"Speculative" people flock to the live broadcast room of scratching blind boxes

Blind boxes refer to toy boxes where consumers cannot know the specific product style in advance, and they are random. Recently, this new economic form of blind boxes has merged with live broadcasting, attracting many "speculative" people. In this article, the author briefly introduces this new form and puts forward his own views. Let's take a look.

1. New ways to play blind boxes

During this period, the anchors in the live broadcast room have developed new ways to play with blind boxes. Zinc Scale has found through observations over the past few days that as long as consumers enter such live broadcast rooms, they can often get the exciting experience of scratching the grand prize and opening the blind box: apply a scratch-off coating on the packaging of daily life and consumables such as pens, tissues, socks, and notebooks. Each scratch-off area corresponds to the three results of "thank you", "come again", and "prize" (some live broadcast rooms do not set "thank you" and "come again"), and as long as you scratch out the prize, you can generally get something more valuable than the blind box product itself.

In the live broadcast room where consumers are willing to "bleed", some consumers spent only 19.9 yuan to scratch out smart watches worth hundreds of yuan; in the relatively "stingy" live broadcast room, there are also consumers who have never placed an order of hundreds of yuan and have never bought a "big one"... But the reason why scratch-off blind boxes have quickly become the "newcomer" in the live broadcast room is definitely not just due to the "speculative" mentality of consumers who want to exchange small for big.

2. New blind box gameplay is coming, live broadcast room scratch prize is more exciting

“I spent more than a hundred yuan to buy more than twenty pens and a bunch of things that I don’t use often?” When Yueyue, who was once a blind box enthusiast, saw this comment in the live broadcast room, she agreed with the ridicule made by this netizen.

At that time, Yueyue's understanding of blind boxes was still limited to those trendy blind boxes that were co-branded with well-known film, television and animation IPs or original IPs of various brands. However, as the popularity of various IP blind boxes has faded in the past one or two years, Yueyue's enthusiasm has also cooled rapidly. "If you buy too much, you will find that there is no point. Before, everyone was rushing to collect various "hidden models", but if you think about it calmly, the value of this kind of trendy toy products themselves is actually not that high. It is because everyone is scrambling to buy them that the prices are driven up. Look at those trendy toys that are put on sale now. How many people can be attracted to buy them?"

Yueyue discovered that in the live broadcast room of blind box scratching that was frequently pushed to her recently, the stimulating experience brought by the anchors' development of new blind box gameplay was far greater than the period when she was most enthusiastic about trendy blind boxes. "Blind box + scratch prize, how attractive can it be? There is no need to say more, right?"

Yueyue still remembers the live broadcast room where she was most willing to spend money. "A blind box pen costs 19.9 yuan, and when you scratch it, you get a smart watch worth hundreds of dollars. The host was so excited that he rang the bell for a long time on the spot, and kept saying that he had lost a lot. There is certainly an element of exaggeration in this, but you can get a smart watch for 20 yuan. Even if this watch is not a brand name, it can be considered a small profit for the person who placed the order." However, in Yueyue's opinion, only a few are willing to spend money like this live broadcast room.

Whether it is a blind box scratch pen, blind box tissue, blind box socks, blind box notebook, or even a blind box card without any accompanying goods, most of the rewards given by the anchors are within the scope of daily necessities such as kitchen utensils, cooling patches, portable fans, and power banks. The actual value of the reward items is only a few to dozens of yuan. "Anyway, compared with the previous blind box trendy play, the first impression given by this kind of play is that at least the things it opens have certain use value for consumers."

However, it is indeed only of "certain value".

Some scratch lottery results

After observing several live broadcast rooms of scratching blind boxes, Zinc Scale found that most of the prizes were exactly the daily groceries that Yueyue mentioned. The key point is that the prizes that were highlighted by the anchors, such as a fine tableware set, are actually a single-person rice bowl + chopsticks, a cute small soap is actually a half-palm-sized handmade soap, and a suitcase is actually a portable carry-on suitcase... In short, no matter how much the anchors use words such as "a certain IP joint name" and "a product gold label" to justify the prizes, they can't cover up the fact that these things seem useful but are not very useful.

3. The actual value of the prize is yet to be determined, and the actual winning rate is also in doubt?

"New account starts broadcasting", "Just for fun, buy if you can accept it", "NO refund, NO exchange", "Minors are prohibited from placing orders"... From these slogans that are flooding the blind box live broadcast room, it is not difficult to see that the emergence of this gameplay has undoubtedly provided a new idea for live broadcast entrepreneurs. After all, "NO refund, NO exchange" means that there is no need to bother to solve after-sales problems, and "Just for fun, buy if you can accept it" means that the prizes are directly determined by the anchor's mind, and it is even completely possible to wait and see the inventory of various prizes and make immediate adjustments.

The slogans of each live broadcast room are similar

The above speculation is indeed traceable. In the multiple blind box live broadcast rooms that Zinc Scale follows, there have been many times where the anchors have persuaded consumers who have placed orders to temporarily change the prizes. "This thing is too popular. The live broadcast room is currently out of stock. Why don't I change it to XX for you? If you really want this, can you wait a moment until we restock it and then send it out?" Generally speaking, persuaded consumers will agree to change the prizes, and few people will refuse.

