The Abnormal Situation Of Double 11 In 2021 Stems From The Change From Barbarism To "Delicacy"

In 2021, double 11 will no longer compete with Gmv numbers, which is abnormal.

In the e-commerce platform and live broadcasting room, Gmv refers to the total amount of commodity transactions. Although it is not equal to the actual transaction volume, it has been a stable indicator in the C position in the past years. Each participant wants to get a string of beautiful figures, because it is the most intuitive data to measure the competitiveness of e-commerce platform, brand merchants and anchor with goods.

The statistical caliber of Gmv is the amount of orders placed by users, that is to say, in addition to the real transaction value, it also includes the amount of unpaid orders (i.e., the amount of orders placed but not paid), the amount of return orders and the amount of orders swiped. Many e-commerce industry insiders and businesses said to kaipineapple finance that there is room for "water injection" in the last three parts.

They agreed that, in the transition from the traditional e-commerce era to the new world of live e-commerce, the statistical caliber of Gmv has been disrupted again, and the water injection space has increased. At least three kinds of Gmv have appeared in the battle report of the head anchor, including guiding Gmv, Gmv (single Gmv) and paying Gmv.

However, at the same time, the participants and beneficiaries of Gmv have also evolved the way of injecting Gmv, and the technique has changed from barbarism to "delicacy". From "sending empty orders" to "simulating" real transactions, the anchor even needs to select a few digital products that are not worried about selling and jewelry with high customer price, etc., so as to improve Gmv.

This year's double 11, major platforms are no longer in a hurry to publish continuously updated Gmv numbers, and all kinds of war reports are no longer dominating the screen. Are platforms, businesses and anchors finally putting down the burden of Gmv?

More than one practitioner's answer is No. In fact, many people in the industry say "never take Gmv seriously", but those companies that can do high Gmv are still busy during the double 11 promotion period.

Brush Gmv, from barbarism to delicacy

"In the industry, how small the proportion of real turnover and how much water can give full play to imagination," said a person in charge of a third-party data company. The generally accepted formula in the industry is: Gmv = real transaction value + unpaid order amount + return order amount + brush order amount. Brush order is always the first way to artificially inject water into Gmv data.

In the era of e-commerce, brand merchants mainly brush their orders spontaneously, focusing on sales volume, so as to improve the search weight of stores and commodities.

Since the popularity of live e-commerce, the number of implementers of "water injection" has increased. The main force on one side is merchants. Even if they have to pay a certain proportion of commission to the anchor and platform in order to make money burst and send war reports, the motivation to swipe orders is not reduced at all. On the other hand, the anchor team, affected by the pit fee, commission and industry competition, has always been a strong driving force to improve Gmv in the live broadcasting room.

With the strengthening of platform supervision and the development of the industry, the two sides have been in the process of evolution.

As an e-commerce practitioner, Zhao Fu once experienced the era of "running to the headquarters of an e-commerce platform, giving cash with one hand, and changing sales volume with the other hand". At that time, platform personnel were required to operate.

Later, his team found a "loophole" in the wholesale system of an e-commerce platform.

"The price of a product is 198 yuan. We set it at a 10% discount price of 19.8 yuan. If we find someone to take 1000 pieces directly, Gmv will become 19800 yuan. Then we will send a fake logistics and ask the other party to click" confirm receipt ", and the sales volume of this product will increase by 1000 pieces directly." this is equivalent to using low-cost brush sales.

Of course, the platform will not give the store extra traffic because of the increased sales volume, but the merchants can still achieve the purpose of improving the conversion rate. "Because consumers click into the link and see, the sales volume of this product is tens of thousands of pieces, and the power to place an order will become stronger. With the increase of conversion rate, the traffic and sales volume will be improved," said Zhao Fu.

At present, Zhao Fu has opened stores on several e-commerce platforms and short video platforms at the same time. He revealed that the shops on platform a will take out 1 / 3-1 / 2 of the * * to brush orders, while platforms B and C will take out 70% of the total. "The cost of these platforms is different. For the same commodity with a customer price of about 200 yuan, the cost of platform a is ￥ 30, while that of platform C is relatively low, which is 6 yuan."

Zhao Fu's shop orders, looking for the brush data team. Li Xun, an employee of MCN, said that since the era of live broadcasting, there have been a large number of bill brushing teams in the market. When e-commerce is in vogue and live broadcasting with goods is stepping on the wind, the business scope of these teams also covers e-commerce and live room.

