Top 10 Keywords of China's E-commerce in 2014

The e-commerce industry in 2014 was very lively, with many players competing for supremacy and smoke of war everywhere. The industry was doing well, and everyone wanted to get a piece of the pie. Each company kept innovating and making gimmicks. It was quite hard to stand out among the big players. As the new year is approaching, we have sorted out the major events that happened in China's e-commerce industry in 2014. If you want to know which e-commerce company is the best this year, please read the following.

【Keyword 1: Listing】

Bigger than Big, Alibaba Creates the Largest IPO in US Stock History

Focus replay: On September 19, 2014, Alibaba officially launched the world's largest IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, with an issue price of US$68 per share and raised US$21.8 billion. As of the close of the US stock market on December 12, Alibaba's total market value was US$261.3 billion, surpassing Nasdaq The total market capitalization of Chinese stocks listed on the exchange.

Also in 2014, JD.com went public with a valuation of US$24.6 billion; Vipshop’s valuation increased 40 times in two years; the market value of the up-and-coming Jumei reached 1.3 billion yuan, which is 2.5 times that of the first domestic e-commerce stock, Macalline. 19 times the $210 million valuation at the time of listing, etc.

It is also worth pointing out that 58.com, Qunar.com, 500.com and other small and medium-sized e-commerce companies completed their IPOs in the second half of last year, setting off a new wave of Chinese e-commerce companies going public in the United States. In China, B2C e-commerce companies such as Jiuxian.com and Meituan.com are planning to go public. It can be seen that 2014 has become a big year for Chinese e-commerce IPOs.

Comment: JD.com and Alibaba, two giants, have entered the US capital market this year, shocking the world's capital market. For the e-commerce industry, this has made more than 90% of the domestic B2C market and more than 95% of the C2C market transparent and subject to the supervision of the general public. But at the same time, the second-tier e-commerce companies are having a harder time. It is worth waiting for consumers to see what new tricks the e-commerce companies can use to break through next year.

【Keyword 2: fake goods】

Tired of fake goods, multiple e-commerce companies were caught in random inspections

On December 11, the State Administration for Industry and Commerce announced the results of random inspections of promotional products on e-commerce platforms during the "Double Eleven" period: 8 batches of samples have been confirmed to be counterfeit goods, including 3 from Tmall, 2 from Yihaodian, and 10 from Lefeng.com, Suning.com, and Amazon. 1 each; 7 batches of samples are suspected of being counterfeit goods and are being analyzed and confirmed. Another 7 batches of samples are of substandard quality or have illegal labels. Be cautious when shopping on "Double 12".

At the end of July this year, Jumei.com was exposed for selling fakes through its third-party watch merchant "Xiangpeng Hengye", and its entire operation industry chain was exposed in detail. Xiangpeng Hengye sold fake luxury goods through multiple e-commerce websites including Jumei.com in the name of original orders or purchasing on behalf of others. Jumei.com subsequently issued a statement admitting to selling fakes and closed the "Xiangpeng Hengye" fake store.

Comments: A website conducted a survey, and among the 50,000 netizens who voted, 84% of them said they had bought fake goods on e-commerce websites, a staggeringly high proportion. The rapid development of online shopping has brought great convenience to people's lives, but it is precisely because the development speed is beyond people's imagination that relevant supervision cannot keep up, creating opportunities for counterfeit goods. I hope that relevant regulatory measures can be introduced as soon as possible so that netizens will not be "tired of" online shopping.

【Keyword three: scale】

China’s e-commerce market is about to surpass the US

Management consulting firm Bain released a report in August saying that China's e-commerce market sales are expected to surpass that of the United States this year to become the world's largest, and are expected to account for half of China's total retail sales within ten years.

The report shows that from 2009 to 2012, the average growth rate of China's e-commerce market was 71%, while that of the United States was 13%. In 2015, the total scale of China's e-commerce market is expected to reach 3.3 trillion yuan.

