What is more terrifying than stock speculation is Tmall Double Eleven

As the Double 11 Shopping Festival approaches, consumers are gearing up to participate in this annual shopping extravaganza. However, Haibei Senior Sister found that this year's Double 11 seems to be more troublesome than stock trading.

Hello, friends. I have had a headache every time I woke up in the past few days. I have no idea why. After receiving several spam marketing messages from brands, I suddenly realized that it was because I had done too many math problems during the Double Eleven shopping festival.

Xiaohongshu blogger teaches you how to solve the math problems of Double Eleven

A few days ago, my phone recommended me an old photo of Double 11 ten years ago. At that time, I accidentally filled in the company's address, and had to borrow a supermarket cart to move the parcels upstairs. As a result, this year's Double 11, the group was full of people waiting to copy homework, and no one was doing homework. Everyone looked at each other and didn't know what to buy. In the end, my Taobao shopping cart was cleaner than my mother's cleaned room~

Why is the Double Eleven shopping festival getting worse and worse? I think there are two main reasons. First, the price system has completely collapsed, and second, the product process is extremely complicated.

These days, the prices of most products on Taobao are more magical than the recent A-share prices. No matter how much the item costs, even if it’s only 30 or 50 yuan, it will be forcibly raised to around 300 yuan during Double Eleven, and then you will be given a coupon worth 200+ yuan, and then a cross-store discount of 30 yuan for purchases over 300 yuan (do you think I can get it?). I felt like I was watching TV shopping decades ago (revealing my age), not 999, not 699, today it’s only 99!

For example, a small box of 3 monthly contact lenses, the original price is 300, then after some discounts, it finally comes down to 58. Another example is a pair of children's pajamas, which doesn't have much fabric, the original price is 300, then you are given a 240 yuan coupon, and finally it is reduced to 65 with 88VIP discount or something. Taobao really makes a fool of consumers, right? Don't I know that the world outside the wall is experiencing consumption downgrades because I don't go out shopping?

It is a basic practice for Taobao merchants to raise prices before every big sale

It's fine that the price is inflated, but buying something requires crazy "internal consumption". For example, if I want to buy a skin care product, apart from those third-party purchasing agents, there are N stores with prices to compare in the official stores alone, including brand flagship stores, Tmall Supermarket, Ali Health Pharmacy, and the 10 billion subsidy brand selection, Tmall Global Self-operated Global Super Store, and Tmall Global Self-operated Miaoyanshe. Are you three competing for the length of store names? Even if you only look at brand flagship stores, there are also various live broadcast prices of different anchors. The live broadcast prices of anchors also include buying one set, buying two sets, buying three sets, and different gifts. Then there are the prices of the first wave of Double Eleven, the prices of the second wave, the prices of the day, etc. After such a set of operations, I can hear the sound of my hair falling out.

These stores should show Alibaba’s internal organizational structure :)

Although my hair is almost bald, if I can get a little bit of bargain through cross-store discounts, store discounts, 88VIP discounts, shopping money, membership coupons, consumer coupons, beauty coupons, red envelopes, Yitao rebates, etc., then I have reason to believe that my hair will grow back soon. Unfortunately, I used such a long set of silky tricks, because I got the wool of capitalism, but in fact, I was fleeced by capitalism. In the end, the price was not cheaper than the next door.

In terms of the prices of daily necessities, it is more expensive than Pinduoduo. For example, the contact lens solution I just mentioned, the flagship store on Tmall spent a lot of time to collect the price and it is 133 yuan per set. On Pinduoduo, which is also a brand flagship store, the same specifications only cost 99 yuan without any additional cost.

After all the trouble, the price is not cheaper at all. Mr. Ma, give me back my hair.

For slightly higher-end cosmetics, the price is not much better than that of Sam's Club and Rishang. The key is that they don't need to combine orders, stock up, or do math problems. For example, a bottle of La Mer water from Sam's Club costs only over 500 yuan. As for the price of clothing, JD.com has been issuing half-off coupons recently, directly 300-150, 100-50. The senior sister silently looked at a sample that her family had stockpiled during the 618 shopping event and had not yet finished using, and fell into deep thought...

