136: Chapter 136 Taobao Comes to Its Senses

This day.

The same scene was constantly repeating across the country.

After the first batch of users received their goods and opened their packages, they discovered that the items bought with shopping vouchers were not as poor in quality as they had imagined.

Although the rice cookers costing a few dozen yuan had rough exterior workmanship, they had absolutely no issues with cooking rice. The facial tissues that cost a few yuan per pack were slightly thinner than those sold in supermarkets, but they were perfectly usable.

These users soon discovered the increasing number of activities and channel entrances appearing on Pinduoduo, as well as its low-price commitment.

Finally.

After the initial excitement from the cash vouchers cooled down, many users realized that it wasn't just vouchers that could save them money.

The items on the software itself were cheaper than anywhere else, and that would always be the case!

Pinduoduo's uninstallation rate in first- and second-tier cities was already low, let alone in the sinking markets.

Those township users who downloaded Pinduoduo for the vouchers were not like college students who would repeatedly compare prices and quality across different platforms.

They only had one standard for judging whether something was worth buying: could they buy the same thing on their own streets for this price?

And the answer was almost always no.

Even on the streets of these townships, many shop owners had already started restocking their inventory via Pinduoduo.

Simply because Pinduoduo's product prices were even cheaper than what they could get from offline wholesale channels!

Soon.

Countless people monitoring Pinduoduo's first-day curve discovered that after the day passed, Pinduoduo's traffic growth curve not only didn't fluctuate, but didn't even show any trend of declining.

In other words.

The percentage of first-day Pinduoduo users who uninstalled the app after receiving their goods was extremely low—so low that it couldn't even be detected through traffic trends across various channels.

...

Soon.

Time continued to pass, and finally, a week after Pinduoduo's update arrived.

When watching Langchao Group continue to continuously inject capital into Pinduoduo, and seeing the product categories on Pinduoduo's homepage becoming increasingly rich, with "Ten Thousand People Group Buy" and "Flash Sales" events following one after another.

Even if there were doubts before, at this moment, everyone understood one thing: Qin Mo was serious.

They weren't just putting on a show; they were truly intending to fully enter the traditional e-commerce platform market!

It's just that, judging from the current situation, the level they were entering was the sinking market.

Over ninety percent of the products on Pinduoduo's homepage were prepared for the sinking market.

Daily necessities costing a few yuan, clothes for a dozen yuan, small appliances for a few dozen yuan—the quality of these items couldn't be considered very good, but when paired with the price, the price-performance ratio was ridiculously high.

At least for now, that was the case.

The most important reason the outside world felt this way was that Pinduoduo had been updated for nearly a week, yet it still hadn't launched channels for high-end categories like beauty and digital phones.

Although there was a "mobile phone" category, upon clicking it, most of them were senior-friendly phones or ultra-low-priced, low-spec smartphones circulating in the sinking market.

Those.

Mainstream brand phones and various digital products that bolstered massive transaction volumes on Taobao and JD.com were nowhere to be found on Pinduoduo.

Digital products and beauty products were recognized as the most profitable e-commerce categories.

Yet Pinduoduo didn't even have these things.

This showed that what Qin Mo was targeting was truly only the completely sinking market.

Precisely because it lacked these things, in the eyes of many industry insiders, Pinduoduo couldn't even be considered a full-category e-commerce platform; it was more like a large online wholesale supermarket dedicated to the low-price market.

On that very same day.

A trending topic surged onto the charts of major platforms. Its ranking wasn't very high, hanging around the tenth spot, but the level of discussion was not low.

"Pinduoduo, a software that only belongs to the sinking market!"

Clicking into the trending topic revealed an analytical article where the blogger made a detailed horizontal comparison between Pinduoduo's current product structure and that of Taobao and JD.com.

The conclusion was.

Pinduoduo deliberately avoided integrating high-end categories like digital and beauty products, indicating that the software had abandoned the high-end market from its very positioning, targeting only low-price consumer groups.

The comment section was full of regret.

"What a pity. I feel like Langchao Group is giving users so many benefits, but they don't even plan to integrate digital and beauty products. It shows their ambition still isn't enough."

"I was still waiting to buy authentic, low-priced phones on Pinduoduo, but it looks like that's not possible."

"The person above is overthinking it. Even if Pinduoduo launched digital and beauty products, the prices would be similar to other platforms. For these categories, it's impossible to have low prices while guaranteeing authenticity. The platform couldn't possibly do loss-making subsidies for that."

Although some comments mentioned.

It was impossible for Pinduoduo to only enter the low-margin sinking market and that it would definitely integrate high-end products, it was just currently making some kind of preparations.

When the time comes, Pinduoduo might launch some kind of subsidy event that allows these high-end electronic products to also enjoy low prices.

However, this speculative comment didn't receive much attention.

Besides that.

Some people in the comment section also mentioned Taobao.

Someone said they had a friend working at Taobao, and previously, Taobao thought Pinduoduo's entry into full-category e-commerce was a diversionary tactic to distract Taobao from the fruit and vegetable e-commerce sector. It turned out they didn't expect Qin Mo to be for real.

Don't know if Taobao is panicking now.

Others said that regardless, Pinduoduo was targeting the sinking market, and Taobao's main source of profit was high-end categories. Since the positioning of these two platforms didn't conflict yet, Taobao shouldn't be too nervous.

...

Meanwhile.

At the headquarters of Anli Group.

There were more people in the conference room than last time.

Besides Old Ma and Ma Kun, there were several core executives who had rushed back from overseas branches, as well as a few board members who usually didn't attend internal meetings.

Feng Haicang stood in front of the projection screen, and the screen behind him displayed the user growth curve for the week since Pinduoduo went online.

That line was almost shooting straight up, without any trend of leveling off.

Just now.

Feng Haicang had just concluded from Pinduoduo's actions that they really wanted to enter the traditional e-commerce industry.

Subsequently, he looked at Ma Kun. His tone carried a hint of uncontrollable anxiety.

"Didn't you say they were using a diversionary tactic?"

"After we entered the market, they truly gave up on fruit and vegetable e-commerce completely. Even the fruit and vegetable channel within Pinduoduo hasn't launched any activities. Pinduoduo's actions over the past few days have already explained everything."

"And during this week, we have confirmed through our investigations."

"When Qin Mo acquired JD.com's warehousing and logistics, only a small portion was used for fruit and vegetable delivery. Most of the warehousing had already been contracted to various large, medium, and small manufacturers to build a self-operated supply chain for low-priced goods."

He paused.

"This was prepared long ago, not a spur-of-the-moment decision."

"From the very beginning, Qin Mo's goal was traditional e-commerce!"