Produced | Bullet Finance Author | Yueye Editor | Lightning Editor | Qianqian Review | Song Wen In recent years, live streaming has become one of the daily shopping methods for consumers. Related industries have developed rapidly, and...

| Bullet Finance

author | Yueye

editor | Lightning

editor | Qianqian

review | Songwen

In recent years, live streaming has become one of the daily shopping methods for consumers. Related industries have developed rapidly and driven new developments. The business continues to grow, but at the same time it also breeds all kinds of chaos. For example, some anchors do not hesitate to use their own pockets to subsidize in order to attract fans and attract traffic. Moreover, this is not an isolated case. This "spend money to earn promotion" model is still spreading on a large scale.

The anchors subsidize themselves, and the live broadcast room aims to pursue the “lowest price”. In the era of consumption grading, “lowest price” is like a dream that everyone wants to realize. In order to achieve the "lowest price", both the platform and the anchors and the organizations behind them have tried their best.

If the major platform owners have big businesses and can afford to subsidize in order to continue to expand the influence of the platform, or the merchants are fighting to increase sales, but what if the anchors who are only used as sales channels and are not large in size can also subsidize the money? Is it a little crazy? On the surface,

is a small matter where the anchor and the organization behind it are "losing money", but in fact it has already evolved into a major matter that disrupts the normal order of the market. In recent years, market disputes caused by arbitrary prices have never stopped. What are the causes of this industry chaos and what will be its future development trends?

1. Subsidy out of one's own pocket has become common.

Subsidy out of one's own pocket to fans seems to be a "business" in the live broadcast room. Open a few live broadcast rooms at will, and no surprise, you can basically hear the anchors talking about this technique within ten minutes.

is like a jewelry store that is broadcast regularly every week. There will be a wave of benefits as soon as the broadcast starts at 8pm. For example, a bracelet called Nanhong, "To give back to the fans, the store subsidizes it out of pocket, 39.9 yuan, take it away directly, 10 pieces, come on, hurry up." Then, there is another popular model, "The same style of Nanhong earrings, elegant Generous, 19.9 yuan, high volume price, fans will refresh to take pictures." In the following hours of live broadcast, the words "subsidize" and "give benefits to fans' babies" often appeared, repeatedly stimulating fans' enthusiasm for placing orders.

The official live broadcasts of some big brands have also begun to use the new rhetoric of "today I will pay for it out of my own pocket and subsidize it for everyone." In the warm-up video, the anchor first bowed 90 degrees, then apologized to consumers, and said, "In order to thank the fans for their support, the anchor will subsidize 10,000 yuan out of his own pocket, and the live broadcast room is giving out benefits," so that fans can Go to the live broadcast room and seize the time to buy.

If store live broadcasts display “self-pay subsidies” during the live broadcast, some anchors even directly put content such as “conscientious anchors, fans, fanatics, and self-pay” in their short videos for pre-heating dissemination.

Some anchors will also use fan support and self-pay throughout the production of short video content. “The reason why #anchorqianyi doesn’t charge for advertising or endorsement fees and pays for her own money to place orders and send them to her fans is because Miss Butler keeps her hair volume even though she stays up late every day. Even though she is an anchor, she is an American majoring in medicine and health. As a professional, she still has her own judgment on products..." In a short video of an anchor named Mini, there was a heartwarming scene of anchor Qianyi giving gifts to a family of three.

Behind the out-of-pocket payment is the "lowering" of commodity prices. It is the anchor and the fans who stand together and bargain with the pricing party.

Faced with such a gentle and affordable offensive, many consumers said that they "can't stand it", "There was no demand at first, but seeing the anchor's passionate performance, I always had the urge to lose money if I didn't buy it." "But it really makes sense to buy it." Maybe not.” “I didn’t dare to open the live broadcast to bring goods. I just wanted to watch a short video and then went to bed, but I didn’t expect to place several orders.” “The atmosphere is here. It seems that I will feel sorry for the host if I don’t buy it.”…

2, real subsidies vs fake subsidies

So the question is, why do the anchors spend their own money to subsidize consumers? Doesn’t the anchor lose money if he pays for the subsidy out of his own pocket?

This needs to start from the underlying logic of live streaming. To put it simply, live streaming is an aggregation effect formed by the credit value of the person. The cost saved is distributed to the buyer, seller and middleman, and feeds back to the person, thereby producing a greater aggregation effect.The core asset of the

anchor in the live broadcast room is "credit value". Daily content output also revolves around this credit value. For example, fans will pay attention to a certain anchor because they like the content, and will watch the anchor's live broadcast. They will also have natural trust in the good things introduced by the anchor. At this time, fans firmly believe that the goods brought by this anchor have either been tested by the anchor, or the price is more suitable, or the anchor has given the product a new meaning. And these are the things behind credit value.

