Tsai Chongxin accepted an exclusive interview with the Chief Investment Officer of the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund and talked about many unknown things between himself and Alibaba. During the interview, Tsai Chongxin generously mentioned one thing, that is, Alibaba has made mistakes in the past few years and ignored user experience.
In 2019, Jack Ma retired together with Cai Chongxin and left Alibaba. It was during this year that Pinduoduo began to rise rapidly. Their users and transaction volume began to increase crazily. Many of their strategies may seem incomprehensible to the older generation of e-commerce merchants, but they have contributed to their success.
Pinduoduo’s ultimate pursuit of price and experience won them the lower-tier market, and then they turned around to seize the high-end market. It has achieved great results for Alibaba. If Pinduoduo was just a potential rival before, now Pinduoduo’s impact with Alibaba is real, and there is even a chance to share the world equally with Alibaba.
Pinduoduo achieved two milestones last year. The first one surpassed Alibaba in market value and became the top e-commerce company in China. Since Alibaba went public in 2014, nothing like this has happened. The second is that Pinduoduo’s annual profit exceeds 60 billion, and its single-quarter profit in the fourth quarter was as high as more than 20 billion. According to this trend, Pinduoduo’s annual profit will exceed 100 billion this year, and it will catch up with Alibaba.
Before 2018, Pinduoduo was just seen as a disruptor. At that time, everyone thought that the only one that could challenge Alibaba was JD.com. Even Liu Qiangdong himself vowed that if given enough time, JD.com would catch up with Alibaba. But now a few years have passed, JD.com is still JD.com, and Alibaba is still Alibaba. However, Pinduoduo has quickly surpassed JD.com and caught up with Alibaba.
Now the fierce battle between Pinduoduo and Alibaba has come, but you would not expect that the most dangerous one is JD.com. Why do you say that? Past Internet experience tells us that when the boss fights with the second child, it is the third child who often falls.
In the past, when people talked about user experience, the most important thing was not the price. For users, the greatest experience is low price. Everyone is a platform, so to achieve low prices, we need subsidies. That is to fight a price war. Pinduoduo and Alibaba have high profits. If they want to fight a price war, they will naturally have more confidence.
But as soon as they start a price war, the pressure on JD.com comes. JD.com’s original advantage lies in standard products, and what they fear about standard products is price competition. After so many years, JD.com has not developed in non-standard products, which is why they have been unable to catch up with Alibaba.
JD.com and Alibaba now have the same problem, which is the disease of large companies. Liu Qiangdong has scolded executives before and used ppt to fool him. After last year’s reforms, the internal situation at JD.com has improved a lot. But now the external situation has become tense again.
Relying on the advantages of logistics, JD.com can still hold on to some market share, but it seems that it is becoming more and more difficult for them to expand externally. Now the economy is also going down, and the sinking market is getting bigger and bigger. Under such circumstances, China's economy will definitely be M-shaped in the future. What does it mean?
is bigger at the two ends and smaller in the middle. The consumption of high-end and low-end products is increasing, while the consumption of mid-range products is becoming less and less. For example, the demand for luxury goods and ordinary clothing, food, housing and transportation is increasing. The high-end ones are all about service, the low-end ones are all about price.
JD.com is engaged in middle-class business, which is why JD.com cannot compete with Pinduoduo. In the past, everyone pursued the ultimate service and would rather be more expensive than have faster logistics. But in today's world, many people would rather endure slower logistics than choose cheaper prices.
For consumers, there is sufficient competition in the market, so that everyone can buy better services and cheaper products.
