The "Butterfly Effect" in the promotion of electric dealers

"Singles Day" at the beginning of the youth is the entertainment of the festival, the development is now to the day Cat Mall and Taobao for the main battlefield of the "double 11" promotional day, promotional efforts, the number of customers, the largest amount of turnover, are people can not help but Marvel. This year's campaign ended up with a high-profile turnover of 19.1 billion yuan (cat 13.2 billion, Taobao 5.9 billion), compared with the previous year (Cat 3.36 billion, Taobao 1.84 billion) growth of 267%, no doubt the world's largest retail business record in a single day. At the same time, Jing-dong, when, and so the comprehensive electric dealers, such as "the whole network low price" banner, the traditional home appliance retailer Suning has launched "0 yuan purchase, online synchronization price" tactics to attract customers.

Prior to this, a number of e-commerce enterprises in various reasons to carry out a large-scale promotional activities, also known as the price war competition behavior. But when these events are over, we recall that "businesses are overloaded and lose, while consumer satisfaction continues to fall, even as government regulators intervene to punish them." Do these results have the effect that any one party originally expected? "If the long-term impact of the electricity sales promotion is neglected, it will become a" enthusiasm "behavior of the network economy.

The Internet "Butterfly Effect"

"Butterfly Effect" refers to a dynamic system, the initial conditions of small changes to the whole system brought about by the huge chain reaction, often used to explain the unpredictable complexity of a certain period of time the changes occurred. The basic characteristics of the Internet, "any time, any place, any person participating", also have the basic conditions of this effect. Electric Business Network promotional activities, both for the time period has a special limit, and difficult to predict the number of participants, so the author uses the "Butterfly Effect" to analyze the "double 11" electric promotion activities observed in the IT security and marketing.

Whenever the network promotion, the enterprise's IT system in the face of more than 10 times times on weekdays or even a hundredfold of the flow, it appears to be so vulnerable. Those so-called "blood spell, Seconds to kill" part of the merchandise does attract attention, but "slow Web pages, orders lost, payment failure, system paralysis" but also common, customers look at the eager, suffer from the impossible, can only stomp his anger. Electric Business Enterprise always only declare war, fire, but never "clean" battlefield, so the social platform is full of such discussions, "second kill is deceptive, loss of price can not buy, pay congestion is intentional behavior", which has touched the bottom line of consumer patience. For example, the mall stores promotions at the top, but the elevators have limited capacity, and the cashier is in a fire escape, and customers smoke and shop. Technology can never be perfect, so more needs "safe, fair, orderly" process to cooperate.

The consumer's demand always has the elasticity relation with the commodity price. Business sales in the "double 11" such a specific period of time to record new highs, largely from the consumer savings in the period before and after the majority of consumer demand, concentrated in the release of the day to complete. It is believed that in addition to a few rational claims have been satisfied, irrational consumption behavior also accounted for the majority. Although the merchant gets a large number of customers at this time, many people are often the first to try to buy the brand, or even the first online shopping. Next, how through the delivery, distribution, after-sale and other processes to complete the customer's brand awareness of the promotion, and further form the Word-of-mouth transmission effect, I am afraid far more complex than the campaign to promote the Battle of the cold.

The Internet is open and flat, and every endpoint (netizens) is tiny, but with today's sophisticated social networking tools, it can quickly have a huge impact on some of the "events" that resonate, quickly spreading to the bottom of the line. This is the network "butterfly Effect" a manifestation.

Aliyun, promotion defeat in the opener

It is noteworthy that Ali Cloud computing also joined the "double 11" activities, promotional products for the "cloud Server", on the basis of the optional configuration, "Buy n months send n months" slogan, because there is no price threshold, attracted a lot of webmaster and procurement attention. As Taobao, Cat and other electric platform of the Internet business provider, in the face of many electric sales promotion by the network support caused by the lack of a variety of "disease", Aliyun can take risks to participate in such a market activity, the author really admire its courage.

