On April 29, Tech Planet (ID: tech618) was exclusively informed that Tencent has rolled out Xiao'e Pinpin, a mini program for social commerce on WeChat. Xiao'e Pinpin's shopping mode is similar to Pinduoduo. It is an e-commerce platform with group-buying feature. 

According to the official introduction, Xiao'e Pinpin relies on the diversified scenes and huge user groups of Tencent's social ecosystem to connect consumers with various circles and diverse shopping scenes.

The WeChat mini-program information of Xiao'e Pinpin shows that its developer is Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd. It is worth noting that Tencent did not choose to build the Xiao'e Pinpin in the form of a website or App. Perhaps it is to first start a cold search with a mini program.

On the track of social e-commerce, Tencent has invested heavily in investment + WeChat traffic to support Pinduoduo. The current market value of Pinduoduo has reached a huge value of US $ 58.5 billion. Why does Tencent have to develop Xiao'e Pinpin after investing Pinduoduo, and what are the prospects for this product?

Group-buying + good recommendations model

Tech Planet (ID: tech618) discovered after the experience that the design of Xiao'e Pinpin is very simple. The function module only has a home page and a personal center. Its main function is group-buying, coupled with good recommendations.

The recommended product tops the homepage, recommending the current popular products. In each product display section of the home page, the top is a good product recommended by the buyer with a text picture, and the bottom will display the price of the product and the number of joint purchases. It adopts the core advantages of the Xiaohongshu and Pinduoduo.

However, the current Xiao'e Pinpin does not support product search and product category retrieval, which needs to be improved.

Xiao'e Pinpin personal center will display order details, product processing details and other services. It is worth noting that the products currently purchased in Xiao'e Pinpin are free shipping, and support 48-hour delivery and 7-day unreasonable return, which is still very favorable for consumers.

According to the introduction, the type of store, business mode and main category are different, and the amount of the deposit paid is also different. For example, all kinds of flagship stores, specialty stores, franchise stores have a deposit of 5,000 yuan, virtual goods are 10,000 yuan to release specific products. In addition to depositing the above deposit, the owner need to pay a special store deposit.

Furthermore, the platform has the right to adjust the basic deposit every month based on the sales of the store in the previous month. If the sales is greater than or equal to 500,000 yuan, the owner need to pay a deposit of 10,000 yuan. If not, they cannot enter the platform.

The manual also stipulates relevant processing rules for merchants' delayed shipments. If there is a delayed shipment, the consumer's compensation will be deducted from the merchant's account. It can be said that Xiao'e Pinpin has begun to design its rule, and what it lacks at present is an app product form and a more complete shopping system support. It is expected that if Xiao'e Pinpin continues to develop rapidly, the product and system upgrade will be on the agenda.

Tencent never stops the e-commerce dream

As a bonanza for the current Internet, Tencent has never achieved much success in e-commerce filed.

Combing Tencent's e-commerce road, we can find that from the early Tencent launched Paipai.com to the later Yixun.com, it tried to compete with Alibaba's 1688.com and Taobao. However, even through it had strong user base on QQ, it failed to let Paipai and Yixun.com achieved a breakthrough. Later, Tencent chose to invest in JD.com, the industry's second-largest company, to save its e-commerce business.

Next, on May 28, 2018, Tencent launched its own e-commerce platform "Emanu-pin" through QQ. This is an ecological platform for Tencent's core derivatives in the field of Pan quadratic culture, with QQ young users as the core. It has its own independent apps and mini programs. However, because it did not bring a good response, it finally went offline with a low profile on September 25 last year, and was incorporated into the QQ public account "look and buy", which became a shopping function, and the ending did not ideal.

After this incident, Tencent has made some changes in its e-commerce development strategy. On the one hand, it continues to cooperate with other e-commerce platforms, such as Pinduoduo. On the other hand, it is to derive e-commerce in the form of WeChat mini programs or embedded in other apps.

However, for Tencent itself, these are all small and noisy projects, which have not caused big splashes in the e-commerce field.

