Why are Meituan, Douyin, Didi and Weibo scolded for making money?
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account ” Tech planet “(ID: tech618) , author: Yang industry break.
The commission policy born from the farming era is still the main revenue of platform companies in the Internet era mode.
During the epidemic in early 2020, the survival of many small and medium-sized businesses was challenged, and the commission policy of Internet platforms was intensively questioned. Events such as “Meituan takeaway high commissions are difficult to reduce”, “Touyin New Deal cuts the vassals”, “Weibo small shop’s commission difficulties”, “online car hire and siege encirclement” and other events emerged endlessly.
Although some merchants told Tech Planet (WeChat ID: tech618), marketing expenses such as through trains on e-commerce platforms and diamond booths are bottomless. However, few merchants will collectively resist these service charges. The core reason is that commissions have two inherent stubborn illnesses: First, although service fees are dependent but not mandatory, commissions are mandatory to “suck blood” ecological players and share revenue with ecological players; Second, the commission policy is often lower for large customers and higher for small and medium-sized customers. When the industry environment is cold, the commission sometimes becomes the last straw to crush small and medium-sized businesses.
“Are commissions the most failed business model on the Internet?” Many people will inevitably issue such questions.
It is difficult to say that after all, anyone who builds a commercial highway has money-making considerations, but setting up toll gates is still building a service area on the roadside. The two commercial ecosystems, direct and indirect, are difficult to generalize. Nowadays, Internet platform companies mostly choose the direct commission model, but all kinds of doubts and troubles are also coming.