this article comes from the public number Tiger Sniff APP (ID: huxiu_com), the author issued an orange, and Ai Faner was authorized to publish .

The free feast of the Internet is becoming a past tense. The patient’s patience, attention, critical eye and even superiority are packaged together and packed into a basket called “Member”, which is clearly priced.

Obviously, as the battle for incremental markets becomes more tight, people have to be more careful about the chips they already have. I don’t even have to stick to the Internet. After all, the anxiety about “traffic” has spread from online to offline, from supermarkets to small supermarkets, and to the snails shop at the corner of the company. No merchants are willing to give up any one to play against the users. Opportunity – the QR code is on, the clerk looks forward to it: “Do you want to have a membership card?”

Not to mention the success of the example.

In April 2018, US e-commerce giant Amazon announced its first number of Amazon Prime members worldwide – more than 100 million, based on its annual fee of $99 or $12.99 per month. Amazon is only a member per year. fee income up to $ 9.9 billion.

Another exciting example comes from Costco, a member-access supermarket that has been touted by Charlie Munger. Today, the market value is as high as $106 billion. Almost 90% of American households are members of theirs. The rate is daunting.

About two overseas companies “paid membership” mode, the text has been discussed a lot, for local companies and entrepreneurs, the former “more than 90% of the membership renewal rate”, also make them hesitate be it as a great learningThe sample, which is to be explored in this article, is a new exploration of local “paid members” of e-commerce. We can simply and succinctly draw a line and divide it into two. One is to follow the Amazon Prime’s large platform to pay membership services, such as Ali launched 88VIP, Jingdong PLUS on the Jingdong PLUS, and the first is based on Costco’s access. Member membership e-commerce.

Pay is a 槛

Local e-commerce attempts to pay for members are 10 years later than Amazon.

Until 2015, Jingdong took the lead in launching Jingdong PLUS, and soon closed the “largest e-commerce membership system” with 10 million members. Ali, next door, should be cautious. On August 8 this year, the first anniversary of “88VIP” will be celebrated. Previously, the two attempts to “members” have stopped more users who have active/contributing rights to free members, such as Taobao V1~V6, Tmall T1~T4, and many people who are less familiar with APASS (Ali). Baba Black Card Club), Jingdong continues to be the gold medal of the gold medal so far.

The essence of membership is to retain loyal users and to sway users.” As the entire Internet progressed to a relatively stable stock era, members became a solution that increased user stickiness and tapped the value of the stock.

However, unlike paying members of many content platforms, paying members in the retail sector require consumers to “pay for the second time”, paying for the membership and the rights they belong to, and the second time is the product. The ownership of the purchase.

Upgrading from a free member to a paid member, this extra payout is a “deaf”.

For the enterprise, the first question written on this “threshold” is “what do it?” or whether the advantage of the company at a certain pivot point is sufficient to support a paid business.

In 2005, Amazon was just an online store with books as its main business. At the time, Amazon Prime launched its core interest to provide members with a free two-day express delivery service for an annual fee of $79. Obviously, the company has placed its core competence in logistics.

This is not a decision to take for granted. One big background is that for most American e-commerce companies at the time, the average time spent on logistics was 3 days to 7 days.

“Delivery Date” is a prominent item in Amazon’s order information. Compared with “shipping information”, the former is more responsive to consumer expectations, so how to reduce distribution costs, quickly complete order delivery, and improve the quality of delivery services. It was an important goal, so as early as 1998 (three years after the company), Amazon invested heavily in the establishment of a logistics distribution center. At the same time, it cooperated with couriers such as Kozmo.com.Help the company efficiently complete the delivery of orders.

The years of cumbersome steps have just paved the way for Amazon to complete its membership business, and it has also made this company unique in the year when e-commerce was not good.

Obviously, when domestic e-commerce companies decide to make paid e-commerce, they also have to face this problem.

Jingdong seems to follow the path of the predecessor Amazon. In 2015, Jingdong Logistics has made breakthroughs in specialization and scale. Through the construction of Asia No.1, it has successfully built its own customer timeliness and service standards into one of the global benchmarks. Obviously, similar to its predecessors. The long-term investment in logistics has become the courage of JD.com to decide to overcome this hurdle.

Jingdong PLUS’s person in charge, Meng Chunhui, gave an example to the tiger: “For example, we provide users with 10 times returning to Beijing beans, our shipping coupons, and our door-to-door return and exchange, these are self-operated. Some of the things that genes can bring, maybe this is our advantage in the entire market competition.”

