Pinduoduo Live, squeezes into the table

Recently, Pinduoduo has been making frequent moves in the live broadcasting field, which means that Pinduoduo has gradually increased its live broadcasting business. So, in what dimensions does Pinduoduo's efforts in the live broadcasting business manifest? Why did Pinduoduo choose to focus on the live broadcasting business at this time? Let's take a look at the author's interpretation and analysis.

Since July, Pinduoduo has been increasingly active in the live streaming field.

Recruit service providers and anchors from all categories, increase efforts to introduce more live broadcast service providers, and add a new "Live Broadcast" column at the first-level entrance at the bottom of the homepage.

These actions all send out new signals: Pinduoduo is going to focus on live streaming.

(Screenshot of Pinduoduo App)

1. No improvement, comeback

In recent years, although Pinduoduo has not had much voice in the live streaming track, it is no longer a "newcomer" when you really think about it.

In November 2019, Douyin, Kuaishou, and Taobao had already formed a three-way competition in the live streaming field. Pinduoduo then slowly entered the market and tested a live streaming event in its 10 billion subsidy channel.

Regarding this event, the relevant business manager at the time said that this was just a temporary online test of the live broadcast plug-in conducted by the platform. The platform itself had no plans to launch a live broadcast channel with a centralized entrance, nor did it have any plans to launch it as an independent business. "Pinduoduo does not intend to clone and repeat existing business scenarios and models."

Perhaps it was precisely because of Pinduoduo’s ambiguous attitude towards live streaming that Pinduoduo, which entered the market relatively late, was late. This lack of firmness may be due to the founder Huang Zheng’s views and Pinduoduo’s low prices.

According to Tencent's "Deep Dive" report in 2020, Huang Zheng gave a simple definition of the live streaming business as "tool attributes", which is an important reason why Pinduoduo has not focused on live streaming.

In addition, the low-price positioning of the Pinduoduo platform itself makes it difficult to take on the low-price strategy of live streaming sales. Pinduoduo focuses on price advantage and small profits but quick turnover, while live streaming sales also strive to achieve the "lowest price on the entire network". Continuing to lower prices will only harm the interests of merchants and lead to vicious competition.

Due to a series of factors, Pinduoduo did not officially provide live broadcast operation services or arrange supporting service providers before 2022, and merchants could only explore and operate on their own. Although most merchant brands have opened relevant functions, most of them play recorded videos or promotional videos in a loop in the live broadcast room, and do not operate live broadcasts.

Therefore, in the past few years, Pinduoduo's live broadcast business has almost only revolved within the platform and has not really gone out of the circle, and there is no impressive data in the live broadcast track.

However, this year, Pinduoduo seems to have made up its mind to compete in the industry. During the 618 promotion, Pinduoduo Live joined the live broadcast promotion for the first time. During the 618 promotion from May 23 to June 20, it simultaneously launched the 618 live broadcast sales main venue and the million anchor challenge.

In the report, Pinduoduo selected the best single-day and single-game data of the top anchors during the 618 period, covering all categories of anchors as well as food, department stores and clothing categories. Among them, Fang Xiaofang, the top influencer in the food category, created a single-game transaction of over 30 million during Pinduoduo's 618 period, ranking first among Pinduoduo anchors in terms of sales.

The live streaming business has joined the promotion battle for the first time and has frequently launched new updates. Pinduoduo, which used to be quite indifferent in the live streaming arena, seems to be getting serious now.

2. Pinduoduo, multi-dimensional live streaming

At present, Pinduoduo, which wants to squeeze into the live streaming track, is mainly focusing on two aspects: spending money to support live streaming merchants; and entering all product categories.

Recently, Pinduoduo announced the "Million Anchor Challenge" event.

According to the introduction, the goal of the Million Anchors Challenge is to help live streaming merchants further increase their live streaming GMV. The platform will set a year-on-year value for the anchors every month (generally the month-on-month incremental GMV of the merchant's live streaming). After the store completes the target, the platform will issue advertising red envelope rewards in the next month. Anchors and merchants participating in the event can receive up to 300,000 yuan in advertising red envelopes per month.

In fact, as early as the beginning of the year, Pinduoduo launched a series of support activities, such as the New Super Star Plan, the Hundred Products Plan, the Live Broadcast Bole Plan, the Service Provider Policy, Category Day, and the Live Broadcast Promotion.