"The restocking time is uncertain, which means you have to keep in mind this and keep in touch with customer service to track when your order will be shipped. It's so troublesome that it makes my scalp numb just thinking about it." A consumer told Zinc Scale that if she really scratched something expensive, the anchor would not ask people to exchange it for other prizes because she knew no one would agree, and the things that the anchor would propose to exchange would most likely be "common goods" in the live broadcast room. "That is to say, no matter how hot the anchor says this thing is, it will never be so important that you need to spend time and energy to keep an eye on it."

In addition, some consumers also have doubts about the actual probability of winning. "Each order starts with 15 pens, and there is one more chance if you scratch 'one more', but all orders basically end with more than 20 pens. How can there be such a coincidence in the world?" Zinc Scale has noticed that there are many consumers who post barrages in some live broadcast rooms to question whether the anchor can manipulate the winning rate. Because from the live broadcast screen, you can only see the process of the anchor constantly putting blind box products on the table and scratching them to redeem the prizes. One order is divided into "maybe the scratch-off products are placed separately on the side, and the anchor will take one out from the area without prizes and scratch it, and the order will end just like that."

It is understandable that consumers have such concerns, because this type of blind box products are not like the blind boxes of cards, trendy toys, etc. that Zinc Scale has reported before. They are all produced and sold by third-party manufacturers. The anchor can only act as a tool to open the blind box. Therefore, the anchor and the consumer cannot confirm what the contents are.

This is not the case with scratch-off blind boxes. In reality, no matter if it is a tissue, a notepad, socks, a pen, or even a small card, it only needs to be printed with a scratch-off coating to become a "newcomer" in the live broadcast room. However, without the endorsement of a third-party manufacturer, the product itself looks "simple and sloppy", so it is not surprising that it is difficult to gain the trust of consumers.

4. Under the demand for “Scratch Lottery +”, new entrepreneurial ideas are realized and become “gold”

In the increasingly competitive live broadcast industry, consumers seem to be particularly fond of the new category of scratching blind box live broadcast. Haven't you seen that the number of viewers in the scratching blind box live broadcast rooms with the slogan "New Account Starts Broadcasting" ranges from hundreds to thousands, which makes many new colleagues envious. Of course, the reason why this type of live broadcast room can quickly gather popularity is inseparable from the "scratch lottery" trend that is flooding the current consumer market.

How keen are consumers to find "excitement"? According to data released by the Ministry of Finance, from January to June this year, the country sold 273.899 billion yuan in lottery tickets, an increase of 91.836 billion yuan, or 50.4%, year-on-year. Among them, in June, lottery ticket sales of lottery numbers amounted to 14.558 billion yuan, up 11.7% year-on-year; lottery ticket sales of guessing amounted to 19.219 billion yuan, up 83.9% year-on-year; lottery ticket sales of scratch type amounted to 10.810 billion yuan, up 99.4% year-on-year; and lottery ticket sales of keno amounted to 4.140 billion yuan, up 34.7% year-on-year.

Among the four types of lottery, the growth rate of scratch lottery ranked first, with cumulative sales of 51.02 billion yuan from January to June, an increase of 17.349 billion yuan year-on-year, an increase of 51.5%. In 2019, the national sales of scratch lottery were only 28.522 billion yuan... From these data, we can see the most real popularity of the "scratch lottery" trend.

Moreover, some live broadcast rooms of scratch-off prizes also upgrade themselves by "patching" to continue to contribute to this grand consumer entertainment carnival: if consumers question whether there is a secret operation, then add a picture of the anchor taking the scratch-off blind box products from the side, directly indicating to consumers that the products are indeed completely random and winning the prize is indeed based on luck; if consumers ridicule that the prizes are not valuable enough, then add some prizes that are several times or even dozens of times more valuable than the scratch-off blind boxes, ranging from a few to more than ten yuan each, and place them directly on the display stand; if consumers report that their luck is too bad, then set a guaranteed "big prize", and give out the "big prize" directly as long as no high-value products are scratched...

Live broadcast room after prize upgrade

But in fact, consumers who place orders in the scratch-off lottery live broadcast room may not care as much about the gains and losses of the prizes as the outside world imagines. This can be seen from the fact that even if the scratch-off lottery live broadcast room hangs slogans such as "Just for Fun" and "No Refunds, No Exchanges", it can still attract a lot of popularity without the above-mentioned upgrade and improvement measures.

Some industry insiders believe that the "post-90s" and "post-00s" groups, as the main consumer groups, have personalized demands, experience-first, and focus on spiritual consumption. With the integration and development of scratch-off lottery and various business formats, such as the emergence of scratch-off lottery live broadcast rooms, these consumers can be brought emotional value far beyond the prizes themselves, satisfying their life pleasures and social needs.

From this point of view, although there is still some controversy about the live broadcast of the scratch-off blind box, it is impeccable that such merchants have accurately found the consumption pain point of "young people enjoy instant feedback more in the Internet age". Perhaps this is the first bucket of "gold" that these entrepreneurs have really dug up.

Author: Zinc Scale, Source: WeChat Official Account: "Zinc Scale"