After the end of 618, the keyword "price comparison" continued to intensify in the e-commerce industry.
On June 25th, according to Interface News, Pinduoduo recently announced an adjustment to its previously launched "automatic pricing" service agreement, further expanding the platform's access to merchants who have enabled this feature to adjust their pricing products. The new agreement will officially take effect on June 28th. Subsequently, the protocol attracted widespread attention on social media platforms such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu.
According to the latest agreement, once merchants authorize the activation of the "automatic price tracking" function, the platform will have the right to adjust the prices of all merchants' products (including existing inventory and future new products) within a specific range based on factors such as network sales and marketing activities. Previously, the platform could only modify the promotional prices of promotional products.
Pinduoduo officially stated that the "automatic price tracking" service is an important marketing service provided by the platform to improve the operational efficiency of merchants, maintain platform order, and provide consumers with more competitive products at a higher price. The platform does not engage in cyclic price tracking or unlimited price reductions.
In addition to assisting merchants in adjusting their pricing strategies, the platform can also automatically determine the compatibility between products and marketing activities through the system, and register suitable marketing activities for merchants and corresponding products.
That is to say, the new rules have further expanded Pinduoduo's control over the prices of merchants' products and the pace of marketing activities.
In fact, during this year's overall 618 promotion, all platforms followed the principle of low prices, and price became one of the core elements of platform traffic allocation. As early as May 29, Pinduoduo has launched the "automatic price tracking" function. A few days before Pinduoduo launched the "automatic price tracking" function, Tiktok E-commerce has taken the lead in testing the "automatic price change" function in a small scale. It also supports merchants to entrust the platform to change prices within the conditions set by merchants according to the market situation and referring to the suggested prices on Pingtai.
A multi platform operator once told Interface News that every platform pursues the lowest price, for example, in Taobao Live, if the lowest price is not provided, there will be a 5% service fee requirement; The automatic price tracking page on Pinduoduo can be seen everywhere, and you can receive calls from several platforms in a day requesting to join the price tracking.
Not following the low price strategy will result in the loss of the maximum resource position of the corresponding platform, and the anxiety of merchants will increase invisibly. In order to cope with the platform's price competition, merchants can only sell through different sets, ingredients, and styles of sub channel strategies.
Despite the rise of Pinduoduo, which has dragged all platforms into low prices this year, after the end of 618, Pinduoduo still chooses to maintain a tough decision-making attitude on its most important "low price" label.
According to data from Analysys Think Tank, the five major domestic e-commerce platforms have been growing throughout the 618 shopping festival this year. The overall growth rate of comprehensive e-commerce is 11.2%, with Taobao and Tmall, which have the largest market share (62.8% in Maogou Pinzhong and 49.5% in overall competition), growing by 12%; Tiktok increased by 26.2%; Pinduoduo increased by 17.7%; JD's growth rate is 5.7%.
According to a later report, Pinduoduo's GMV growth rate in the first quarter of this year did not meet its expectations. Pinduoduo hopes to maintain a 30% GMV (transaction volume) growth rate in 2024, reaching 5.5 trillion yuan. In order to maintain growth, Pinduoduo chooses to further optimize system tools to improve efficiency.
However, the country is also taking action to crack down on forced price breaks and price comparisons on major platforms, which are seen as unfair competition on the internet.
In the early days of 618, various platforms clearly labeled themselves as "lower than XX (e-commerce platform)". For example, on JD's product promotion slogans, you can see "more than Pinduoduo, cheaper than Taobao", and there are also words like "cheaper than JD" on Tmall. But in the later stage of 618, the relevant price comparison tags are no longer displayed, and the price comparison jump pages on Taobao and JD.com have also been taken offline.
According to Interface News, the platform has taken down relevant functions, which are related to the "Interim Provisions on Anti Unfair Competition in the Internet" (hereinafter referred to as the "Provisions") announced by the State Administration for Market Regulation in May. This regulation defines and holds accountable many business chaos in the e-commerce industry, and will be officially implemented from September 1st this year.
There are regulations in the Regulations that provide relevant provisions on unfair competition behavior of e-commerce platforms and merchants. For example, Article 24 states that platform operators shall not use service agreements, transaction rules, and other means to impose unreasonable restrictions or conditions on the transactions, transaction prices, and transactions with other operators within the platform.
These may be related to the "price comparison" function, but whether they will have an impact on the price comparison behavior between platforms and protect the rights and interests of merchants will depend on the definition after the "Regulations" are officially implemented on September 1st. At present, the issue of low prices has become a collective concern in the entire e-commerce industry.