" and "caotou meat". users who don't like brother xiao yang even directly call him the "prince of fakes."

having said so much, to summarize briefly, the pursuit of high-quality content and low-priced goods is challenging the "impossible triangle". the sensibility of entertainment and the rationality of consumption are naturally in conflict and contradiction.

douyin's interest e-commerce is becoming a strange "ecosystem" that will put any participant on the platform into a cruel environment to fight.

02

hobby e-commerce: the conflict between sensibility and rationality is "intensifying"

no matter how douyin wants to ensure that the platform is not impacted by e-commerce, it cannot change the fact that e-commerce is becoming the first consideration for douyin anchors when creating content.

we can deeply understand the changes in the composition of the most popular influencers on the platform. in the past, the top ten on douyin were talent anchors like @代古拉k, @嘟嘟姐 who was good at making jokes, @刘畊宏夫妻 who became popular again by doing aerobics, and @张同学 who brought the rural flavor to the public. in 2024, only influencers who sell good products can survive.

as a pan-entertainment platform, this kind of influencers and content tend to be consistent due to some factors. the concept of short video creation has shifted from diversity to focus on involution, and the consequences will be directly reflected in traffic. people have always been in the entertainment choice of the richer the better, the more diverse the better, the more immersive.

conversely, when the content richness of a platform decreases, its attractiveness to users will also decrease.

data from the 2024 china mobile internet half-year report released by questmobile shows that the growth of mobile video in terms of monthly active user scale and average usage time has slowed down in the past year, and the average growth rate is even less than 5%. in this case, the "anti-diversification" of content brought about by e-commerce will accelerate this slowdown in the future.

it is no wonder that this year douyin proposed the concept of "e-commerce authors", hoping to make e-commerce practitioners pay attention to content to delay the possibility of a decline in the platform's attractiveness in terms of content.

against this backdrop, douyin's e-commerce development has also entered a new era.

earlier, according to wandian.com, douyin e-commerce sales in the first quarter of 2024 exceeded 700 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of more than 50%. among them, the cumulative year-on-year growth rate in january and february exceeded 60% (considering the spring festival holiday, the statistics are generally combined), and the year-on-year growth rate in march fell below 40%.

the total traffic volume has become smaller, and the growth of douyin's e-commerce has also slowed down. for the top players on the platform like xiao yangge and dong yuhui, they also need to use all their efforts to attract traffic.

1、consumer side: emotional impulse and return rate;

at the beginning of 2024, a leading women's clothing store on douyin that could sell billions of dollars a year and had 5 million fans tearfully announced its closure before the 618 promotion, which caused sighs among women's clothing merchants. the store was none other than "lola code", the leading women's clothing store on douyin.

in an interview, the founder lola revealed that before closing down, they had been losing money for more than a year, with a loss of tens of millions a year.

lola code mainly mentioned the excessively high return rate on the tiktok platform. "when we started in 2021, the return rate was still 30%-40%. now the return rate is 70%-80%, which has doubled"; for example, traffic costs, "have increased 10 times"; for example, the consumption trend of "low price is everything", lower-priced copycat products appearing faster and faster, "copied out in a week", and copycat merchants use inferior fabrics to pass off inferior products as good ones. the same style and lower price also make their products more difficult to sell.

there is also the case that the editor wrote last year about the high return rate of jewelry and jade on douyin. this return rate is even more serious than that of a certain dd platform. what is the connection with the emotional interest e-commerce that douyin has always been focusing on?

in the entertainment atmosphere and with the "strongest" special effects in douyin live broadcast rooms, many consumers are impulsive. many douyin users place orders to buy goods, but the impulse is often gone by the time they get them. in addition, it is difficult to compare the physical objects with the visual effects of the live broadcast rooms. all these factors have exacerbated the fact that the return rate of douyin e-commerce is higher.

in any case, within the emotional and impulsive interest consumption ecosystem, under the mechanism of seven-day no-reason return and the protection of freight insurance, the possibility of returns can easily be triggered.

2、merchant side: high-quality content and low prices are twin shackles;

the underlying logic of business is rational. when douyin e-commerce wants to have both high-quality content and low-priced goods, the "entropy increase" of this part of the impossible triangle will ultimately put pressure on the merchants.

now we see that the products sold in the live broadcast rooms of big anchors such as xiao yangge and dong yuhui are mostly small and medium-sized brands or white-label products, and occasionally there are scandals of counterfeit brands. so why don’t big brands invest in douyin e-commerce anymore? the experience of blue moon may explain this problem.

blue moon's financial report shows that sales in the first half of 2024 have increased significantly by no less than 38%, but it is expected to suffer a huge loss of hk$665 million, a surge of 295.8% over the same period in 2023. the reason for this is that blue moon is one of the few big brands that has gone all in on douyin anchors.

for example, during the 618 shopping festival this year, blue moon invited the most popular couple on douyin, a guangdong couple, to conduct a special live broadcast. during this live broadcast, blue moon products sold over 10.3 million bottles, with sales ranging from 75 million to 120 million. behind this was a high investment fee of 40 million, with paid traffic accounting for 69%, far exceeding the industry average.

after simple statistics, from 2020 to 2023, blue moon's sales expenses soared from hk$2.017 billion to hk$3.244 billion, and the sales expense ratio soared from 28.8% to 44.3%.

they have to pay for high-quality content, and at the same time "accommodate" the platform's pricing strategy, which leads to double cost pressure. although it seems that sales can be boosted, the costs they have to bear are terrifyingly high.

the double shackles of high-quality content and low prices are making many big brands stay away from douyin anchors. without the "favor" of big brands, some big anchors have to compromise by relying on a "copycat" gameplay, which ultimately leads to worse consequences.

3、platform side: "wanting it all" hides a long-term crisis;

the beginning of the article emphasizes a fact. at the same time as the xiao yangge incident occurred, douyin e-commerce launched a new core business methodology, which made many merchants who had high expectations for douyin e-commerce feel disappointed.

the double costs of requiring anchors and merchants to produce high-quality content and merchants to provide "the best price on the entire network" products will put pressure on brands that value douyin e-commerce. either they choose to give up their past investments like lola code and close the store to "save their lives". or they are like blue moon, which seems to have increased sales, but because of the surge in sales expense rate, it was questioned by shareholders and caused the stock price to plummet.

in this context, douyin's e-commerce monetization rate has taken the lead among many platforms. according to an article by "zou ma finance", a certified author of xueqiu, in 2023, alibaba's e-commerce monetization rate was about 3.9%, kuaishou about 4%, pinduoduo about 4.5%, and douyin about 10%.

as one of the two major short video platforms, hundreds of millions of users are a treasure trove of traffic. in the context of highly fierce commercial competition, big anchors and brand owners do not want to give up this traffic pool.

however, douyin e-commerce has left the burden of high-quality content and low-priced goods entirely to the anchors and merchants, while at the same time trying to achieve the highest monetization rate on each platform. this "want it all" approach puts all the pressure on the anchors and merchants, and the outbreak of an ecological crisis is only a matter of time.

looking back at the xiao yangge incident, this crisis had already emerged during the 618 shopping festival this year, when complaints about inconsistent goods and repeated shipments began to emerge in the clothing industry. the more than 20 problematic products that xiao yangge was exposed by the public are just the tip of the iceberg of the crisis.

looking at these problems in detail, it is tiktok that should take more responsibility and make changes.

the traffic business has become distorted, and even the no. 1 internet celebrity with hundreds of millions of fans is inevitably spurned by consumers. this model is no longer viable and needs to be improved urgently.