Baidu c2c facing the test of search engine impartiality

Baidu (BIDU. NASDAQ) has been poised to enter E-commerce.

Zhongguancun Software Park is located in an office building, the end of last year just formed the Baidu E-commerce Division, has more than 100 employees, there are many vacancies waiting for the new owner. Everything here is kept secret until the official news is released.

Last October, Baidu officially disclosed that will launch the C2C platform news, and after months of preparation, until last month, Baidu began in the nationwide investment, explained that Baidu's E-commerce platform is about to launch. Recently, Baidu E-commerce division general manager Li Mingyuan accepted the "first financial daily" exclusive interview, said that Baidu believes that the current E-commerce market has matured to the harvest season, and E-commerce for Baidu is in addition to the bidding ranking of another important business, its importance is self-evident.

This is Baidu for the first time external description of its E-commerce platform. "We only pay attention to the end of the consumer is ' C ', regardless of whether the front is ' C ' or ' B '." "Li Mingyuan said, Baidu's E-commerce platform, and not just c2c," Baidu will not be like Tencent Pat to keep the first, but a launch will be heavyweight.

　　Create the second largest revenue model

At present, Baidu's revenue mainly from the bidding rankings and Baidu theme promotion and other advertising business, these probably occupy more than 90% of Baidu's income. However, after several years of training, Baidu know, stick, Alliance community, etc., has gathered a huge user base, how these users of the value of the present, has been placed in front of the enormous challenges of Baidu.

According to Li Mingyuan, and search users do not have to log in, in fact, bar, community users can register access through the user ID, users can accumulate their experience value, and how these users through, Baidu launched the "Baidu hi!."

Next, will these user's value manifests, the Baidu has launched the C2C platform.

According to Li Mingyuan's understanding, China's e-commerce ten-year development has been over three stages. At the earliest time, due to payment, logistics, integrity and other problems are not resolved, belong to the exploration stage, and 2003-2005 years, to solve the problem of lack of credit, but the lack of professional operators, can sell less things. Li Mingyuan that, at this time, Taobao made a very important contribution to solve the problem of commodity richness, so that the market became mature.

"The current E-commerce, has entered the competitive stage of services, e-commerce and traditional channels compared to the sale of intermediary services, rather than price war." Li Mingyuan said Baidu believes it is time to enter E-commerce.

According to Li Mingyuan Introduction, the user in the E-commerce platform in Baidu after the shop, can be with the search, stick, community and so on without every link, the site's ads can be placed directly in accordance with user behavior bar and other products, to achieve maximum flow value, but also to enable businesses to obtain greater profits.

According to a survey by Baidu, the user buys a product before, many will search the relevant information of this item through the searching engine, and make the purchase decision, but 60% of direct purchase demand but choose to buy through the traditional channel under the line. Therefore, Li Mingyuan that Baidu to do is in the user before buying through search, know, stick, consumer community, etc. to guide users through Baidu's c2c platform or other E-commerce platform to buy goods, which also makes these Baidu product flow become more valuable.

According to Li Mingyuan introduced, Baidu requires E-commerce must occupy the market place. "Competition depends on the market environment, the opponents do not make mistakes you can not surpass him, but now the opponents have a certain situation." Li Mingyuan said that the domestic c2c site has long been not the introduction of large functional adjustment, indicating their future direction is not clear, so Baidu will have a huge opportunity.

　　Strengths and challenges

It is understood that the current Baidu search engine occupies more than 70% of the domestic market share, and has the world's largest Chinese interactive knowledge community, these two factors is whether Baidu in the field of E-commerce to achieve the key to success.

In fact, Baidu before entering E-commerce, conducted a large number of research, and early preparations.

and E-commerce links, Baidu will be divided into three processes: buy before, buy in and buy after service. Li Mingyuan that in these three links, Baidu in the purchase decision before buying the absolute advantage, and in the purchase of the link Taobao occupies an absolute advantage, and after the logistics of buying links can easily narrow the gap.

Third-party research this year showed that in April 2007, the number of c2c E-commerce site users covered 63.803 million people, of whom a total of 31.41 million people in the c2c E-commerce site before the use of search services, accounting for the total coverage of 49.2%. The research shows that search has become the most relevant Internet service with the C2C class of E-commerce.

Li Mingyuan said that Baidu's advantage lies in the community, netizens in the Baidu community on the network shopping related discussions, not only will become the impact of other Internet users shopping behavior factors, will gradually form a community behavior as the basis of opinion leaders Group and credit mechanism, which is the Baidu development c2c another advantage.

Internet analyst Luebbe that the combination of search engine and C2C shopping platform provides a seamless docking extension service for China's Internet consumer, which will make Baidu have comparative advantage in the C2C market in the beginning. But how can without damaging its search engine impartial position premise, push its c2c market development, is Baidu will face the test.