In the era of live e-commerce, the participants of Gmv have become more and more. They only look at the double 11 in the past two years, and their techniques have changed from barbarism to "delicacy".

Chang Bo, a former e-commerce practitioner, summed up that businesses usually brush the "order and pay" part. However, some anchors, in order to increase the pit fee, just want to broadcast a record Gmv number on the spot, and the "method" is not so authentic.

During the double 11 of last year, martial arts brother Ben, the founder of a skin care brand, wanted to find a live broadcast of wanghong to flush the sales volume. He selected a 16 million fan, who claimed to have set a record of 60 million with goods. As a result, the live broadcast, together with more than 30 businesses, suffered a collective brush off.

Martial arts brother at that time to open pineapple finance and economics, this anchor team's technique, not only is not authentic, but also absurd.

"As soon as 12 o'clock in the morning, the users who bought goods in the live broadcasting room started to refund one after another." finally, the refund rate of martial arts brother's goods was as high as 97%. When the delivery amount of late Cheng exceeded 50000 yuan, the actual transaction amount was only about 1000 yuan. Martial arts brother and other businesses to check the backstage found that many orders address is fabricated, the buyer's name is very strange, such as "pictures".

After a live broadcast, the anchor team got a high Gmv number, but more than 30 brands including martial arts brother did not send out the prepared goods, and all the money was wasted. Before the broadcast, these brands have put 100% of the pit fee into the organizer's account.

Martial arts brother encountered a "unilateral brush", at the same time, during the double 11 last year, there was also a "tacit understanding brush list" on the market. Xu Xin on the "operation" many, to fake delivery, delivery of empty bills.

She is a part-time brush order staff, daily in QQ and other channels to receive orders, every time to double 11 and other big promotion period, she is in some of the "make up", "refund", "send order" group chat, is particularly busy. "618, double 11, double 12, brush single demand will surge, brush hands busy."

What needs to be emphasized is that swiping orders is an illegal act and has been severely punished by major e-commerce platforms. Therefore, these brush single personnel's technique is also more concealed.

According to Xu Xin, the operation process is that after receiving the Commission, the group owner will push the product link to the brush list group, arrange the brush hand to purchase according to the requirements, and the brand merchant will send the "envelope express" or "empty box express" to the brush hand, and the express will contain worthless items such as rubber bands and cards. When the brush hand confirms the receipt, the order will be finished. Brand merchants and the anchor team are well aware of the whole process. As fake packages are easy to be identified by the express party, it is necessary for the express party to cooperate and pull the express company into the partnership.

Since this year, the brand side is no longer willing to cooperate with the "empty order" anchor, so it has evolved a brush order method close to the real deal.

Feng Sheng, the head of the new consumer brand, disclosed to kaipineapple finance and economics that "some of the brush companies are so professional that they can't recognize them and think they are real users."

According to its disclosure, this type of demand is generally through third-party social software or foreign software docking. The method is to place an order in a real way and make a real deal. After receiving the goods, they will be resold to wechat merchants, community group buying, pinduoduo and other sinking channels.

An anchor who is motivated to do so usually signs a minimum guarantee agreement with the merchant. If the result of carrying the goods fails to reach the sales volume of * *, he / she needs to refund the fee to the merchant according to the proportion. However, if he / she swipes the bill in this way, he / she will make a profit.

The cost of this method is relatively high. On the one hand, it depends on the property of the commodity. Because it needs to be transferred again, "the cost of FMCG is lower, and that of small household appliances that is difficult to realize is higher." for example, the cost of a single instant noodle is about 10 yuan, which is relatively low; On the other hand, it also depends on the trading platform, because improper operation in this way is easy to be identified by the platform, and the platform with strong governance will have high cost. "The cost of Taoxi system is * *, but shuoyin and Kuaishou are relatively cheap." he said, "repeated orders and abnormal orders will be added to the problem address database by the platform."

In the final analysis, passive and active unilateral brushing is like a cat and mouse game. When the cat wants Gmv, we can ignore the mice that brush the list temporarily. When the cat evolves, it needs mice to contribute more real Gmv.

Gmv "three treasures",

IPhone, jewelry, "coupons"

What makes Gmv distorted is not just the amount of money spent. "Unpaid order amount" and "return order amount" also have certain operation space.