And Ali’s answer is: the brand’s recognition of Taobao, Tmall, and the maturity of the entire Ali ecology.

In 2018, the Ali e-commerce platform including Taobao and Tmall went to a relatively mature stage, and 90% of the big brands have basically entered Tmall. This background, in the eyes of the 88VIP leader Xiu Yan, is very important, more intuitively reflected that more and more businesses are investing more resources in the Ali ecosystem. “I think this is a turning point.”

At the same time, in the past two years, Ali’s strategic acquisition of a large number of acquisitions and mergers and acquisitions around the local life and cultural entertainment sector has also paved the way for its so-called “eco-type members.”

How to set a threshold for users? After the last “槛”, new problems came one after another.

The way to become Jingdong PLUS is very direct, 148 yuan a year; and if you want to join Ali’s 88VIP, the difficulty factor is even bigger – in addition to the money, there is also a “naughty value” Something, the naughty value of 1000 can be purchased for membership at 88 yuan, otherwise the cost of one year is 888 yuan, and this number is enough to make many people discouraged.

“It may be the difference in appeals.” Meng Chunhui, the person in charge of Jingdong PLUS, told Tiger that PLUS mainly hopes to allow more users to join and continue to expand its scale. Obviously, for JD.com, member payment action It is enough to “satisfy” the platform. Users who have been screened out through this threshold can naturally become the “best number of users” in Jingdong.

Ali’s 88VIP is more like a two-way choice: the platform first uses a high-quality user portrait portrayed by naughty values ​​for a round of screening, and then throws 88 yuan a year’s membership benefits to wait for the “willing” Hook up”.”

“The essence of membership is to do repurchase, and how you use this form to build barriers, that is, the process of repurchasing can bring consumers, and you can cover the cost. Because, for the company, In fact, it is not possible to make this subsidy without limit. It is necessary to look at what China’s national conditions are now, what consumers need and what their core strengths are.” Therefore, compared with Jingdong’s pursuit of membership, Ali 88VIP The idea is more inclined to give up the low-frequency users directly, improve the retention of loyal customers, and operate accurately.

Give me a reason to pay

“I think the design of a good membership mechanism depends on whether it does two things, one is the principle of unfair competition, and the second is to defy the upper end of the chain.” Obviously, the founder of Fei Yi Interactive is Jiang Meilan. 88VIP fans, referring to the setting of 1000 mischievous values, she said, “I have a lot of friends who are very convinced. I feel that Alibaba is discriminating against him, but for me this kind of 1000 naughty value, I feel immediately Standing at the top of the chain of contempt.”

Similarly, the sense of coolness comes from the difference with non-members. For example, if you get more discounts, you can experience it earlier, that is, a lottery that only members can participate. “You said that I am not fair, yes, I am not fair. If I am going to be the same as if you didn’t join the membership today, why should I join the membership?”

Earning and feeling cool is a direct reason to stimulate users to pay for their members. However, behind the è, companies also need to think about how to meet their needs while keeping their expenses too exaggerated.

Demand and supply is a tug-of-war in the membership rights setting.

Fortunately, we have some originators and old generations: the success of Amazon Prime and Costco member stores has brought us a lot of inspiration. In North America, where the region is sparsely populated and logistics delivery is available for one week, the Prime of the “Next Day” based on the deep-rooted logistics system can meet the most profound and wide-ranging needs of Amazon users.

Similarly, compared with China, North America lacks convenience stores and small business supermarkets, with large commercial supermarkets and shopping centers as the most common offline consumption locations. At the same time, North American cars are much more popular than in China, and consumers generally have a spending habit of “not easy to go offline shopping, pull back a car when you go”. At this time, the Costco member store, which can be trusted (extremely biased towards the return of consumers), has become one of the most preferred shopping options.

Prime and Costco achieved success in North America by focusing on pain points and accurately setting rights, and became the target of all walks of life. There are already too many compliments about the two, so I won’t go into details here. We might as well think about it. Why is Prime and Costco not too successful in China?

This is actually based on demand and supplyThe balance has changed. In China, except for a few remote areas, logistics generally does not need three or five days. Suining said that for the most developed Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shanghai regions, “Next Day” and even “Day Day” are completely part of the “free rights”. I dare to take this charge and I really don’t want to live.

