Use its online shopping model to carry out in-depth industrial chain model output and capability transformation of different categories
Editor’s note: This article is from the WeChat public account “Future Consumer APP” (ID: lslb168).
Author | Xie Kangyu
Production | -Future consumption (WeChat ID: lslb168)
In the latest quarterly earnings report, Pinduoduo surpassed Taobao with 788.4 million annual active buyers and became the largest e-commerce platform in China. It arrived as scheduled, but it was still caught off guard.
The leap-forward growth of other companies is measured in five or ten years, while Pinduoduo is measured in three years. Three years ago, Pinduoduo’s slogan was still a “shopping app used by 300 million people.” Before the listing, Pinduoduo had half the number of users of Ali. At that time, this company appeared once, went public in three years, and used another third. Rushing into the top three companies at a time is enough to shock the industry.
It has only been three short years since its listing, and Pinduoduo has surpassed Taobao in its number of users. This platform has been ranked first in the past ten years and seems to have extremely high barriers.
Many people once regarded the scale of Taobao as the ceiling of the industry, and calculated the development path of Pinduoduo based on this ceiling. With the emergence of the number of 788.4 million, the industry record was refreshed again, and a new three years started. .
Pingduoduo’s 2020 transcript
On March 17, Pinduoduo announced its fourth quarter and full-year earnings report for 2020. Judging from a number of data, the financial report for this period was beyond expectations. However, the founder Huang Zheng suddenly resigned as chairman. While diverting everyone’s attention, the stock price went out of a rise and then fell. V-shaped.
If the highlight of Q3 is the first quarterly profit, then this time it is undoubtedly that the number of users surpassed Taobao.
According to the financial report, as of the end of 2020, the number of active buyers of Pinduo for many yearsIt reached 788.4 million, a year-on-year increase of 35% from 585.2 million at the end of the previous year, of which 57.1 million was added in the fourth quarter.
In the past few fiscal quarters, the number of new active buyers of Pinduoduo is basically two or three times that of Ali, Q1 Pinduoduo 42.9 million Ali 15 million, Q2 Pinduoduo 55.1 million, Ali 16 million, Q3 Pinduoduo 48.1 million, Ali 15 million, Q4 Ali’s growth is 22 million. The gap in growth continues, which means that Pinduoduo’s number of users may be higher than Ali for a long time in the future.
In terms of monthly active users, the average monthly active users of the Pinduoduo APP in Q4 reached 719.9 million, a net increase of 76.5 million in a single quarter. In the second half of last year, Pinduoduo added 151 million monthly active users. At present, Yuehuo Pinduoduo is still behind Ali, but from the current growth rate of the two, Pinduoduo is much higher than Ali. In other words, Yuehuo Pinduoduo has surpassed Ali and is already on the schedule.
Not only the scale, but the user stickiness of Pinduoduo is also increasing. According to QuestMobile’s previous report, during the Spring Festival this year, Pinduoduo’s daily active users topped the industry for the first time. During this period, Pinduoduo’s per capita single-day usage increased by 25.9% year-on-year , Which has the fastest growth rate among apps with daily activity exceeding 100 million.
At the same time, the purchasing power of users is also increasing. Last year, the average annual consumption of active buyers of Pinduoduo increased to RMB 2115.2, a year-on-year increase of 23%.
Driven by both the scale of users and the purchasing power of users, Pinduoduo’s GMV will also increase to 1,667.6 billion yuan in 2020, a year-on-year increase of 66%.
The revenue growth rate is even more impressive. In Q4, Pinduoduo achieved revenue of 26.547 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 146%, and realized revenue of 59.919 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 97%, nearly doubled. increase. Both figures were significantly higher than market expectations.
In the financial report, the revenue growth was mainly attributed to the strong growth of online marketing technology service revenue and the revenue generated by the sales of new products.
In the fourth quarter, platform online marketing technology service revenue was 18.922 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 95%. For the whole year of 2020, Pinduoduo’s online marketing technology service revenue was 47.953.8 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 79%. In the fourth quarter, platform merchandise sales revenue was 5.357.8 billion yuan.
To some extent, the increase in revenue is due to Pinduoduo’s gradual switching to a money-making model and entering a new stage.
Huang Zheng said in response to the outside world’s doubts about losses in 2019, “Pinduoduo has the ability to generate income and make money at any time.” Like many companies in the early stage, Pinduoduo was doing more Attract more users and businesses to the platform, and allow businesses on the platform to gradually grow up to form a certain demonstration effect.
Specifically, it is to reduce the proportion of advertising while exempting merchants from commissions. With the gradual formation of the platform ecology, it is time for Pinduoduo to be realized, which is reflected in the data as the increase in online marketing technology service income.
At the same time, in addition to the original advertising and commission income, Pinduoduo has also made up for the self-employment, which has evolved to a mature e-commerce platform model with a more complete financial structure.
New business to Pinduoduo
Duoduoduo is undoubtedly the most watched business of Pinduoduo in 2020, and it is also another key factor for the strong increase in the number of users this time apart from the tens of billions of subsidies.
Improving user retention is more important for the current Pinduoduo than pulling new ones. As early as after the “618” promotion in 2019, Pinduoduo mentioned that its current marketing expenditures are focused on increasing user stickiness and activity, rather than pulling new ones, because the current number of users of Pinduoduo is indeed very large. Further up is WeChat.
We have mentioned many times in previous articles that tens of billions of subsidies have an effect on increasing user stickiness and activity, but the effect is also limited. Specifically, when you mention JD.com and Suning, you will think of buyer electronics and 3C digital. When you mention Taobao and Tmall, you will think of buying clothes and beauty makeup, but Pinduoduo has not formed such a strong category reflection.
The image perception of a platform can be formed around a core category. The establishment of this perception will help consumers to repurchase, and at the same time, it can gradually extend more scenarios around the main category. And fields.
So the establishment of category bundling is the first significance of buying vegetables to Pinduoduo, and non-branded products such as agricultural products are indeed Pinduoduo’s superior categories and one of the early fortune categories, which should be carried forward.
Price-sensitive and time-insensitive users in the sinking market are the core group that propped up Pinduoduo’s early user base, and the grocery shopping business just fits the needs of these users, so grocery shopping will have a further influence on the sinking market. Very helpful.
At the same time, whether it is a sinking market or a first- and second-tier market, grocery shopping is just demand, which is effective for increasing retention and even pulling new ones.
More importantly, the development of Pinduoduo’s “shopping” model for a living needs to be further upgraded to the current stage, which is different from Ali’s platform capabilities in the upstream and downstream collaborative connection of digital-driven industries, or JD’s supplyAt the chain level, to create efficiencies and experiences that exceed the industry average level, Pinduoduo also needs a capability of this type to build higher barriers to competition.
The opportunity for Pinduoduo lies in using its online shopping model to carry out in-depth industrial chain model output and capacity transformation of different categories. In fact, Pinduoduo’s new brand plan has already been exploring this type of exploration before.
At present, Pinduoduo has completed the output of a relatively good imposition version of the industry model in some categories such as household consumables, household goods, packaged food, and home appliances, and the next category will come to fresh food.
Of course, Pinduoduo was also engaged in the purchase of fresh products before, but this is different from the previous fresh purchase of fruits as the main category, with the brand of “Duoduoduo” and Wuhan as the first battlefield. A round of agricultural product category purchase business is to transform the entire chain of agricultural product source bases, intermediate circulation, terminal order intensive and contract performance.
The long-term vitality of the future E-commerce purchases is to find a way to the whole industry link of different categories. This will also become the focus of Pinduoduo’s efforts in the next two to three years.