On November 7, Wang Xiao, the managing partner of PWC China Consumer Goods, said at the 16th China Chain Store Conference 2014 that from 2013 to 2016, Asia's retail industry drove 6% of global growth. By the end of 2015, China's e-commerce scale will exceed that of the United States; by the end of 2016, China's retail sales will reach 25 trillion yuan.

A report by KPMG shows that China's e-commerce market will reach the combined size of the e-commerce markets of the United States, Britain, Germany, Japan and France in 2020.

Comment: If we compare the e-commerce in China and the United States, China wins in quantity and scale, but the quality of development of American e-commerce is far better than that of Chinese e-commerce. Whether it is large e-commerce, vertical e-commerce or retailers, the development of the United States is relatively balanced. In China, Taobao is the only one, and there is a serious polarization. The reason is that traditional Chinese brands lack sufficient understanding of new things in e-commerce and have only taken them seriously in the past two years. Chinese e-commerce still has a long way to go to catch up with its American counterparts.

【Keyword 4: Wechat business】

Wild growth of micro-businesses

There is a popular saying in WeChat business: "We don't sell products, but trust." 2014 was the year when WeChat business developed most rapidly, and WeChat business became popular in the second half of the year. The so-called WeChat business refers to small businesses that sell goods on mobile terminals.

With the popularity of WeChat, a new "micro-store" shopping method has quietly emerged and is showing a "wild growth" trend on WeChat. According to statistics from a third-party agency, there are currently more than 10 million micro-stores, and the number is growing rapidly at a rate of 30,000 to 50,000 per day. Open an Internet search engine and enter the keyword "micro-store" to search, and there are countless commercial platforms related to the word "micro"; and on the WeChat platform, searching for "micro-store" will also bring up a large number of micro-stores. It can be seen that micro-stores and marketing methods have become an emerging online business model.

Comments: The WeChat business ecosystem has just started, and there is no unified management standard at present, which has caused many problems in the early stages of the development of the WeChat store business model. Since the operation and promotion of WeChat stores are highly dependent on social networks such as WeChat Moments, they will cause harassment to other users to a certain extent. If WeChat stores are allowed to grow wildly, this highly potential business model is likely to become a flash in the pan.

【Keyword 5: Burning money】

The wealthy are willing to spend money on taxi-hailing apps

At the beginning of this year, in order to seize market share, Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache staged a roller coaster-like subsidy war: in early January, the subsidy wave began to surge; in February, it became white-hot, and both sides raised subsidies alternately within a week, but high subsidies could not be maintained for a long time; in March, both sides unexpectedly cooled down and entered the "post-subsidy era". After 77 days of fighting, Didi announced that WeChat Pay subsidies exceeded 1.4 billion yuan. The driving force behind it was Alibaba and Tencent, the two major e-commerce companies that wanted to control the entrance. When they were fighting fiercely, the local government had begun to interfere, and this internal fight suddenly turned into a battle for survival.

Statistics show that Didi and Kuaidi account for more than 90% of the market share of taxi-hailing apps, and have launched special car services for business people in the second half of this year.

The latest news is that after Didi Dache announced that it had received $700 million in investment, Baidu Strategic investment of US$1.2 billion in Uber. Thus, the duopoly of Didi and Kuaidi in the domestic taxi-hailing software market has ended, and the "Three Kingdoms" pattern of BAT will be formed, which may set off a new round of "money-burning" war.

Comment: In the past year, the two major taxi-hailing apps, Didi and Kuaidi, have provided subsidies at a dizzying pace, and the competition has escalated so quickly that it is hard to believe. Undoubtedly, the competition among taxi-hailing apps has brought tangible benefits to passengers and taxi drivers. Simply relying on burning money to snatch mobile payment users is not a long-term solution. Who will get the future market share remains to be seen by the performance of several companies in the coming year.

【Keyword 6: Logistics】

Take the ride of "Iron Boss" and plan the "last mile"

Data shows that in the seven days from November 10 to November 17 this year, the industry needs to handle nearly 600 million pieces of express mail, and the highest daily processing volume will be close to 100 million pieces, which is three times the daily processing volume this year. Ma Yun admitted: "What I am most worried about is the logistics and distribution issues in the next few days. This is the biggest problem."

