Ali is starting to get twisted

Recently, Alibaba has made many updates to Taobao, including canceling the pre-sale system, updating the PC terminal, and restarting "Taojianghu". However, this is inconsistent with corporate use and may be a deviation from its vision and mission.

Alibaba has made several interesting moves recently: the first was to cancel the 618 pre-sale and announce that it would go on sale directly at 8 pm on May 20, with price guarantee throughout the process.

In fact, Taotian has been doing pre-sales for ten years. For merchants, pre-sales can more effectively judge the inventory quantity, but for users, pre-sales lengthen the delivery cycle, which obviously damages the user experience.

But perhaps users are willing to bear the loss of user experience in order to buy low-priced goods, which reflects the seller's market relationship.

The second action was that Taobao started to restart the PC version of the website and the Taojianghu forum. To say that it was restarting the PC version of the website is of course an exaggeration. The PC version of Taobao has always existed and has never been offline. It’s just that the user experience on the PC side was very bad in the past few years. It was very troublesome to log in to the PC version of Taobao, so that sometimes when I wanted to check the Taobao website while slacking off at work, it was extremely inconvenient.

I believe everyone can feel the poor user experience of the PC version of Taobao in recent years. Alibaba’s intention is probably very simple, that is, to make way for the mobile terminal and guide users to use the APP as much as possible. This is naturally due to Alibaba’s mobile strategy.

These two changes in Alibaba's actions can naturally be said to be user-centric changes, and also show Wu Ma's determination to make changes after taking charge of Alibaba. ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍It's just that this change really made users wait too long, so Alibaba's sudden consideration for users seems to have become a kind of "wiseness". ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

But I want to say two things: First, “user first” may conflict with corporate interests. Therefore, Alibaba’s (or any company’s) “user first” strategy cannot be sustained in the long run. “User first” is more of a theme for a certain stage. Second, who are Alibaba’s customers? Has Alibaba really thought it through?

We have some doubts about this. Of course, Cai Chongxin said that Alibaba finally understood who its customers are (consumers), but this is actually inconsistent with Alibaba's vision and mission. Let's talk about these two points in detail.

01

First of all, after Wu Ma Cai Chongxin returned to Alibaba, he first criticized Alibaba’s previous management, saying that now they have figured out who Alibaba’s real customers are, and that they must be user (consumer)-centric.

But the problem is that Alibaba's corporate strategy may conflict with user experience and userism. When this contradiction occurs, what should Alibaba do? For example, Alibaba's previous "All in Wireless" strategy allowed Alibaba to seize the e-commerce and payment entrance of the mobile Internet, create top apps such as Taobao Mobile and Alipay, and open up space for Alibaba's mobile growth. From the perspective of the rearview mirror now, Alibaba's "All in Wireless" is actually not wrong.

But for users, the cost of early migration to mobile terminals is actually quite high. At least you need to download an app to log in, and mobile search is obviously not as smooth as web search, and it is indeed not as convenient as PC. ‍‍‍‍‍‍One of Alibaba’s problems is that Taobao seems to have deliberately reduced the user experience on PC terminals, forcing users to use APP to achieve the “All in Wireless” strategy. For example, you need to scan the QR code and perform complex login to view product details. ‍‍‍‍‍‍

This phenomenon is obviously likely to happen in the future, but when it comes to Alibaba's own strategic choice, Alibaba may not necessarily stand on the side of users, and the "all in wireless" phenomenon that reduces the PC user experience may happen again. Of course, to be fair, user needs do not necessarily have to be met, and blindly listening to users may also harm the company.

A classic example is that before the invention of the car, users only wanted a faster horse, and Steve Jobs also said that he never did user research. So this is a test of Alibaba's scale, where to put users first and where to selectively ignore user interference.

We now even think that Alibaba seems to have some tendency to overcorrect, and its actions are beginning to become a little twisted. For example, the cancellation of the 618 pre-sale system, in fact, we think this is not necessary. The long-term existence of the pre-sale system has its rational business logic. After the cancellation, there may be unexpected pressures in terms of shortages and after-sales service, and in the end, it may not necessarily satisfy users.

