According to iResearch, the estimated size of the domestic second-hand trading market reached 400 billion yuan in 2016. In 2017, the sharing economy became hot, and the idle goods economy entered the view of consumers rapidly on the express train of sharing economy, and the “idle goods economy” showed an explosive growth trend.
Giant boost, the traditional second-hand market in spring
The traditional second-hand market originated in Europe. People display their unused, unused and outdated goods at different sizes and sell them to consumers in demand at a low price, forming a flea market with characteristics. With the advent of the Internet era, most of people’s shopping and consumption are completed on the Internet, and the scale of offline flea market is constantly reduced, and some users continue to sell their second-hand and idle goods through the Internet. However, in the early stage, the online second-hand market environment is not standardized, the interests of both consumers and sellers can not be guaranteed, and the online second-hand market needs to be improved.
In this process, e-commerce giants and capital have joined the second-hand market after seeing the business opportunities of second-hand goods trading. Take the used-car market as an example: On Sept 25, online used-car seller Renrenche announced that it had raised another $200 million in financing from Didi Chuxing. On November 1, Daso car announced the completion of 335 million US dollars E round of financing, the financing for Alibaba lead investment, Warburg Pincus, Primavera Capital, China Merchants International with investment…… Driven by e-commerce and capital, the second-hand idle trading market has expanded from a traditional flea market to a larger Internet platform in the service sector and is gradually maturing.
First of all, the circulation channels of goods in the traditional second-hand market (flea market) are narrow and the market scope is small. In the traditional second-hand market, sellers usually display their unwanted used goods and idle items at specific locations through offline stalls, and consumers in need go to stalls to select. The coverage of traditional second-hand markets is small, most of which are mainly flea markets in communities, and the circulation of idle goods is small. In this context, the traditional secondary market to online expansion will become inevitable. The traditional second-hand market needs online layout to expand the market and promote the circulation of more idle second-hand goods in the hands of consumers.
Secondly, the display space of goods in traditional second-hand market is limited. In the traditional second-hand market, some sellers need larger space to display large goods, but each stall space is limited, and sellers are likely to lose trading opportunities due to incomplete display of goods. In contrast, online display of goods can greatly save the display space of the seller, the seller only needs to display pictures or videos to provide comprehensive commodity information; By integrating the transaction information of buyers and sellers, the platform can enable the demanders to obtain the information of the goods they need in the shortest time, thus promoting the rapid realization of the transaction.
In terms of functions, online second-hand platforms also have more channels to meet the needs of consumers to buy high-quality second-hand goods at a low price. When users are in short of funds but in urgent need of a certain commodity, online second-hand trading platforms obtain commodity sources through multiple channels and provide consumers with commodities that meet the requirements after information integration. In addition, on the online platform, users can switch roles between sellers and buyers freely, and sell their unused second-hand goods to more needy consumers.
Under the tide of sharing economy, the upgraded second-hand market is rapidly occupied by the packaging of giants. People browse commodities online and complete transactions after confirming their needs. For a time, domestic second-hand commodity market smoke everywhere.
At present, the second-hand trading platform on the domestic market has idle fish, around, love second-hand, people’s net, clap second-hand and so on. However, after Alibaba separated Xianyu from Taobao and Tencent spent 200 million DOLLARS to become zhuan’s shareholder, the domestic second-hand market has become a battlefield for giants. Alibaba xianyu and Tencent Zhuan have become two giants in the second-hand market
Ali is more sociable than original
On November 16th, Xianyu held a strategic press conference, and planned to build the existing online community “Yutang” into a real community combining online and offline. Xianyu also became the third largest platform of Alibaba group after Tmall Taobao. From a humble PC page entrance of Taobao, Xianyu has developed to a business division equal to Tmall Taobao, which can be seen that Ali attaches great importance to the secondary market.
As a second-hand trading platform, Xianyu’s characteristic commodity trading and circulation unit “Yutang” is still distributed to various cities based on the geographical location, interests and demands of the largest college groups, taking the traditional community as the entry point. Fish pond is an important driving force of idle fish platform, which has been implemented in all regions of the country. From its launch to operation, Xianyu has completed 170 million idle goods transactions within two years. Driven by the fishpond community model, there are 16 million active sellers on Xianyu platform and 450,000 online community “fishponds”.
In May this year, Alibaba’s auction and Xianyu business integration, formed a unique “auction + transaction + social” second-hand goods trading platform. Through auctions and transactions on the platform, users can establish social relations in the transaction process, which is consistent with the current social development direction of Ali and forms the ecological concept of e-commerce + social relations.
However, in view of the current market, Alibaba’s forced integration of social and e-commerce appears to be a bit of a rush for quick success.
