The Attempt And Effort Of Pinduoduo In "Spiritual Consumption"

"Nowadays, the popular multi-media fragmentary reading brings about more impetuous, superficial and inefficient reading. What is lacking is to construct a self-contained and stable knowledge logical framework and value system through in-depth reading of classic works." Tiandi publishing house won the evaluation of readers that "shallow joy is like a dog, and deep love is like a long wind" during the period of "more reading month", For them, it's a great compliment.

On September 24, 2021, the second quarter of "more reading month" activity ends. Since the launch of reading month activity in April, the platform has invested 50 million yuan in reading fund twice, officially subsidizing genuine classic books, driving the growth of sales of traditional publishing industry and long tail products. In the flagship store of Tiandi publishing house, the sales volume of Liuji of a floating life alone reached 40000 copies in one month. The sales amount of another brand, Shanghai Century Publishing Group, increased by more than 1000% compared with that before the event.

Book reading is still the present progressive tense.

Taking advantage of the situation, pinduoduo

Under the influence of the epidemic situation, the scale of book retail code in China will reach 97.1 billion yuan in 2020, showing a negative growth for the first time, with a year-on-year decrease of 5.1%, and the scale of offline market code ocean will decrease by 33.8%. At the time of the decline of offline book retail, online sales ushered in an opportunity. The e-commerce platform advantage, which accounted for 79% of the total book retail market, broke out, bringing opportunities to book retail. Pinduoduo also took advantage of the situation to expand the platform construction to a broader level.

Data shows that in 2020, more than 400 million people will purchase books through pinduoduo, which makes pinduoduo establish the confidence to expand its business map to the field of book sales. Pinduoduo launched the large-scale knowledge inclusive action "more reading month", which not only attempts to explore the new c2m mode of book categories, but also extends the value concept of "knowledge inclusive" to the long-term goal of helping the whole people form reading habits.

To this end, the platform has established the rules for optimizing the supply side, launched "public voice creator plan" and "affordable legitimate public welfare alliance" with writers, authoritative publishers and booksellers respectively, forming a whole chain "inclusive" movement, and continuously launched two seasons of "more reading month" legitimate subsidy action in 2021.

From this point of view, pinduoduo is playing a big game of chess.

After the investment of key resources, the effect of "more reading month" is remarkable. After the first reading month of Shanghai Century Publishing Group, the number of shop visitors increased from several hundred to 20000, and the number of paying buyers also increased from the initial dozens to nearly 1000 every day. Zhejiang literature and Art Publishing House, which has been on the platform since 2019, has achieved sales of hundreds of thousands of yuan per month.

"The advantage of e-commerce platform lies in its explosive nature. Some blockbuster new books, combined with the current hot publications, can reach readers at the first time through the e-commerce platform. At the same time, readers' comments under the commodities also have great reference significance for our new product development. However, we also take into account the difference of each person's access to information, so we have a mission to spread more books closer to readers "Such as community libraries, rural bookstores, etc.," said the person in charge of Zhejiang literature and Art Publishing House.

As for the official flagship stores of the publishing house, pinduoduo carries out double official subsidies through the 10 billion subsidy channel and "more reading month" activities, which can help them to operate and create brands, and also help them to establish channels to reach different levels of readers. Compared with Jingdong and dangdang.com, which have established mature models and cultivated readers' consumption habits, the key to pinduoduo's breakthrough lies in its "inclusive" strategy and its commodity centered sales logic.

"Inclusive" strategy of pinduoduo

In terms of stimulating the reading potential of sinking market, pinduoduo has inherent advantages. In the latest financial report telephone conference in August 2021, Chen Lei, chairman and CEO of pinduoduo, once again emphasized the platform's "inclusive" strategy.

This logic has also been brought into the practice of "more reading month" by the platform. On the one hand, it can ensure that the knowledge can reach as many readers as possible. The subsidy scope covers humanities and Social Sciences, natural sciences, economic management, children's books and teaching aids and other rich bibliographies, so as to achieve the "universal" range of readers; On the other hand, pinduoduo also cooperates with publishers and booksellers through official subsidies, preferential flow and other measures to achieve "benefits" in price.

As for the commercial press which officially settled in pinduoduo in May 2021, the shopping mode and various activities of pinduoduo not only provide new possibilities for the promotion of publishing house products, but also help the merchants to cover more readers in remote areas, providing more space for online sales of brands.

"2020 pinduoduo reading report" shows that in the past year, the growth rate of pinduoduo's books and orders has exceeded 189%, and the volume of book orders and Book transactions from rural areas have both increased by more than 180% year-on-year. For more and more young users, pinduoduo has become the preferred platform for their knowledge consumption, and "spell book" has gradually become the lifestyle of young readers. The report also shows that in the list orders of literary novels, more than 40% of them are post-95 and Post-00, which has exceeded the proportion of readers after 75.