The New Super Star Support Campaign is a support campaign launched by Pinduoduo for new anchors. During the event, anchors can receive corresponding advertising red envelope rewards based on their live broadcast performance.

The Hundred Industries Support Plan is a recruitment plan launched for businesses in industrial belts.

The Live Broadcast Bole Plan is an invitation-based incentive activity. Every time the inviter invites a new anchor and completes the broadcast task, he or she can receive a 300 yuan live broadcast promotion red envelope, and there is no upper limit on the reward. After the invited anchor settles in, he or she can enjoy up to 28 days of special support for newcomers and 10 million traffic subsidies.

In addition to spending money, Pinduoduo is also shifting its focus from food and clothing to expansion into all categories.

According to media reports, Duoduo Live is introducing service providers on a large scale to assist the platform in completing regional and category investment promotion work, and provide one-on-one services to merchant anchors, implement official operating regulations and activity policies, and provide merchant brand anchors with delivery and operation, live broadcast and cargo tray operations and other services.

Duoduo Live's "100 Industries Plan" is to recruit merchants from industrial belts to start store broadcasting. In order to recruit more local service providers, Pinduoduo employees have appeared in industrial belts such as the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, and Chengdu-Chongqing.

A person close to Pinduoduo revealed, "In 2022, there was an imbalance in supply and demand for fresh food and clothing due to macro-environmental factors, and Duoduo Live took the opportunity to implement operations in the two categories. But this time, Duoduo Live started to do live broadcasts of all categories."

3. Pinduoduo Live Streaming, Squeezing into the Table

This year, not only Pinduoduo, but also JD.com has started live streaming.

In early March, JD Live launched the “SUPER Rising Star Plan” for new anchors, providing high-commission products and a rising star product pool, as well as support for traffic and account weight.

An official 10 billion subsidy live broadcast room has also been opened in the 10 billion subsidy zone, with JD customer service as the host, broadcasting live from 9 am to 12 pm every day.

At the same time, JD.com also invited Jiao Ge Pengyou and Luo Yonghao to join the platform to promote products, in order to build momentum for cultivating super anchors on the platform.

Starting from the second quarter of 2022, Pinduoduo, which already has 880 million annual active buyers, will no longer disclose user data. This year, Alibaba and JD.com also stopped disclosing key user data. In addition to user data, GMV is also an indicator that major platforms have tried to blur in the past two years.

The reason is that growth has slowed significantly.

Pinduoduo and JD.com entered the market and focused on live streaming at this time, hoping to find new growth points.

However, at present, whether it is Taobao, Douyin, or Xiaohongshu, they have all explored their own style in the live broadcast track, and also have super anchors who represent the platform.

Taobao continues to focus on content, Xiaohongshu has found its own way of live streaming trendy lifestyles, and Douyin has always been a trendsetter in live streaming.

There are certainly opportunities in the market, but the competition is also fierce. Driven by the blue ocean of traffic and favorable policies in the early stages of Pinduoduo's development, it has a certain appeal to merchants and influencers.

But for users, there seems to be no motivation to watch live broadcasts on Pinduoduo. Pinduoduo's prices are already low enough, and users don't need to watch live broadcasts. How to cultivate users' mentality of watching live broadcasts on the platform may be one of the issues that Pinduoduo needs to solve next.

On the eve of Pinduoduo's listing, Huang Zheng once described the competitive environment Pinduoduo faced as follows: "It's like a table of people eating. When Taobao just started, the table was empty, but when Pinduoduo started, there were already 5 people at the table. You insisted on going up to eat under the table, but the people at the table didn't want you to come up, and the people under the table didn't want you to go up either. I would inevitably suffer a double blow."

Now, this issue has been handed over to Duoduo Live.

References:

1. Yibang Power: Pinduoduo Live Broadcasting Launches Full Category Expansion
2. Yibang Power: Pinduoduo 618: Top anchors in multiple categories emerge, with the highest single live broadcast exceeding 30 million
3. E-Commerce News: Pinduoduo engages in live streaming, falls down and gets up again
4. Chief e-commerce observation: Pinduoduo's live streaming sales cannot compete with Douyin and Kuaishou

Author: Lingling

Source public account: Bohu Finance (ID: bohuFN), focusing on leading companies, featuring in-depth originality, to discover wonderful things for you.