140: Chapter 140 Cutting flesh and changing bones—there's no flesh at all!

At this moment, the internal team at Taobao finally understood that this incident could not be brushed off with just a few apologies.

Before this, they had never imagined that the user backlash this time would be so immense.

They thought that as long as they reissued the phones and released an apology statement, the matter would slowly subside.

But this time was different. The screen recording was too complete; sixty thousand people witnessed the entire process with their own eyes. That feeling of being treated like a monkey could not be erased by a few apologies.

Soon, Ma Kun also responded.

At ten in the morning, Taobao released a new announcement, with wording much more sincere than last night's statement.

The announcement admitted that there were issues with the design of the previous event mechanism. All users who had participated in the Slash event during this period could directly receive a fifty-yuan cash compensation without any additional conditions.

Fifty yuan in cash would be directly deposited into their Alipay account, arriving with just a single tap.

Although Taobao showed great sincerity and the money actually arrived, its reputation was completely beyond saving.

The event was interrupted.

The Slash entry point was quietly removed, and on the same day, Taobao also canceled most of the promotional slots in its low-price section. After receiving the fifty-yuan compensation, a large number of sinking market users turned around and returned to Pinduoduo.

And most importantly, the compensation funds Taobao gave to users this time were drawn from the fruit and vegetable e-commerce budget.

On the day Taobao issued the compensation announcement, the Taobao fruit and vegetable channel canceled most of the previous discount subsidies. All fruit and vegetable prices returned to normal market levels, and those low-price group-buying activities that once attracted users to place orders frantically were also quietly taken offline.

Taobao did not think there was any problem with this decision.

Looking at the current market data, Taobao's fruit and vegetable channel already occupied over eighty percent of the market share. Even if it canceled the low-price subsidies, it wouldn't have much of an impact.

In Taobao's view, it was already the absolute leader in the fruit and vegetable e-commerce market. Canceling subsidies would at most slow down the user growth rate and slightly reduce market share, nothing more.

But they never expected that in just three days, Taobao's market share in fruit and vegetable e-commerce would plummet by half!

To be precise, the fruit and vegetable e-commerce market itself had shrunk by half!

Meanwhile, Meituan, which had previously been low-key and quietly doing localized fruit and vegetable delivery, saw its daily orders for fruit and vegetable users skyrocket during these three days.

On the most recent day, it even surpassed five million, completely overtaking Taobao's fruit and vegetable channel!

At the same price point, Meituan's localized service, with its same-day and next-day delivery capabilities, was almost a dimensional strike against the traditional e-commerce fruit and vegetable channel.

The user's logic for choosing was incredibly simple: at the same price, there was no need to hesitate between choosing items delivered to the door within a few hours versus items that arrived only after two or three days.

Until this moment, the internal team at Taobao finally understood that Qin Mo was never "cutting flesh to change bones" in the first place.

Because this piece of meat, the fruit and vegetable market, did not belong to e-commerce platforms at all!

...

At the Anli Group headquarters, the atmosphere in the conference room was more oppressive than ever before.

Feng Haicang stood in front of the conference table, holding the newly compiled data report on the fruit and vegetable channel, his face looking quite grim.

He looked at Ma Kun sitting opposite him, his tone carrying an irrepressible emotion when he spoke.

"President Ma, please give us a suggestion quickly."

"What exactly should we do next?"

"The Slash event in the low-price section has exploded, user stickiness in the sinking market has completely vanished, and after canceling the subsidies for the fruit and vegetable channel, market share has plummeted by half in three days, while Meituan is still growing crazily."

He placed the data report on the table. "The board of directors can no longer sit still; several directors called earlier to ask about the situation."

"In all these years of Taobao, there has never been a time where we suffered huge losses in two directions simultaneously!"

Ma Kun lowered his head, his hand supporting his forehead. "I am thinking."

His voice had grown a bit hoarse. He truly had not expected the chain reaction of this event to be so exaggerated.

The Slash event explosion triggered a collapse in reputation; the reputation collapse led to compensation expenditures; compensation expenditures forced a reduction in fruit and vegetable subsidies; and the reduction in subsidies led to market share plummeting by half in three days.

Every step was a chain reaction, and every step landed on a timeline he had not anticipated.

Huge problems appearing in two directions at the same time—this was something he had completely not anticipated.

Finally, "This Qin Mo." Ma Kun raised his head, his voice no longer carrying even a shred of the previous contempt.

"From the very beginning, he never intended to trade the fruit and vegetable market for the e-commerce market."

"The fruit and vegetable e-commerce market is a bubble at its root. Its real scale is far from as large as the data we saw initially, and only localized platforms can handle it."

"The reason the repurchase rate of those new users was high is not because users really need to buy groceries and fruits online, but because the price was cheap."

"Once the price returns to normal levels, this group of users will lose no time in flowing to more convenient channels and will not develop shopping habits like they do on regular e-commerce platforms."

He leaned back in his chair. "Cutting flesh to change bones..." Ma Kun laughed self-deprecatingly.

"I was too careless. He wasn't using flesh at all; he used a brick to trade away our bones!"

On the other side, Feng Haicang turned toward the person in the main seat, Lao Ma, whose face also didn't look good and who hadn't said much, and continued his report.

"Now, the user stickiness of the sinking market in Taobao's low-price channel has fallen to the lowest point because of the explosion of the previous Slash event."

"The fruit and vegetable market share is also plummeting crazily, and JD.com has already officially announced its withdrawal from the competition in the fruit and vegetable e-commerce market."

Hearing this, Ma Kun froze for a moment. He suddenly raised his head and looked at Feng Haicang.

"JD.com had also previously announced large capital investments in the fruit and vegetable e-commerce market; how could it withdraw so cleanly and so quickly?"

"Is it not afraid of huge losses?"

Upon hearing this, Feng Haicang shook his head while opening another document in his hand.

"In the past two days, we have investigated JD.com's ad-spend and ground promotion data and discovered that regarding this fruit and vegetable e-commerce matter, JD.com only had great momentum from the start, but its actual investment was quite minimal."

"Contracts were signed, press releases were issued, but the actual funds never finished the approval process. It looked very lively, but in reality, the loss from exiting the fruit and vegetable market is almost negligible for JD.com."

He paused. "It seems its internal team knew from the very beginning that the fruit and vegetable e-commerce market didn't have much room, and everything was just for the outside world to see."

After hearing this, cold sweat kept seeping from Ma Kun's back, and something crossed his mind.

He turned his head to look at Lao Ma sitting beside him. He remembered Lao Ma telling him that Qin Mo had personally gone to the JD.com headquarters and signed the logistics line only after a face-to-face talk with Liu Qiang.

Could it be... At the same time, Feng Haicang's voice continued.

"And there is one more thing wrong with this matter."

"Liu Qiang has always been known for being conservative. I can barely understand him being able to judge in advance that the fruit and vegetable e-commerce market scale is limited."

"But how did Wang Xing from Meituan know that the fruit and vegetable delivery market would ultimately fall to localization?"

"You have to know, when entering the fruit and vegetable delivery market, almost all were e-commerce platforms; only Meituan was doing localized service."

"But I know Wang Xing; his business sense has never been this advanced. It is impossible for him to have seen that the final form of fruit and vegetable delivery was localization before everyone else."

Hearing this, Ma Kun raised his head again. If it was just cold sweat on his back before, now the clothes on his back were completely soaked, and his body was even trembling slightly from fear.

In his mind, he had already thought of the most terrifying possibility.

"Meituan Wang Xing, JD.com Liu Qiang..." He muttered these two names repeatedly.

"Could it be that all of this was within your arrangements!"