In the red sea of book sales, pinduoduo has realized differentiated competition by using the "inclusive" strategy. In order to obtain the broad space of sinking market, authoritative publishing houses and book publishing companies can focus more on book selection and bibliographic expansion with the help of traffic and policy inclination of pinduoduo platform, so as to further improve the user experience.

During the reading month activity, pinduoduo also selected the most popular version and the most easily accepted version by readers from various editions and prices, and carried out targeted key subsidy. On this basis, in the second round of reading month activity, the platform also selected the key subsidized books in a rolling way, and set up a super subsidy area. The book price could be as low as 10%. "In an era when the price of a cup of milk tea exceeds 10 yuan, we hope to subsidize the price of a good book to less than 10 yuan," the official of Duoduo reading month said in an interview

It is reported that during the second round of "more reading month", pinduoduo, together with more than 60 publishing houses such as people's Literature Publishing House, Shanghai Century Publishing Group, writers' Publishing House and CITIC publishing house, has officially subsidized more than 2 million books through 10 billion subsidy channels, attracting first tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and consumers from the sinking market to participate actively.

"Businesses can change their thinking and regard users as free product promoters. Businesses can make profits from the saved promotion expenses to consumers. The low price of the products can bring more traffic and exposure, thus forming an effective cycle." the person in charge of the commercial press said that compared with the traditional e-commerce mode, the Commercial Press cooperated with pinduoduo platform, Active participation in the "more reading month" activities, reduce the brand in the fierce competition into the marketing of a large number of funds, the final result of the orientation is high-quality bibliography and inclusive price.

In addition, pinduoduo has donated more than 100000 books to local primary and secondary school students in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province, Xinzhou of Hubei Province, Bazhou and Tacheng of Xinjiang, Delingha of Qinghai Province, Yongdeng of Gansu Province, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places to further practice the "inclusive" strategy in the field of knowledge.

Supply side optimization

Pinduoduo's balance not only tilts to the consumer side, but also increases the weight on the supply side.

In the activity of reading month, pinduoduo and other writers launched the "public voice creator program". For the writers who join the program, the exclusive brand page will be opened free of charge. The first period will last until December 31, 2021. As one of the first batch of writers to settle in, Liu Zichao's masterpiece "the lost satellite: a journey to the mainland of Central Asia" achieved a 5-hour sales of 1000 copies in the first quarter of "more reading month", becoming the top three best-selling books in station travel category. The Mao Dun Literature Prize winner Mai Jia's "life in the sea" sold more than 10000 copies in the second reading month, which is one of the top bestsellers in "more reading month".

The income of writers can't keep up with the economic development and it's difficult for the new writers to enter the publishing industry. At the creative end, the implementation of the "public voice creator plan" directly connects the creators and readers. With the investment of more flow resources and the support of professional operation team, many new writers get exposure opportunities, which is to break through the "oligarchs" of the industry The pattern provides opportunities to support a group of young writers to move towards a broader market.

At the sales side, pinduoduo platform has broken through the brand restrictions of the traditional e-commerce platform with "commodity" as the core. In many cases, this kind of play will allow businesses to go beyond the threshold of traditional big and small brands and directly compete with products. The platform operation of the commercial press flagship store mainly includes two dimensions: one is product selection and the other is activity. With the platform rules, some potential products can quickly increase sales in a short period of time when the price is competitive.

"This mode is very suitable for products with high profits, as well as for the plates that need to invest a lot of money in marketing due to fierce competition on other platforms. Therefore, in the cooperation with pinduoduo platform, choosing the products that match the platform tone is often the key step to achieve sales growth." said the relevant person in charge of the commercial press.

Many platform merchants are familiar with the underlying logic of pinduoduo. The most typical case is the emergency printing of six chapters of a floating life. In the flagship store of Tiandi publishing house, with the blessing of reading month, the sales volume of six chapters of a floating life has reached 40000 copies in a short month, and has been printed urgently for many times. Some unpopular books also came ashore under the platform's "commodity centered" strategy. During the second season of "more reading month" of Guomai culture, many popular books appeared, including Dostoevsky's obscure literary work "basement notes".

It can be said that whether it is the creative end of the upstream industry chain, the sales end of the midstream, or the consumption end of the downstream, pinduoduo is practicing the "inclusive" strategy of the platform. Today, when "Nationwide Reading" has been included in the government work report for the eighth time in a row, pinduoduo is moving along with the wind, trying to open up the pattern of "knowledge inclusive" with the stepping stone of "more reading month".