Starting from July 1, the railway will operate 3 pairs of 6 e-commerce express trains every day between Beijing-Shanghai, Beijing-Guangzhou, and Shanghai-Shenzhen. This is the first time in history that railway freight has entered the e-commerce market.

Before the "Double Eleven" event, JD.com's first "Asia No. 1" modern logistics center was officially put into use. The shipping sorting area uses an automated conveying system and the world's highest level sorting system, with a sorting processing capacity of 16,000 pieces per hour and a sorting accuracy rate of 99.99%, which completely solves the problems of poor efficiency and low sorting accuracy of the original manual sorting.

Comment: Statistics show that the total volume of express delivery in 2014 is expected to surpass that of the United States and become the world's largest. At present, the development of my country's express delivery industry is still subject to many constraints. In the United States, online shopping logistics is very convenient even in relatively remote areas, but in my country, the biggest reason for the limited development of rural e-commerce is logistics problems. Under the trend of great integration, how e-commerce and express delivery companies can achieve organic integration still requires companies to continue to "trial and error".

【Keyword 7: Data leakage】

Ctrip is hard to guard against Leaks awaken data security awareness

On March 22, Wuyun.com, a well-known vulnerability reporting platform in China, released information about "Ctrip's secure payment calendar causing user bank card information to be leaked." The vulnerability discoverer pointed out that Ctrip enabled the debugging function for the service interface used to process user payments, so that all data packets transmitted to the bank's cardholder verification interface were directly saved on the local server. However, the encryption level of this information was not high enough and could be easily obtained by hackers.

It is reported that the leaked information includes the user's: cardholder name, ID card, bank card type (for example, China Merchants Bank credit card, Bank of China credit card), card number, CVV code (a set of numbers on the back of the credit card) and a 6-digit password used for payment.

On March 23, Ctrip gave a detailed explanation: "In order to troubleshoot system issues, Ctrip's technical developers enabled the payment debugging function in the online environment, leaving a temporary log. Due to negligence, it was not deleted in time. At present, this information has been deleted. After investigation, only the developer of the vulnerability made a test download, involving a total of 93 Ctrip users at risk. The personal information of users who did not receive a phone call from Ctrip is safe."

Comment: Entering the era of big data, information security has received great attention from users. However, in the past two or three years, there have been continuous reports of information leakage incidents of Internet companies, especially the intensive exposure of express delivery company user data leakage incidents the year before last, the "hotel room booking information leakage" incident in October last year, and the current Ctrip "leakage gate". The leaked information is getting closer and closer to the core interests of users. The regulatory authorities have realized the seriousness of the problem. In the future, Internet security will rise to an unprecedented level.

【Keyword 8: O2O】

Wanda e-commerce invests 20 billion yuan in O2O

On August 29, 2014, Wanda Group, Baidu and Tencent held a strategic cooperation signing ceremony in Shenzhen, announcing that they would jointly invest to establish Wanda E-commerce Company in Hong Kong, with a total investment of RMB 5 billion in the first phase and a total investment of more than RMB 20 billion in the next five years. It is reported that Wanda E-commerce will build the largest universal points alliance platform in China. At the same time, Wanda, Baidu and Tencent will establish a big data alliance. Putting aside competition to cooperate, the interests of the three giants brought them together, which shows the ambition of all parties to accelerate the layout of O2O.

In addition, Alibaba has newly established an O2O division and disclosed its important goals for 2014 - "thousands of troops and tens of thousands of codes" and "four links in all directions". Among them, "thousands of troops" refers to the fact that nearly 5,000 brands will enter the entire Alibaba O2O strategic scope this year, "ten thousand codes" refers to the QR code plan, "four links" refers to the four important links that must be opened in all O2O scenarios, and "eight links" refers to the solutions Alibaba provides for traditional enterprises in eight important scenarios.