Various price comparison strategies on Xiaohongshu

Since these former flagship categories of Alibaba are not cheap, I thought I should stock up on hotels, since the other companies don’t have this category. But the hotel promotion strategy of Fliggy turned out to be a huge document. Wow, that table is even bigger than the data analysis I did at work, and it is divided into many different sheets. My computer would freeze when I opened this document. There is even a blogger who wrote a strategy on how to stock up on hotels during Double Eleven, and the title says “40,000 words!…” It is really longer than the PRD that I wrote when I was working at Meituan… I guess the friends from big companies don’t want to quit their jobs to work in self-media after reading this, because writing this article is more tiring than working.

Look at this guide more seriously than I did when I was studying for the college entrance examination

The price is not cheap, so I just accept it. I just blame myself for not learning math well. However, Taobao's product process is extremely complicated, which is my specialty.

I still remember that when I was in college, Double Eleven only lasted one day, and the requirements for merchants, networks, and logistics were indeed a bit too high. The express delivery of the small logistics station in the school was extended to the streets. A few years later, pre-sales began, which indeed reduced everyone's pressure a lot.

But now the battle line is getting longer and longer, almost more than a month, and now there are several waves of pre-sales, which immediately reminded me of those World War I movies. For example, I added a contact lens to my shopping cart, and then I checked out in the shopping cart, and it told me that I could only buy it on the 31st. This is very confusing, after all, I have paid the balance for other products, but this product has not started to sell yet... I don’t understand, then what do you mean by asking me to check out in the shopping cart? Can’t you gray it out or not let me check out? Taobao product manager, don’t you know that with this design, how many precious hairs of consumers will be lost?

I can check the checkout button on the car purchase page, but when I get to the checkout page it tells me I can’t buy it yet

Just looking at this wave of products, it also requires ingenious order combination. For this reason, Taobao's shopping cart even has a "grouping" function, because this situation often occurs: buying all the products together will make the unit price more expensive, and it is necessary to settle separately to ensure that every coupon and every red envelope is used. There are even many guides on the Internet to teach you how to pay the balance in the most cost-effective way. Pinduoduo next door barely even has a shopping cart, and Taobao's shopping cart is really the next level. I think that the product designed with this function should be able to write many pages of PPT for the defense and successfully get promoted~

Please don't underestimate the final payment, it's really hard.

I finally divided my shopping cart into groups, but when I placed an order, I found that the price was wrong. How could so much less be paid? I took a closer look and found that Taobao copied a feature of a certain platform - use now and pay later. The original intention of designing this feature was good, and it was considered from the perspective of consumers. I felt that it was better than grouping shopping carts, and it was always good to pay later. Hehe, although other people’s products can be ordered for 0 yuan, the postage cannot be. When placing an order, it is not 0 yuan, but 3 yuan. I suggested that the name of this function be changed to "Use first if shipping is not included". What's even more outrageous is that there are people online who have made negative order amounts because of this function.

I thought I was great for getting 300 yuan down to 3 yuan, but the netizen deducted the amount directly into a negative number.

After finally placing the order, the senior sister breathed a sigh of relief, feeling that today's KPI had finally been completed. Unexpectedly, she was "surprised" by Taobao's products again. The thing is, the senior sister wanted to check the progress of the product delivery, so she took a look at my order, and then found that the clothes and shoes I bought a few months ago were displayed in the order list, interspersed with the things I bought on Double Eleven. After confirming again and again that I did not travel through time, the senior sister calmed down and thought about it. This function should also be for KPI, to increase the frequency of purchases... The problem is that clothes and shoes are not paper towels. Once you buy them, you are unlikely to buy them again. Moreover, the design of this style is exactly the same as other orders. It is not like the product recommendation module that most e-commerce companies have. It is really easy to be misunderstood.

This feature is named "Ghost Order" by the senior sister

Finally, I still hope that Alibaba can return to its original intention and think about Jack Ma’s original vision of “making it easy to do business in the world”. If it continues like this, Double Eleven will become “making it easy to do math problems in the world”.