And the credit value is not something that ends once the live broadcast is over, but also requires the anchor to continuously improve through long-term quality and low price. Then word-of-mouth spread, eventually gaining the loyalty of fans. By cutting through middlemen, live broadcasts and manufacturers negotiate prices, which can indeed make prices more advantageous, thus forming a virtuous cycle.

(Photo / Photo Network, based on vrf protocol)

provides subsidies out of his own pocket in the entire chain and is not involved in any link. In other words, in the conventional live streaming operation logic, paying for subsidies out of your own pocket is only a small probability event and is not a necessary condition. What loyal fans of

want is not the natural benefits of a product at a certain point in time, but the sense of trust established by the anchor over a long period of time. In this way, fans can stay in the live broadcast room for a long time, and this will be a steady stream of "productivity" for the anchor. The act of subsidizing out of pocket will only make fans feel like "picking up red envelopes while passing by", and will not bring long-term credit value to the host. Once the subsidies are no longer available, fans will be lost.

But why do some small anchors still use their own money to attract fans? In fact, it is not difficult to understand that in the early stages of the development of live broadcast rooms or anchors, before their fan base and influence have grown larger and stronger, they must find ways to accumulate them. And subsidies or gifts have become the simplest, crudest and most effective ways.

During the subsidy process, consumers thought they were getting benefits, and this was indeed the case. But I didn't expect that I was just a "tool" for the anchors, and a valuable "data" for the anchors and the live broadcast companies behind them to achieve greater goals. The better the data, the more popular the anchor is, and the anchor’s bargaining power on the brand side is higher.

From this perspective, such subsidies are temporary and are just a "marketing tool" for many small anchors to become bigger and stronger and increase their bargaining power.

3. Will it involve unfair competition? When will the industry become standardized?

Live streaming is a business model that has emerged in recent years and is developing rapidly.

brings goods through live broadcast. Some brands are known to consumers, some industries are revitalized, some anchors are recognized by consumers, and some consumers have new consumption paths. There is no doubt that this is a subversion of the traditional retail industry's "people, goods and places".

Thinking back more than ten years ago, when e-commerce platforms were just emerging, competition among the top three e-commerce companies was in full swing, competing on price, service, and logistics. With the strong intervention of Pinduoduo, "low price" has become the core of e-commerce's continued competition. Last year, major platforms also adopted a "really low price" competitive strategy. This shows that in the market environment of consumption downgrade and consumption grading, high quality and low price have long become the common demand of all parties.

(Photo / Photo Network, based on vrf protocol)

Looking back at the development history of e-commerce, we can see that healthy competition in the market can promote the prosperity of the industry and bring more benefits and convenience to consumers. On the contrary, the chaos that has arisen with the development of the industry has to be faced squarely. After all, if these chaos are not eliminated, it is very likely that the industry will collapse.

The behavior of some anchors paying out of their own pockets will help their own development in the short term, but in the long term, it may become a major hidden danger for the development of the industry, such as unfair competition, malicious price wars, etc. Therefore, consumers should be rational about the so-called price wars used by some anchors to attract fans for themselves. This type of anchor’s personal subsidy routine is ultimately just to enhance his bargaining power with the brand. In the end, it is the consumers who are reaped.

In November last year, the 2023 "Double 11" Consumer Rights Protection Public Opinion Analysis Report released by the China Consumers Association stated that there were 150,000 pieces of negative information about "live streaming of goods".Since this year, Douyin and Kuaishou have successively introduced new live broadcast regulations to strengthen and standardize live broadcast rooms based on the original rules.

From the perspective of laws and regulations, some positive actions are taking place. In response to the current chaos in the industry, the State Administration for Market Regulation recently issued the "Interim Provisions on Anti-Unfair Competition on the Internet" and made regulations in the form of a large number of enumerated regulations.

According to the "Interim Provisions on Anti-Unfair Competition on the Internet", "marketing by forging word-of-mouth, concocting topics, creating false public opinion hot spots, and fabricating the income of Internet workers" is an act of unfair competition on the Internet. Anchors in the live broadcast industry use so-called subsidies to "price-breaking" and claim that they have achieved the "lowest price in the entire network". This is a typical example of forging word-of-mouth, concocting topics, and creating false public opinion hot spots. “By using price strategies that break the cost price or are far lower than the product market guidance price and high cash rebates, using extremely low prices as marketing gimmicks, we concoct topics, create false public opinions, deceive and mislead consumers, and seriously harm product manufacturers. and the interests of other operators. "Lawyer Yao Kefeng, director of

Beijing Guobiao Law Firm, previously said in an interview with the media: "After the "Regulations" are implemented, I believe that the relevant departments will severely punish these live broadcast chaos. "

4, Conclusion

How will the live broadcast e-commerce industry finally appear in front of consumers? This is a problem that all brands, platforms, and practitioners must face head-on.

When live streaming e-commerce enters its second half, it has bid farewell to its barbaric growth. A more standardized market environment is the best soil for the healthy development of the industry.

* The title picture in the article comes from: Photo Network, based on vrf protocol.