While in small shops, convenience stores and even uninhabited stores in China, high-frequency, low-cost daily necessities shopping does not require Costco, a large and comprehensive member store. On the other hand, on the other hand, due to the gap in the integrity of the society as a whole, Costco’s impressive after-sales service in the United States may cause them to die in China.

There is little demand for providing logistics services such as Prime in China; and the cost of providing after-sales services such as Costco is too high. Both 88VIP and JD.com are constantly changing and expanding their rights. They are afraid to “eat the old” every year – to find out the real needs of local users, and to meet the requirements at the lowest possible cost, it is also necessary to “adapt to local conditions”.

As Xiu Yan said, many brands are now willing to invest resources in Taobao and Tmall marketing. This transformation invisibly reduced the burden on Ali itself. Ali’s successful ecological construction has enabled Ali to be one-stop in the “associated members.” Of course, 88VIP also paid the price of being late for 3 years (compared to Jingdong).

Jingdong PLUS also has its own growth path. Unlike 88VIP, it launched a series of eco-type “cross-platform” rights around eating, drinking and living (such as being able to receive hungry, Taobao tickets, shrimp members), benefiting from self-employment accumulation, initially The 3-year PLUS has been able to dig deep into the “shopping line” and use the shipping and after-sales offers to capture the core membership needs. After that, adding a horizontal “lifeline” through “joint name” became the meaning of the title.

“We actually have two versions of the members, one is to cooperate with iQiyi, Zhihuo, KFC, and Kung Fu, and cover the entertainment, catering, and travel fields, and add members with life rights. In addition, we actually have a classic membership (the price is cheaper, like the previous PLUS, specializing in the “shopping line”).

The 88VIP “When Calling Out” is a blockbuster, thanks to the unique barriers created by Ali’s vast ecology. This kind of accumulation can be met and demanded; the structure of Jingdong PLUS is even more “small step” It is a more flexible move within the ability. As for the cash flow, it is also difficult to look at the small and medium-sized enterprises of the Jingdong project. The point of the member’s main point is probably not as simple as “making profit.”

It is worth noting that the fees collected by 88VIP and JD.com are not sufficient to cover the operating costs of the membership system at this stage. In other words, for Ali and JD.In other words, the paid membership business itself is still a “losing money to make money” business.

In this regard, the giants are clearly ready for long-term planning, because they know that these purchasing power, willingness to adopt, and positive feedback super users, not only determines the platform today, but also determines the future of the platform. As Xiu Wei, the person in charge of 88VIP, said that as early as the beginning of the project, the internal membership is justified as the cornerstone of Ali, and it is also one of the core strategic projects. “It will drive the user’s stickiness of the entire Ali ecosystem. This is our most fancy, and its commercial value is priceless.”

Obviously, for the giants, the member business that can effectively absorb the “loyalty powder” can become an engine for other business growth and a moat in fierce competition.

But for startups, it’s hard to come up with the patience and huge capital of Amazon and Ali for ten years to build such a huge paid membership ecosystem. They also have different thinking on “paid members.”

Promotion tool or profit model

“Membership fees are now a big part of our income.”

Speaking of paid members, Yhouse’s Chen Yang’s tone is hard to hide. After two major adjustments, the team finally put the treasure on the “membership e-commerce”. She claims to be an apprentice at Costco, claiming to make money by membership fees rather than selling goods.

“The platform for membership in the big platform is essentially a means of promotion.” In Chen Yang’s view, the success of Amazon Prime has verified that paid members can bring the high-frequency stickiness of core purchase users to the e-commerce platform. “But this is very different from our consideration. We are the logic of user stratification.”

According to the current statement, Yhouse is a member rights collection platform, but at the beginning of the platform in 2013, they described themselves as the “first platform for high-end experience and elite information.”

Chen Yang’s so-called user stratification means that I have missed the “big and complete” dividend of this platform. It is no longer possible to shape a Jingdong. Then simply set up a part of the threshold and then give This part of the user offers specialized products and services.

“What we always wanted to do was a new middle-class lifestyle solution, but at the beginning, I didn’t think about what specific product should be used as a catcher. “The earliest approach is to make a face-to-face On the basis of the “Information + Service” type of APP for high-end people, the version 1.0 of Yhouse is online. At this time, the membership model is more like an elite membership club, similar to the old London soho house, membership fees ranging from 5,000 yuan to 20,000, online to provide members with event recommendations and customized news content, offline to do Exclusive party event booking and other services