During the promotion period, due to customers' failure to understand the preferential mechanism or system failure, repeated orders, etc., have increased the unpaid Gmv. However, when "7 days no reason to return" has become the mainstream, and the anchor makes good use of induction techniques such as "refund at any time if you don't want it", the Gmv of returned goods will be virtually increased.

According to Tian Jing, an e-commerce practitioner, in the background of actual goods, orders are divided into three states: "paid", "expired" and "settled". "Invalid" can be generally understood as "additional purchase not paid"; "Paid" can be understood as "additional purchase and payment, but not confirmed receipt". In this state, there may be a refund (the difference between refund only and return refund is not distinguished); The amount of money that the merchant really gets is the "settlement amount" added up by the "settled" status.

Taking the background data of a commodity recently carried by a certain anchor as an example, the proportion of "paid", "settled" and "expired" is 6:2:2. The merchant settles the Commission for the anchor according to the "settled" status, and the platform extracts the technical service fee from the anchor's commission. Up to now, Gmv accounts for less than 20% of the real transaction of this commodity, and 80% of the remaining Gmv is water.

A person in charge of the data platform judged that the return rate of the live broadcasting room is higher than the overall data of the e-commerce platform. Without considering the artificial water injection, the proportion of return orders in the live broadcasting room is about 20%. At the same time, it depends on the unit price of the product. The lower the unit price, the lower the return rate, the higher the unit price and the greater contribution to Gmv, the higher the return rate.

Bian Xu, another person in charge of the e-commerce platform, thinks that the return rate is higher, and the return rate of 50% - 80% is normal, because even the standard products have a lot of impulsive consumption.

"Last year's double 11, the anchor had to sign a minimum guarantee agreement in order to make the merchants pay at ease. Otherwise, they would not cooperate. Under the pressure of minimum guarantee, there will be more demand for bills. This year's double 11, there are two popular ways: pit fee plus commission, or pure Commission. The choice depends on the anchor's voice." Feng Sheng said, however, there are still ways for the anchor to improve Gmv, The mainstream is to make articles on the selection.

More than one practitioner mentioned that Apple's digital products, jewelry, etc. are GM V products promoted by * * and do not need to be paid.

The first category is apple products, which are sold in real time, and the anchorperson doesn't want to make money, which is to boost the popularity of Gmv and live broadcasting room. "A large number of anchors sell Apple products with their own money. In fact, not only won't lose, but the effect is even better than the investment stream," says Tian Jing.

The second category is jewelry. "This category is extremely special. Even if it is a live broadcast by conscience merchants, the return rate is as high as 80-90%."

According to Tian Jing, there is more room for jewelry merchants to "leave" for the anchor team, or they can actively cooperate with each other to improve the Gmv, or they can ask the team to place an order and then refund. However, there is a code of conduct for the refund, which means that the refund is operated before the delivery of goods by the merchant on the next day of the live broadcast. In this way, the merchant only loses the pit fee, otherwise it also loses the logistics fee.

"A lot of skin care products with high customer price, such as weather pill, are the same as jewelry." Tian Jing mentioned that there are anchors on Shuo Yin and Kuai, with 250 million Gmv on a single show, of which 100 million are selling weather pills, and 40% of the orders are quickly returned after the live broadcast.

Finally, when it comes to statistics, trading platforms and third-party data platforms will "accidentally" raise Gmv.

For example, every time the platform promotes the "cross store full reduction", it drives up the Gmv.

On the one hand, it stimulates consumers to buy; on the other hand, the statistical caliber itself contains moisture. Under the full reduction of "200-30", the real transaction volume of users is 170 yuan, but the Gmv of platform is still calculated by 200 yuan.

The preferential mechanisms such as "auction and reduction" and "0 yuan for the second piece" will also "affect" the capture logic of the third-party data platform. According to the introduction, the Gmv statistics are calculated at the original price.

According to Tian Jing's financial analysis of pineapple, the third-party data platform focuses on the "sales gap before and after live broadcast", and then multiplies it with the page price captured in advance to get the estimated Gmv. In fact, on the day of double 11, the commodity price may be automatically reduced to 50% of the page price, but the third-party data platform still calculates according to the original price, and the Gmv obtained is almost double the virtual high.

