For the first time, the three CEOs of Taotian Double 11 made a collective appearance. What signal does this reveal?

The first weekend after the National Day holiday, the Alibaba Xixi Campus in Hangzhou was brightly lit, because this year's Double 11 arrived earlier than previous years.

According to 36Kr, Alibaba originally planned to announce the rules and gameplay of Double 11 on the 18th of this month and officially start the presale on the 20th. Even many employees involved in the Double 11 project only learned one day in advance that the presale date was moved up to the 14th. JD.com and Pinduoduo also unanimously chose this day to "get a head start".

The three business presidents of Taotian Group, Chu Duan (Taobao), Jia Luo (Tmall), and Wu Jia (Taotian User Platform, Alibaba Mom), after taking office for nearly a year, officially made an overall appearance to accept media interviews. This is not only for the Double 11 sprint, but also to send out a signal on how Taotian will develop in the future.

In their statements, the direction for Taotian's next steps has become clearer: continue to consolidate its position as the number one in the e-commerce industry's market share, and break through in the low-price battle with more differentiated measures. All three business presidents unanimously mentioned good quality, good user experience, and anti-price involution.

"Not getting involved in low prices does not mean not doing Double 11"

From last year to before 618 this year, the e-commerce industry was deeply involved in the low-price battle, shouting the slogan of "the lowest price in the entire network". But just over a year later, several companies no longer emphasize this point externally. Taotian was the first to make adjustments, taking GMV as the first assessment indicator, followed by Douyin and Pinduoduo.

The result of the low-price battle has caused damage to all parties. The relevant strategies of "only refund" and "freight insurance" were not perfect when they were formulated. Merchants sold at a loss due to price breaks, and ultimately suffered greatly due to a significant reduction in profits. Even the magical event of "chasing orders for thousands of miles" occurred, and consumers received goods of increasingly poor quality. After jumping out of the lowest price maze, the platform no longer repeatedly tests the cost red line of merchants and stimulates the price nerves of users, hoping to find a better balance between users and merchants on the basis of sacrificing some platform interests.

Low prices every day have also diluted the impulse effect of major promotions, greatly disrupting the sales rhythm of the e-commerce industry throughout the year, and the platform's sales have not been as ideal as expected.

"Not getting involved in low prices does not mean not doing promotions", Chu Duan clearly stated for the first time externally that the price power Taotian wants to achieve is to conduct price competition for different price bands of each category , and the traffic distribution will refer to the three elements of low price, merchant service, and product quality. Chu Duan takes the category of water as an example: "Achieve good quality and low price in different price bands of 1 yuan, 5 yuan, and 10 yuan, instead of selling water for only 10 cents."

In addition to price, Taotian is also continuously optimizing the user experience and service. At the end of July this year, Taobao launched a new business mechanism centered on experience and service: the new Taobao version launched store experience points and product experience points, and formulated new service standards based on the service and price of each price band. As long as merchants provide good services and are competitive in price in each category, they will have traffic and repeat purchases. Chu Duan revealed that after two months of launch, the number of merchants with a score of 4.8 and above increased from 30% to 36%, and a 6% increase means that the service quality of about several hundred thousand Taobao merchants has significantly improved.

Another important task for Taobao is to modify and redesign the "only refund" service. "Only refund" is a method to protect consumers, but Taotian hopes that its rules will not harm merchants. Chu Duan said that since some users who frequently refunded were restricted and customer service intervention in return evaluation was added, the number of unreasonable only refunds has decreased by 20%, and the merchants' appeal rate has decreased since July and has now exceeded 30%. In addition, Taotian also subsidizes logistics costs together with insurance and logistics companies to reduce the burden on merchants.

Tmall has retained high-spending customer groups through heavy investment in the 10-billion-subsidy and free shipping for 88 VIP . The latest data shows that the number of 88VIP has exceeded 35 million, contributing nearly one-third of the GMV to the platform. In addition, Jia Luo revealed that on the basis of services such as 7-day no-reason return and exchange, consumer quality guarantee, compensation for one fake product with ten genuine ones, and rapid refund, Tmall has also newly launched "Expensive Products Must Be Compensated" to ensure that the prices of Tmall products are aligned with the outside to protect the interests and experience of consumers.

The presale that once disappeared in 618 will also return in this Tmall Double 11. Chu Duan said that this can bring a definite increment to the platform and merchants, so it should be done openly. Jia Luo said that this is also related to consumers' consumption habits in autumn and winter. In autumn and winter, down jackets and new mobile phone releases are mainly high-spending consumption, which requires a longer decision-making time, a greater discount, and the need to lock the inventory in advance, so a presale is needed as a buffer for consumer decision-making.

Even for a business like live streaming that is strongly GMV-oriented, Jia Luo believes that compared to the past when looking at traffic and price, quality is the key factor that needs to be measured in the future of live streaming. This also means that Taobao Live will be more inclined to anchors with professional qualities (such as those with a shopping guide background), strong product control capabilities (with their own supply chain and able to match Taotian's supply chain), and those who can output high-quality content and services. In fact, many top anchors previously had low professionalism, resulting in the industry only being able to get involved in prices, and these big anchors also collectively collapsed due to fake products, such as Northeast Yu Jie, Xiao Yang Ge, Xin Ba, Qi Wei, and so on.

Wu Jia revealed that the usage frequency and user scale of Taotian's young users and lower-market users are growing rapidly. Based on this, it is expected that this year's Double 11 will be the one with the largest number of participants in the history of Double 11 . He also said that Taotian and WeChat will have further cooperation in terms of traffic and other aspects. 36Kr previously reported that Taotian officially connected to WeChat Pay in September this year. In October, users can complete their purchases on Taobao within WeChat without having to jump to the Taobao APP, which has brought obvious benefits to the growth of Taotian's Q4 user indicators.

From collectively getting involved in the low-price battle to collectively strategic pullback, the extremely involuted e-commerce industry has experienced a round of strategic tug-of-war. Several Taotian executives also said that no matter what new waves and changes they experience, Taotian has actually not changed its original intention and initial strategic positioning: "Making it easy to do business anywhere" remains the same.