Taobao Bid Farewell To The Era Of High Growth

Taobao and Tmall, the largest online shop in China, are the largest online business developers in China.

When it comes to the end of Taobao's fast growing era, we must first clarify two concepts, that is, whether there are two types of commercial retail formats, online or offline, one is the mode of buying and selling, and the other is the platform mode.

The mode of buying and selling is action. Retailer I will sell it to you after I buy it. Offline such as Volvo, Carrefour, Gome, etc., such as Jingdong mall, suning.com and so on. The online part is the result of the "electric shock" of the traditional retailers; and the platform mode, or the market format, that is, I do not directly purchase or own goods, only provide a place to buy and sell goods, such as Taobao, Zhongguancun, Xiushui Street, etc., such as Tmall, Tmall mall or eBay.

Platform mode is unique in China.

Interestingly, however, in the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia, the retail industry in most parts of the world is Main business format They are all buying and selling mode, and only in China, the platform model is unique.

On the line, shopping centers and department stores took the lead. Take Beijing as an example, commercial real estate has increased 6 times in the past 10 years. Taobao is the largest online company in 2012, adding Taobao's C2C and Tmall B2C sales to about 85%~90% of the entire e-commerce industry.

In 2010, data showed that the 10 largest e-commerce businesses in the United States were buying and selling, whether WAL-MART, Amazon or Office Depot. 9 of China's top 10 are platform models, and only Suning is a traditional trading company under the line.

China's retail industry has always had a strong platform complex. The platform model has been developing rapidly over the past 10 years, mainly because of the rapid development of China in the past 20 years, and the most profitable one is real estate. The surge in commercial property prices has led department stores to make two landlords, Real Estate Company to sell professional stores, and retail businesses to rent counters. As long as the passenger flow is attracted and some basic services are provided, the profit is much higher than the hard work of buying and selling goods. In this sense, Taobao and Tmall are essentially the largest online commercial developers in China.

On the whole, the penetration and coverage of buying and selling mode in Chinese society are low, plus many social imperfections, such as tax and fee system, and small businesses and small businesses are easy to find tax avoidance space in platform mode, which all contribute to the rapid growth of platform mode in China.

Trading mode is better than platform mode.

According to the study of retail formats at home and abroad, the platform mode is almost monopolized in China, but in fact it is a relatively primary business mode, and a platform mode of "ant army" group effect. It is not a rational business development model. We can find the answer from the comparison between the two models.

The platform mode has obvious crowd effect and strong explosive force in the short term. The overall sales of "double 11" in 2013 can be seen. The profit model is the type of drought and flood protection. No matter what the business is doing on the platform, I can benefit from it. Taobao relies on advertising fees and Tmall receives commission. This mode can maximize the sharing of customer resources and achieve rapid expansion. On the other side of the coin, because the platform side is not involved in the commodity link, it forms a kind of ecological environment that will ebb and flow, and it will inevitably lead to the increase of the implicit shopping cost of the platform customers. The most important thing is that it does not touch the supply chain, and does not need to stock, and then goes on to say that it actually "only honours the winners, not pays for the losers". It is a sales mode with low social benefits, and the cost of those who fall on the platform or the losers become a social cost and absorbed by the society. Cost socialization is another characteristic. {page_break}

The biggest advantage of buying and selling mode is that it improves efficiency through its own optimization of retail links. It needs enterprises to intervene in the commodity supply chain, and it needs to establish its own buyer team, choose products from commodities, negotiate with suppliers one by one. A lot of specialized things need to be done with great efforts. The mode of business is efficiency, and profit is based on efficiency. The main competition is the ability to control all aspects of retailing. The core of the business model is how to achieve the low cost of online shopping through more effective management. For example, Amazon uses the gross profit margin of WAL-MART below the line to achieve net profit, which is the significance of the new technology in the Internet to promote retail transformation.

The buying and selling mode, on the premise of purchasing goods, assumes the greatest degree of commercial risk. It provides customers with a relatively constant shopping experience. In the long run, the mode of buying and selling must be a better form of retailing.

In contrast, the biggest weakness of platform mode is that it can not provide consumers with a constant shopping expectation. Almost every shopping on the platform, users may face different businesses, different quality definitions and service standards. Because the goods provided are too identical, the same commodity is sold by different sellers, which not only causes customers to have a relatively stable shopping period to wait for value, but also leads to the emergence of vicious price competition. Of course, Taobao has a lot of experience in continuously improving shopping experience and setting more rules and requirements for merchants, but after all, hundreds of thousands or even millions of different businesses do business on the platform, which can be said to be a congenital defect that platform mode can not solve.

Taobao, as the "big boss" of China platform mode, will face at least three big challenges in the future. One is whether the platform can be maintained in a unique fashion. Two, is it possible for the wireless mobile terminals to continue the success of the PC side? Three, in the next five years, more and more traditional enterprises will become the protagonists of the electricity supplier, which will impact Taobao in an objective way. We need to know that the top 10 business enterprises in the United States, apart from Amazon and eBay, the remaining 8 are traditional enterprises.

Therefore, the platform mode is not a panacea for solving the dilemma of the electricity supplier. With the growing maturity of Chinese consumers, the concept of time cost has been increasingly strengthened and the economic growth has slowed down gradually. platform The mode will inevitably give way to a portion of the market share in the buying and selling mode that provides a better user experience, which is a common trend on the offline line. Of course, this is a slow process.

This will also be a challenge for Alibaba to continue to deal with in the future.