During the promotion period, the Gmv of the third-party data platform will be more distorted. He mentioned that, for example, a product link was carried by two anchors at the same time of a certain day. The sales volume difference detected by the third-party data platform is actually the cumulative performance of the two anchors, but the total amount will be included in their respective Gmv achievements. "Of course, this situation does not exist in the anchor with exclusive links."

Evolution history of Gmv, from "chaos" to "desalination"?

"Gmv itself is very water," says Chang Bo.

Gmv is the invention of e-commerce platform. He said that only when the e-commerce platforms gradually matured in the industry and the game rules were transparent, did they have a consistent Gmv statistical caliber. The corresponding explanation can be found in the financial statements of the head e-commerce platform, that is, the total value of all confirmed orders for goods and services on the platform, whether the goods are actually sold, delivered or returned.

Coming to the new world of live broadcast with goods, Gmv statistical caliber fell into confusion again.

Bian Xu said that for a long time, some live delivery platforms included additional purchase (added to the amount of goods in the shopping cart) into Gmv, but now most of them calculate Gmv with the following single amount.

At least three kinds of Gmv have appeared in the battle report of the head anchor, including guiding Gmv, Gmv (single Gmv) and paying Gmv.

During the period of double 11 in 2019, Weiya and Li Jiaqi have announced the guiding Gmv. Wu Xiaobo, a financial writer, also announced the guiding Gmv (52 million yuan) in his first live show. For example, he sold 500 yuan cupboard coupons for a certain brand in the live room, but the guiding Gmv was calculated according to the actual price of the cabinet of 20000 yuan.

Later, mainstream anchors such as Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi evolved from Gmv to single Gmv, which is also the common caliber of e-commerce industry.

But Luo Yonghao is a special case. According to his own opinion, the official war report of his live broadcasting room calculates the Gmv according to the actual payment amount, that is to say, to pay Gmv, which means to remove the "unpaid" part from the Gmv ordered.

The constantly refreshed Gmv myth seems to have come to an abrupt end when it comes to double 11 this year. The number of war reports on the circle of friends and network platforms has obviously decreased, and the mainstream platforms have become much quieter.

On the day of double 11, it was in the afternoon that Jingdong updated Gmv (the total amount of orders placed in Jingdong 11.11 global love season exceeded 311.4 billion yuan). At 24:00 p.m., Ali, who canceled the digital screen, finally announced Gmv in a low-key manner (the total transaction volume of double-11 was 540.3 billion yuan).

The magic Gmv has gradually been "diluted" from different caliber. Is it because the platform, merchants and anchors have finally put down the burden of Gmv?

Let's look at the platform side first. Wang Ran, CEO of kaipineapple, said that as the initiator of the promotion, the platform disclosed Gmv in real time in the past because it was worried that the outside world would not believe the huge Gmv created by double 11, in order to attract more participants to enter. During the period when Ali conducted propaganda on Gmv, the platform must be in a strong position, and the growth of its own Gmv refers to the growth of double 11 market.

By this year, Gmv is bound to be diverted from a single platform to a hundred flowers in full bloom. It is difficult for a single platform to continue to achieve a new high growth rate. "Now the outside world has reached a consensus that the Gmv contribution of Weiya, Li Jiaqi and other head anchors is too prominent, and it is embarrassing for the platform to publicize Gmv in a high-profile way." Wang Ran said.

From the perspective of businessmen and anchors, it seems that everyone's enthusiasm for the war report is not as high as last year's double 11. However, more than one practitioner believes that the industry has to face the Gmv numbers rationally.

Chang Bo said that the pulling effect of double 11 on Gmv is weakening. Because of the daily promotion and promotion in the live broadcast room, consumers have less reasons to store goods on double 11, and the double 11 battle report data of brands and anchors are not so prominent. At the same time, Bian Xu believes that "supervision is strengthened and false publicity is not allowed. Once the real Gmv of water is disclosed, it is clear who is swimming naked. In other words, there are not so many brands that are prone to Gmv breaking 100 million yuan, and few businesses can really report the war."

"The attitude of platforms, businesses, and anchors to Gmv has never changed. They always love and hate Gmv." Chang Bo says that after years of popular science, they are no longer only interested in Gmv.

In fact, many people in the industry say "don't take it seriously". Gmv doesn't mean anything. However, as long as the most intuitive data dimension measuring the competitiveness of e-commerce platform, brand merchants and anchor with goods has not been found, Gmv will not disappear. Companies that can improve Gmv still have a market.