“Sinking the market” has been mentioned a few years ago. The bargaining links are flying all over the sky, making the “sinking market” and “consumer downgrade” quickly popular. According to many people, Pinduoduo has taken the road of “surrounding the countryside” with the help of WeChat traffic to achieve a soaring sky, agitating the wider, larger, and more “low-end” market outside the first and second tiers.
The argument that is more easily accepted is that it is the victory of Pinduoduo’s “Sinking Market” campaign. This larger and lacking monopoly market has caused various Internet industries that focus on the “fine small life” of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen Drool, but this is the inversion of causality. Some people still remember the sinking road of JD.com and Taobao. They believed that the sinking market had already cooled after experiencing a lively period, and it was once again booming with the success of Pinduoduo. but it is not the truth.
The market sinks, a battle that lasts for decades
Although the Internet industry has never been short of miracles, any success has not been achieved overnight.
As a developing country, China ’s development process started in first- and second-tier cities. A series of factors such as resources, population, and facilities have allowed these limited spaces to gather China ’s most active and purchasing power groups. For Internet companies that are highly dependent on traffic, the consequence of losing Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen is “lost me the mountain and make my women colorless.” In recent years, with the help of dozens of first- and second-tier cities, several Internet unicorn companies have been bred and developed.
However, the total population of the four cities, which are as strong as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, also accounts for less than 6% of the national population, and high-density markets will eventually be saturated. Taking the real estate-related market as an example, it has entered the stock era early. Outside the first-tier and second-tier cities, there is a vast and promising market with more than 90% of the country’s population. There are more than 300 prefecture-level cities, more than 2,000 county-level administrative districts, nearly 40,000 towns, and hundreds of thousands of villages . On one side are gradually saturated first- and second-tier cities, and on the other side, the blue ocean is still sinking. The plunder of the sinking market has already begun.
This is a market full of “Kang Shuaifu” and “Lei Bi”. This is a market where consumption power is not what it used to be. This is a market with strong demand but nowhere to release. This is a A market that is eager to quickly eliminate the intergenerational gap in consumption with first- and second-tier cities. The sinking market’s growing consumer demand has become a must-have for many e-commerce platforms and traditional retailIn this place, “clothing” and “food” such as e-commerce takeaway sites, “living” such as Qijiawang, and “line” such as major OEMs, all industries have long been quietly starting to sink. .
You come or do n’t come, the sinking market is always there.
However, contrary to the public’s impression, the markets in third-tier and below cities and rural areas have always been there, and have not appeared in recent years. Pinduoduo, even Meituan, and Toutiao today are not pioneers of the sinking market. In fact, the battle for giants to seize the sinking market began before the Internet era and has been going on for more than two decades.
When people are focusing on how to “punch and kill” a way out of the sinking market, they ignore the fact that Taobao is the first platform to sink in e-commerce. “Even before the Internet era, merchants regularly delivered merchandise books to towns and villages to achieve express sales by post; when people are intoxicated with their mobile phones shaking their heads, today ’s headlines, they will find” headlines “such as fun headlines, favor headlines, and oriental headlines The rebate subsidy has dominated the information of the sinking market, but the earlier QQ has almost dominated the social field of the sinking market many years ago.
Sinking the market in different times will also have different opportunities. It seems that the immutable third-tier and below markets have changed their trajectory several times in the changing times. In those countless sinking “floating corpses”, Ali in the PC era killed eBay in the sinking market with the help of Taobao. Tencent’s QQ first harvested the post-85s and 90s that grew up with the Internet era. In the era of the mobile Internet, Ali quickly changed Taobao and Tmall from promoting rural areas to developing third- and fourth-tier cities. Tencent used WeChat to harvest the social traffic that sank the market, and Pinduoduo was born.
From “clothing and food” to “living”, the “consumption upgrade” of young people in towns
The “sinking market” is by no means a “low-end market”, and “town youth” are typical consumers in the sinking market. Unlike traditional residents in rural areas and small townships, most young people in small towns have received secondary education or above. The continued sinking of the mobile Internet has led to an outbreak of entertainment, learning, and consumption needs among young people in small towns. They are “young people” in the first place, and they are no different from the young people who are accustomed to consuming Starbucks and are skilled in using the mobile Internet.
The 2019 Small Town Youth Report jointly released by the Fast Hand Big Data Research Institute and others shows that compared with urban youth commuting hours and working hours 996, young people in towns have more free time and benefit from small Lower house prices in cities and towns, lower consumption levels, and parental help have helped 30% of young people in towns