Social e-commerce has sprung up in recent years, and finally let Tencent find its own e-commerce path. Nowadays, the competition in the social e-commerce field is still fierce: Taobao integrated Tiantian special sales and Juhuasuan and fought with Pinduoduo through 10 billion subsidy palan; JD.com's platform "Jingxi" is officially connected to the WeChat first level entrance; Suning.com has also become the main force of the sinking market.

Can Tencent's WeChat ecosystem give birth to its own Pinduoduo? Maybe it's the reason why does Xiao'e Pinpin emerge. 

Xiao'e Pinpin compete with Pinduoduo?

According to the data of ibaogao.com, online retail sales will reach 19 trillion yuan in the next five years, with a compound growth rate of 16% over the past five years. E-commerce is still an incremental track with continued increase in penetration. By 2021, the transaction scale of the brand e-commerce service industry will reach 347.4 billion yuan. For such a huge market, Tencent will naturally not turn a blind eye.

Most of the cakes in the e-commerce head market have been cut away by Taobao, JD.com and Pinduoduo. It is naturally not easy to share a piece of soup with them. In the face of the huge sinking market, there are still larger opportunity. JD.com and Alibaba launched "Jingxi" and "Taohua" respectively. They took the route of the sinking and group-buying, which is also the most effective method in the incremental market.

Pinduoduo, as an emerging e-commerce platform, is relying on the strategy of "group-buying + the sinking". According to Pinduoduo's 2019 financial report, from the user data, Pinduoduo has exceeded Taobao and JD.com in the growth rate of active users for 17 consecutive quarters. At present, the number of its active users is 585 million, reaching 82% of Alibaba's users, far more than that of JD.com's.

Faced with the pressure of Pinduoduo, JD.com has also launched a "group-buying e-commerce platform" for the sinking market, that is "Jingxi". At JD.com's 11.11 Media Open Day event last year, Zhang Jing, the advertising and marketing manager of Jingxi Business Division, shared Jingxi's achievements in the first war.

According to data from JD.com, nearly 40% of new users from JD.com come from "Jingxi". Among Jingxi users, more than 70% came from the sinking emerging markets of the 3-6 line cities. And new users from these sinking markets accounted for 75% of Jingxi's overall new users. Jingxi has now completed the global layout of the WeChat first-level entrance, mobile QQ shopping entrance, applets and other channels, and built a comprehensive scene ecology.

It can be found that Pinduoduo and Jingxi have one thing in common, and both exist in the first-level entrance of WeChat. As Han Rui, vice president of JD.com Group and head of the platform business center of JD.com Retail Group, said, "The first-level entrance of WeChat is one of the most important resources for cooperation between JD.com and WeChat." In May last year, JD.com announced a new three-year flow cooperation with Tencent, and this time Tencent left the opportunity of WeChat first-class entrance to Jingxi, the importance of which is self-evident.

It can be predicted is that Tencent will also follow the sinking route, and attract some high-quality users in the form of recommendations. Xiao'e Pinpin is still a mini program of C2C e-commerce model. It can conduct drainage and promotion through WeChat's huge social relationship chain, taking a marketing route similar to Pinduoduo. At the entrance, this is also based on the development route created by WeChat ecology, which may be beneficial to the breakthrough of Xiao'e Pinpin and strengthen Tencent's own e-commerce genes.

But to a certain extent, it will also affect Pinduoduo and Jingxi. Since Xiao'e Pinpin and Pinduoduo belong to the category of purchase products, which means that the two exist a strong competition relationship.

The current major transactions and developments of the two are carried out in WeChat mini-programs, which will inevitably cause Xiao'e Pinpin and Pinduoduo to collide head-on. Perhaps on the one hand, Tencent wants to let two products compete to recreate another hot product; at the same time, it gives pressure to Pinduoduo to stabilize its role as a vanguard of the Alibaba department.

For Pinduoduo, its potential competitors have already appeared, how should it respond to this wave of Tencent operations? In the fierce e-commerce track, can Xiao'e Pinpin find a way for Tencent's e-commerce dream?

This is an article from WeChat official accounts Tech Plant(ID: tech618), written by Chen Qiaohui, translated by Chris Yuan.