In addition to large enterprises stepping up their O2O layout, the originally inconspicuous community stores are becoming the new favorite of e-commerce and the "experimental field" of O2O due to their convenience; Hangzhou's first cross-border e-commerce O2O experience store debuted in Xiasha; SF Express has 30,000 Hey stores across the country, etc. Other retailers and service providers are also actively trying various O2O innovations.

Comment: With industry trends, offline advantages, infrastructure, and partners, it is ideal to build a new O2O empire with the productivity of big data, but whether it is reliable or not depends on the data source, data analysis capabilities, and whether the reality of the big data business model is too shabby, even if the team and execution are perfect. In addition, although Baidu and Tencent have different corporate genes, they are in a certain competitive relationship with each other, and each has great ambitions. How much they can contribute in this alliance remains to be seen.

[Keyword 9: cross-border]

Which small and large platforms are developing cross-border e-commerce?

In April, the six language sites of WorldFactory.com, including English, Arabic, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and French, jointly launched the Export Service, focusing on cross-border e-commerce and becoming a core partner of Google in Greater China, hosting the Central China International Trade E-commerce Service Base (Google AdWords Henan Experience Center).

At the end of October, Amazon (China) announced the opening of direct mail service from six overseas sites to China, and launched the "Overseas Purchase" campaign to directly purchase foreign goods for the domestic market. During the subsequent "Double Eleven" period, Alibaba announced its strategy to enter the global market, and made its debut with its three platforms, including Tmall Global, Taobao Overseas, and AliExpress.

In the capital market, MiTao.com (formerly known as CN HaiTao), which was established only one year ago, received $30 million in Series B financing, with a valuation of over $100 million. Yangmatou, which operates a C2C overseas shopping model, also completed its latest round of financing, with a financing amount of over $50 million.

Domestic e-commerce platforms including JD.com, Suning, Jumei, Vipshop, No.1 Store, and SF Express have also launched their own overseas shopping projects, and a fierce war has begun.

Comment: Domestic cross-border e-commerce is still in its early stages. According to statistics, China's cross-border retail will grow by 300% from 2014 to 2018. Cross-border e-commerce will become the best opportunity for China to transform from a world factory to a world mall and eventually reconstruct the world's industrial chain. This trend is unstoppable. In 2015, the cross-border e-commerce field will surely become one of the main battlefields for major e-commerce platforms to compete.

【Keyword 10: Crowdfunding】

Don’t let “crowdfunding” become “crowd worries” due to the proliferation of concepts

On March 26, 2014, Alibaba Digital Entertainment Group announced the launch of Yulebao, where users can invest 100 yuan to invest in popular film and television works, with an expected annualized rate of return of 7%. Yulebao's first batch of film projects include "Tiny Times 4", "Wolf Totem", "Illegal Operation", "Lush Beauty" and the game "Model Academy".

According to the monitoring data of China Investment Network, as of December 2014, Yulebao has launched four projects with a total investment of 305 million yuan.

On November 11, 2014, JD Finance and Sino-Ocean Group launched a crowdfunding project, and “crowdfunding for buying a house” gained great popularity.

On December 18, the long-awaited "Private Equity Crowdfunding Financing Management Measures (Trial) (Draft for Comments)" was officially released. The draft clearly stipulates that the net assets of equity crowdfunding platforms shall not be less than RMB 5 million, the number of shareholders of the financiers or financing enterprises initiated and established by the financiers shall not exceed 200 in total, and investors shall be units or individuals with a minimum investment amount of no less than RMB 1 million in a single financing project.

Comments: Crowdfunding can be regarded as an "imported product". With the continuous development of crowdfunding in China, it has gradually shown a development status that is significantly different from foreign crowdfunding models: the original intention of helping small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs with dreams has gradually weakened, while pre-sales, publicity, and exposure have gradually been explored. In the long run, domestic commodity crowdfunding will inevitably end up like the short-lived group buying before. I hope that not only equity crowdfunding, but also commodity crowdfunding can be effectively regulated to prevent crowdfunding from being ruined by people chasing the trend.