Second-hand market: The compromise survival of Internet thinking

"To mediate" has been hailed as one of the core thinking of the Internet, its biggest significance is that the Internet can be reduced through the middle channel to speed up the production of products from the hands of consumers. The best case is Taobao, Beijing-east and other electrical business website. The former through the small sellers of the collective power to solve the consumer information equivalence, "East buy West sell" This kind of information is not equivalent to the transaction by Taobao page and express gradually disintegrated, while the latter challenged agents, remove the agent profit, brand and consumers because of "high and low translocation" formed a happy scene- Brand makers can sell at relatively "high" prices, while consumers buy goods that are "lower" than they originally were.

Although the Internet in the field of pure electricity to rely on the intermediary thinking of the success, but with the further expansion of Internet influence, some "special" products because of non-standard, long-term use and other reasons can not avoid the user experience link-that is, O2O mode. This time, the Internet channel's attribute began to highlight, along with it is the internet to the intermediary thinking in some consumption scenarios become powerless, the most obvious performance is this year was the hottest online second-hand car market-because of the non-standard second-hand car and large expensive product attributes, so that the role of the offline link is particularly prominent, More importantly, because of its own trading restrictions on the professional threshold of the car, so that the transaction process requires the existence of "middlemen"-traditional internet thinking seems to have begun to "compromise" offline mode.

For middlemen, I used to be in an article taking the new used car (kx.cn) as an example, this paper analyzes the transaction process of the online used cars: in the current second-hand car market, the reason why we can only choose to pick the ear scoop instead of the forklift nuggets is the biggest reasons for the "two-letter problem"-trust crisis and information asymmetry- -Most buyers do not have the knowledge of the vehicle, so it is difficult to be assured to buy a second-hand car on a website, and for second-hand vehicle sellers, the lack of market demand makes it difficult to sell cars ... As a result, the traditional second-hand car trading market has a very distinctive "characteristics"-second-hand cars sold to middlemen dealers, and then by middlemen sold to buyers-we can call it c2b2c.

As the representative of the online second-hand car trading website, the new used car chooses the upstream industry from C2B to cut into, that is to say, the new second-hand cars have not removed the link of B (middleman) in C2B2C mode, nor have the whole transaction flow covered, only to help users sell cars. If you say that because of the user's limited knowledge of the vehicle, so that the intermediary is the idea of the middleman can not be carried out, then why only do part of the industrial chain and not all of the dabbling? More importantly, this is in the new used car has been equipped with a large number of offline inspection team under the premise of the new used cars have a reason to let the offline team and two jobs, to help sellers and buyers at the same time, through the internal digestion middleman to the user to consumer-to-consumer the ultimate experience.

In fact, if you look at the corporate boundary theory, it's a sensible way to start a new car. For the enterprise boundary, generally divides into the horizontal boundary and the vertical boundary, horizontal boundary refers to the expansion of business scope, which may not have much relationship with its core business, such as Ali Investment Huayi, more business area expansion; The vertical boundary refers to the extension of its own industrial chain, like a new used car, If the industrial chain extends to the downstream, that is, the user buys a car, it is a longitudinal expansion.

The main factors that determine the vertical boundary of the enterprise are two: first, whether the vertical development of the business itself belongs to its own core business; second, whether the cost of vertical development is greater than the cost of purchase. Simply put, if your upstream or downstream channels determine your life and death, your vertical development is imperative, and if upstream or downstream business does not determine your life and death, the vertical development of the consideration is whether the cost of their own development will be high for direct purchase costs.

Or to open a new used car for example, open a new second-hand car is currently doing upstream business, that is, to help users sell cars and middlemen overcharging, if you want to expand vertically, you need to expand the consumer is to help buyers buy cars and middlemen to sell cars. First of all, to help the downstream sale of cars is to open a new second-hand car "lifeline." According to China's Auto Circulation Association incomplete statistics, 2013 China's national total transactions of 8.46 million cars, and the first half of this year also continued to grow. November 14, 2014, China auto Market index published the "China Used car market index release report" shows that in the next 1-2 years, China's second-hand market volume will increase 20–30%, in 2020 years after 40 million vehicles, the market value is expected to break through 1 trillion.

From the data point of view, the car market has a huge demand, which means that in the future for a long time, the purchase of second-hand cars will increase dramatically. Under such a large purchase demand, Che Yuan will become the core resource, that is to say, even if the new used car does not involve the business, and will not affect the future of the industry. Therefore, for the new used car, the optional downward travel market development.

Then, we analyze the cost of developing the new used car market downstream. If according to the c2b2c of the second-hand market, the second-hand market can be roughly divided into three stages: production, circulation and consumption. The so-called production refers to selling cars, circulation refers to the circulation of middlemen, consumption refers to the purchase of cars. To open a new used car to expand the market, it is bound to involve the circulation of middlemen and brokers selling the link.

In the current market, if the development of the consumer (to help users to buy a car) link will cost a lot of costs, and if you want to get rid of middlemen or convert middlemen into internal digestion, then face huge competition: first of all, to the current market, the active Australian, Che Wangwei, representatives, they generally need tens of thousands of square meters of stores, The vehicle retail cycle is very long and belongs to the heavy asset model; second, although the intermediary circulation is a light asset, but need a strong market control, the current year SAIC's car enjoy filming, Canton and Alibaba Cooperation, the intention is to use the layout of the National distributor Network and logistics system, to eliminate the circulation of intermediaries; Finally, on a scale , the production scale of the used car market can be comparable to that of new cars--in America, developed countries such as Germany, because of the large number of social vehicles, second-hand car turnover is almost 2~3 times the sales of new cars, and relative to the consumption stage of fragmented marketing, the second-hand vehicle production phase to B marketing easier to scale services, So in the future, the source must be the core competitiveness of the second-hand car market.

It is in this situation that open a new used car selectively into the "help sell" mode, that is, second-hand car sellers can call to open a new second-hand vehicle testing personnel, to make a detailed report on the condition, and then upload the report to open a new used car online Web site, by the various handcart vendors to do blind auction, The deal was eventually completed under a secured transaction for a new used car-the full introduction of a second-hand-market economy.

Data show that this model has indeed achieved good results, according to the new second-hand car published data, the number of new used cars in the average monthly turnover of more than 1500 vehicles, the monthly service of new customers by license plate statistics of more than 3,500 vehicles, and last year only 14,000 vehicles. More importantly, by opening a new used car to sell cars, can be compared to the second-hand market car dealer Direct quote can be 5%-10% higher than the 4S shop 10%-20%.

Human resources are sometimes poor, and in many cases the dream is not a reality. Just like our dream of online second-hand car consumer-to-consumer trading, at least in the present, the vehicle traceability and testing standards have not yet been implemented, it seems that a good wish is only the flowers in the water. In "living in the present", Angelite writes, our most common practice is to bounce back into our bodies and minds from our restless mind. Only in this way can we discover the power of life. Perhaps for the Internet, the next stage needs to focus on the study may not be subversive, but compromise, and only in this way, the Internet as a new industry will not be a fresh glow of life.

But this result seems to be not perfect compromise, and several people can find its power!