Another example is the restart of the PC version of Taobao. It doesn't seem to be necessary now. After all, users are waiting for big sales to place orders on their phones. It seems that few people are squatting in front of a computer browser to place orders. The PC version of Taobao is still suitable for people who need a PC when they are slacking off at work. ‍‍

02

Secondly, we can further discuss who are Alibaba's customers. In a podcast interview, when talking about why Alibaba fell behind, Cai Chongxin said, "Because we forgot who our real customers are." Alibaba's users are "users who use our applications to shop," and "We did not give them the best experience."

To be honest, I think what Tsai said is questionable. If Alibaba has grown into such a large Internet giant even though it has forgotten who its real customers are, it actually shows that Alibaba has always been very clear about who its real customers are. We don't play word games here. In our opinion, whoever gives Alibaba money and whoever feeds Alibaba is Alibaba's real customer.

Obviously, it is not the consumers who really pay Alibaba, but countless merchants and brands. In fact, when Alibaba was first established, Jack Ma defined its mission as “making it easy to do business anywhere”.

At that time, he compared large enterprises to whales and small enterprises to shrimps, saying that Alibaba does not catch whales but shrimps, and emphasized that e-commerce should serve China's small and medium-sized enterprises. In other words, Alibaba is actually a typical 2B enterprise. "Make it easy to do business in the world" is a very classic slogan, but it is obviously aimed at the business community.

Today, on the official website of Alibaba Group, it is still stated that Alibaba’s mission is to “make it easy to do business anywhere” (for merchants), and Alibaba’s vision is to “strive to become a good company that will last 102 years.

Our vision is to enable customers to meet, work and live in Alibaba” (said by the face himself), and the first value of Alibaba is “customers first, employees second, shareholders third”. ‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Even from the daily language system, we can actually see the difference between Alibaba (2B) and Tencent (2C). Alibaba always says "customers", while Tencent is more accustomed to saying "users".

Therefore, we believe that Alibaba’s predicament today is not because it has forgotten who its customers are. The mission of “making business easy” does not need to be corrected (and has not been corrected). Take consumption upgrade and new retail strategy as examples. These two directions have now been suspended in Alibaba, but consumption upgrade was indeed once a consumer demand. Of course, cost-effective consumption has always been a consumer demand, and there is nothing wrong with this. In other words, consumption at that time had polarized characteristics, which the industry calls the coexistence of “consumption upgrade” and “consumption downgrade”.

The problem lies in Alibaba's own choice. It has chosen the path of consumption upgrade. As for the reason behind this, we believe that brands have more marketing budgets than white-label products, so they can invest more in Alibaba's system, and Alibaba's own profitability will continue to improve.

At this point, it seems to be back to the first question we discussed, that is, when Alibaba's own interests diverged from the interests of consumers, Alibaba chose its own interests. Or to be more precise, Alibaba chose the big merchants over the small and medium-sized merchants.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with this from a business perspective, so I never think that Alibaba’s consumption upgrade strategy is a "wrong". I just attribute it to strategic shortsightedness, organizational and temporal limitations.

There is reason to believe that the direction of consumption upgrading cannot be achieved without Jack Ma’s approval. The rise of Pinduoduo has awakened Alibaba and JD.com. Let’s take a look at the corporate culture description on Pinduoduo’s official website: Pinduoduo’s values ​​are “universal benefit, people first, and more openness. Adhere to the values ​​of duty, stand for consumers, and continue to work tirelessly to meet the needs of the vast majority of users.”

Compared to "making business easy", Pinduoduo's value description is user (consumer) centric. Although my friends and I were harassed by Pinduoduo's "cut-price" in the early days, I now find that more and more friends around me use Pinduoduo, probably because our stocks have not yet recovered.

In short, there may be a potential conflict within Alibaba today in terms of corporate strategy and organizational mission. The difference in strategy (user first, representing the interests of consumers) and organizational mission (making it easy to do business anywhere, representing the interests of merchants) has also caused Alibaba's internal organization to become twisted.