Originally I had a somewhat negative attitude towards group buying, and I wrote "Group buying must be discussed" and "Group buying will eventually become standard". It’s just that this negative attitude is limited to independent group buying websites and does not refer to this model of group buying. The conclusion drawn from this current thinking comes from two aspects: on the one hand, it is mainly about the continuous development and data of group buying models (independent and configured); on the other hand, it is through reading Clayton K., Assistant Professor of Harvard Business School Christensen's masterpiece "The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Make Great Companies Fail" talks about "disruptive innovation" that allows emerging companies to gain a position in the original marginal market, and then use this position to make the marginal market Gradually develop into the mainstream market, and finally create a new leading company.
So what are the characteristics of disruptive innovation? "Generally speaking, disruptive innovation does not involve particularly complex technological changes... Disruptive innovation does not provide better products to consumers in the mainstream market, so this kind of innovation starts from the beginning." The likelihood of occurring in mainstream markets is slim. In contrast, disruptive innovations offer a completely different product mix whose attributes will only be valued by emerging markets that are far away from or of little significance to mainstream markets. "
Compared with destructive innovation, there is continuous innovation, such as the series of innovations carried out by GOOGLE and Baidu around search, Tencent around IM, Sina around portals, and Taobao around C2C/B2C. This kind of disruptive innovation subverts industry leaders seems to occur in various industries. The IT industry and the Internet industry are particularly obvious due to their rapid development. I once mentioned on Sina Weibo that the ultimate goal of a company is to achieve "absolute monopoly", but this goal is elusive. But when Microsoft wanted to do this, GOOGLE crushed this idea; when GOOGLE When FACEBOOK wanted to do this, FACEBOOK smashed the idea; when FACEBOOK wanted to do this, TWITTER smashed the idea.
It seems that the above situation has not yet happened in China's Internet, because the pattern of China's Internet appears to be very stable, and the Chinese people's "profitability response is particularly fast", from the examples of Kaixin.com, Renren.com, 51.com and Tencent It can be seen.
Search, portal, IM, e-commerce, video, social SNS, and Weibo are all basically monopolistic and stable. How do emerging companies gain status in edge markets through "disruptive innovation" and then transform edge markets? Develop into a mainstream market and create new leading companies?
Senior experts from the China Electronic Commerce Association, China Mobile Research Institute experts and think tank members analyzed the group buying model in the following five aspects and believed that group buying will become the most destructive innovative model in China's e-commerce industry:
1. Online shopping model: One ultra-low-price daily product every day satisfies the dual consumption psychology of "curiosity and expectation" and is easy to become "addicted". Under such consumer psychology, even if the profit margin is very low, Able to obtain a large enough number of customers and repeat (secondary) consumption in a short period of time. As for the existing Taobao and B2C stores, it is estimated that it will take several hours or half a day to select products that you are satisfied with. It is even more difficult to start with lifestyle consumption. Apart from obtaining some information from a few lifestyle websites such as Dianping.com, there are very few websites that provide discount services. Well, at least in the online shopping model, the group buying model will undoubtedly serve as an innovation that disrupts the existing e-commerce consumption model.
2. Online shopping products: The entire group buying model is based on daily consumer goods (catering, movies, beauty salons, etc.) as the main merchants, and obtains service goods through BD negotiations, at least in terms of logistics, distribution, and pre-sales for physical goods. And after-sales service and operating costs are greatly reduced, and the profit is much higher than other virtual products such as games and recharge cards. So at least in terms of product management, the group buying model has also seen a destructive innovation in online shopping products.
3. Promotion methods: The mainstream Internet promotion models mainly focus on Internet advertising, CPS, EDM, DM, SEM, SEO, etc. There are not many that can truly achieve word-of-mouth promotion and achieve great success, especially in the field of e-commerce. Basically, promotion expenses account for the largest proportion, and it cannot be stopped. Once stopped, it will be replaced by another company, such as Fanke replacing PPG. However, most of the current promotion methods of group buying websites are word-of-mouth promotion, which truly achieves word-of-mouth promotion. Coupled with the consumer psychology characteristics mentioned in the first point above, group buying websites are very sticky. So now not only group buying websites like Tuanpai.com are popular, but also group buying navigation sites like Waituan.com are also very popular.
4. Regionalization of online shopping: After Taobao became the dominant player in China’s e-commerce market, regional or urban e-commerce has always been considered as one of the ways to compete with Taobao. Unfortunately, this regional The traditional e-commerce model has not yet emerged as a real leader. However, the group buying model combines the above three destructive innovations with the characteristics of regionalization, and with the help of venture capital, it accumulates a large number of regional customers in this way, and then develops from point to point, forming a regional market to a national market. of coverage.
5. Strong scalability: Although the current group buying model is just a simple page and one product, with the accumulation of users and the increase in stickiness, it is quite easy to add several rich contents or channel divisions to this simple page. . Complex patterns become simple, and subtraction is very painful; simple patterns become rich, and addition is very simple and pleasant, and the premium will be much higher. For the ever-complex e-commerce industry, this is undoubtedly another disruptive innovation.
Analyzing from the above five characteristics, plus the technical perspective - the group buying technology is so simple that it does not require product managers and so-called complex user experience analysis, let alone complex database technical support. There is no doubt that group buying has become the most destructive innovative model in the e-commerce industry. We are waiting to see what changes this model will bring to the development pattern of China's e-commerce industry in the future.
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