E-commerce collective "self-mutilation": May 1 price war started

Fight for the bottom price of your singing stop me on stage in the United States settled in Dangdang after the new electric city was on March 25 on the line. GOME's entire product category settled in Dangdang.com, and became the exclusive supplier of dangsang. Recently, in addition to the previous “books,” “beauty makeup,” “home,” etc., Dangdang.com has added a franchise to its business category on the front page. Electrical products "Guo America." Dangdang vice president Yao Danjun said that Dangdang will jointly launch digital home appliance promotions, some of which will be lower than their competitors by several hundred dollars or even thousands, and will launch multiple price wars throughout April. Yao Dan stated that Dangdang promised to “lowest price in the entire network” during the promotion period. If consumers found that the price of the same model of any other B2C mall was lower than that of Dangdang, they could report it to the Dangdang customer service.

It is understood that Dangdang Gome Electric Co., Ltd. sells goods to keep up with the price of Gome Online Mall, and will introduce third-party price monitoring agencies, closely monitor the entire network price, to ensure that Gome Online Mall and Dangdang Gome City implement the lowest price of the entire network. At the same time, Suning Tesco vowed to break through the "wide net reserve price" and claimed that "Why must be more than West Amoy", this year, a new round of battle for home grid companies formally started. In addition, on April 17th, Gome Online Mall officially announced the addition of "General Merchandise Channel" besides home appliances and consumer electronics products.

"The consumer shopping habits are subject to change, but it is undeniable that prices are still the issue they are most concerned about," said Li Bin, executive vice president of Suning's E-Commerce. In recent years, online shopping consumers have higher and higher requirements for services and user experience, but prices have always been the most important position. Surveys have shown that consumers are much more sensitive to prices than delivery times, page access speeds, and other users. Experience factors. Li Bin believes that "burning money" is a necessary process.

In the "self-mutilation" style price war, who can persist for longer? According to industry insiders, the traditional home appliance channel network operators who have three trump cards, namely “global purchasing scale”, “cost-intensive” and “cash reserve”, have more shopping power. According to Li Bin, Suning's e-commerce relies on a total of nearly 200 billion purchases under the line to allow it to have an 8% to 10% purchase price advantage in the 3C appliance industry compared to the current major e-commerce companies. This kind of supply chain has accumulated over 20 years. Is a traditional enterprise transformation e-commerce "big killer", and many e-commerce companies have to rely on multi-agent supply, and even went to the store to buy "special machine" to maintain the status of online low-cost image can be described as a world of difference. In addition, on the back-end logistics, services, information development and other resources, the traditional channel e-commerce and stores realized a complete platform sharing, and do not need to start a huge amount of investment as other e-commerce start from scratch, thus also have 3% in operating costs ~ 5% advantage.

The future profit model still has no solution to such a high-scale, large-scale bargaining price, which is undoubtedly at the expense of losses. The reporter was informed that Suning and Jingdong Mall, which have reached the top three in the B2C industry, are still losing money. However, Suning’s senior executives once stated that “If we can maximize the market share, it is necessary to bear some stage losses.” How should we view the “self-styled” price war on major home appliances? CCID Consulting analysts believe that the rapid growth of China's e-commerce is due to low prices, and now is the crucial period for major e-commerce companies to seize the largest market share and impact sales. At present, although Jingdong, Dangdang, and Taobao (Tmall) have certain advantages in market share, it is also true that there is no absolute loyalty to the user base accumulated at a low price. This gives Suning Tesco a chance to rely on price levers to step up. Opportunity.

Data show that in the Chinese online shopping market in 2011, the growth rate of 3C and home appliances in all categories is very significant. At present, the basic pattern of the first echelon of home appliances e-commerce has been determined, including the Jingdong Mall, Suning Tesco, Gome Dangdang, Tmall Electric Appliances, home appliances sales will be the main force in the B2C e-commerce field. Among them, Gome has become the most variable home grid provider.

"In fact, the gross profit of 3C products is very low." According to Cao Junbo, president and chief analyst of Ereli Research Institute, domestic gross profit of 3C products may be only 6%. Experts believe that with the intense competition in the home network procurement industry, higher and higher demands will be placed on online sales of home appliances. Whether it is offline shopping mall or online shopping mall, the future "price war" will always be played, but the "profit" problem still has no solution.