Known as the "carnival shopping" Aliyun activities, began in the cat shopping mall 1 hours before the event, and only the earlier purchase of "Carnival volume (11.11 yuan)" users to participate. Even in the case of a clear grasp of the number of participants, the unexpected "network congestion failure" has emerged. Due to the success of the payment in order to enjoy the strength of the concessions, buyers have already sufficient balance, under the good order, just wait for activities to start the second click to pay. However, many people returned with an "HTTP 404" error page and several attempts to pay an unexpected order payment exception. Activities for 15 minutes after the gradual return to normal, the activity page shows that have successfully sold more than 1111 servers, at this time can only enjoy to buy n send N-5 months long discount, snapping completely meaningless. Microblogging platform soon appeared a lot of questions, the official forum, all kinds of webmaster groups are also very active expression of dissatisfaction.

Aliyun, the failure to buy only thousands of people has been a bit embarrassing in the event of a 99.9% cloud server promotion. Shortly thereafter, the official microblog posted an explanation of the failure. Obviously, this is an unpleasant experience for network operators who are "stable" above all.

In terms of marketing strategy, Aliyun to participate in this large-scale promotion is the right move, one by the "double 11" concept of the heat attracted enough attention, and secondly, thousands of participants (have been bought activity qualification) is absolutely high-quality word-of-mouth spread of the seeds, should have gained positive word-of-mouth and continuous chain effect, But the end result is greatly reduced, this is the author mentioned above "Risk and courage." Of course, the author is more willing to see Aliyun after a series of electric sales promotion test, and eventually with Google, Amazon and other such mature cloud computing products in the same column, the Internet is the lowest and most critical service role.

Day Cat Mall, the change of the model

Day Cat Mall as China's largest business platform, this year's "double 11" promotional activities have 10,000 enterprises to participate. According to its published data, the 0-point activity officially began, the 10th minute turnover reached 250 million, respectively, in 15th, 20, 23 minutes there are three shops breakthrough 10 million, only 2 hours and 19 minutes to break through last year's turnover. After two hours of work in the middle of the night, these figures prove that China's retail industry will usher in a new round of "change in mode."

As early as in 2009, Ma Yun said "Enterprises do not do E-commerce, five years later will regret." Now, looking back on the life of intravenous drip, you have reduced the number of shopping malls, but also a long time did not go to the Xinhua bookstore to buy books, whether it is no longer to buy digital products and swim in zhongguancun, and even color TV, refrigerator and so on all you need to work under a single home can receive Whether or not this "double 11" historical figure, E-commerce is indeed changing the traditional retail model. From the Cat official micro-blog learned that after the promotion, the various road manufacturers, retailers, the Giants gathered in the Ali group data monitoring venues, watching a group of users and netizens together to refresh the data, they are in the excitement or entanglements? In the face of the huge market of billions of people in the future, Metamorphosis begins.

Ma Yun's previous interview with the firm belief that "2012 years of Double 11 power sales promotion War, will be the signal of China's economic restructuring, so that traditional manufacturers to see and pay attention to the rise of new marketing model." ", compared to the previous" Jing Mes Su "price war, the campaign is directed at the traditional industries. Consumers buy their favorite goods at 50 percent or even lower prices, and by recommending and reviewing their records, many are also exposed to previously unfamiliar brands. Businesses reduce the market costs of acquiring customers, and customers reduce the time cost of acquiring valuable goods, both of which are winners on this node.

Since it is the model of the new economy, it has to have his specific rules, rather than simply moving the offline goods to the line to sell, distribution. At this stage, the traditional manufacturers are undoubtedly the hands of each other, because of marketing methods, sales channels, after the sale of factors such as the change in the face of them, in addition to peer competitors, but also to complete a thorough self innovation. The enterprise that tasted the sweetness from the electric dealer promotion, please do not only see the growth number of the surface, support these numbers are the Internet in every corner of the customers, today they are yours, maybe tomorrow all go away, their aggregation effect is very strong and transfer cost is very low, a shopping "order, pay, evaluation, sharing" process is very simple, But please do not ignore the process behind the "people", any subtle "episode", may become the future market position of the determinants.

"Mode change" is not only the slogan of traditional enterprises, we would like to see the next five years, the decade, E-commerce can truly be an integral part of life. Let all the "effects" flow in a healthy, sustainable way.

Author: Li Rain

06 has founded the 3G Communications Network (www.chn3g.cn), long-term focus on telecommunications, Internet industry, is now Hengtong Research (Hintone study) senior partner.