On the one hand, although the business integration of auction and Xianyu attracts the flow of auction to xianyu platform, after the integration of Xianyu, auction occupies a large theme space in classification, and even seems a bit overwhelming. And in the transaction classification of idle goods, the classification of some goods is unreasonable, and the information on the home page is too large, so most of them need to search or scan to find the classification of goods. It remains to be seen whether Xianyu can become a more cohesive sharing community under the complex operation process.
On the other hand, Xianyu does not do commodity quality appraisal, which has become the main reason for most users’ criticism of Xianyu. As a trading platform, although it emphasizes social interaction, its essence should be centered on the trading of idle goods. The platform does not do commodity quality identification, which will undoubtedly increase trading risks. Some commodities with high quality requirements are difficult to compete with the self-run model. In addition, consumers’ trust in the platform is greatly compromised due to the bad consumption experience brought by users’ dissatisfaction with product quality.
Tencent focuses on services rather than markets
Another large second-hand trading platform is the second-hand trading platform successfully incubated by 58 Group in November 2015, which will become the underlying user platform bearing all the future business of 58. In terms of the mode, zhuan converted C2C into C2B2C mode, and added the self-owned category. In business, and home appliance enterprises for cooperation, to solve the second hand home appliances disassembly, cleaning and other problems. Strategically, Zhuan relies on the strong resources of Tencent and 58.com, and makes use of Tencent’s social advantages to cooperate with wechat to make wechat the only login entrance of Zhuan. Payment is also closed through wechat payment, which makes use of wechat’s credit information to improve reliability.
After receiving strategic investment from Tencent, Zhuan platform has been expanding in scale and successfully entered the “Unicorn Club” valued at $1 billion within 18 months of its establishment. The tour focuses on classification and service, which looks more professional, concise and shows seriousness and purpose of business on the whole, and is more lightweight. Compared with The lightness of Ali, Tencent uses fixed standards in its self-run model to make commodity value judgments on quality, fineness and defects, providing consumers with reasonable price basis and solving the problem of opaque information.
However, in the current second-hand market, There are still shortcomings for Zhuan to compete with Xianyu, an e-commerce company owned by Alibaba.
First of all, Tencent, as a social giant, is far behind Ali, an e-commerce company, in terms of online transaction services. Xianyu, a subsidiary of Ali, has formed an online to offline service industry chain and user activity based on its e-commerce. Moreover, wechat, as the only login entrance of Zhuan, cannot solve the user traffic problem of zhuan from the root.
Second, although Zhuan is backed by 58 and Tencent, zhuan started more than a year later than Xianyu, and Ali has swallowed a lot of second-hand market share during this period, and its influence in the second-hand market is also bigger than Zhuan. Zhuan huan is not a high priority, low user activity leads to low transaction volume, which makes Zhuan seem more like a toddler following the idle fish.
For the secondary market, the transaction of idle goods is not only a single process of social interaction or service, but also a process in which buyers and sellers understand the information after communication and realize the transaction service. From the perspective of strategic goals, Both Alibaba and Tencent are developing towards the future direction of “social + service” in the development of second-hand platforms. Current market competition atmosphere is tense, idle fish and turn between the war is difficult to determine the outcome.
Under the test of the consumer market, the second-hand trading platform industry problems highlight serious
At present, the second-hand market is expanding, and the two e-commerce companies are also trying to enter the second-hand market. Although the secondary market is still dominated by two giants, there are still many small platforms with diverse functions, and with the continuous expansion of the market, the problems in the secondary market are becoming more and more obvious.
On the one hand, the quality of C2C traded goods in the secondary market cannot be guaranteed. Although second-hand markets are all used goods, for online transactions, users cannot intuitively perceive the quality of goods, understand the quality of goods and accurately evaluate the value of goods as traditional flea markets do. In this way, consumers who buy unusable or unsatisfactory products on the platform can only consider themselves unlucky, resulting in poor shopping experience and loss of users on the platform.
Second, the authenticity of commodity trading information on some platforms is difficult to identify. For second-hand transactions in the same city, users can also make transactions in the form of face-to-face, but for cross-regional transactions, it is difficult for users to judge the authenticity of information, and based on the dominant power of sellers on the platform, it is difficult for consumers to thoroughly protect their rights after sales. There have been consumers buying second-hand mobile phones on the second-hand platform, but after completing the transfer, they received the empty box sent by the trading side, and the check machine report is carried out according to the description of the seller. In this case, the complex after-sales processing process on the offline line will directly affect consumer experience.
Thirdly, improper transaction information in the market affects consumers’ desire to consume. The Internet is a hotbed of bad information, and even giant platforms like Xianyu are not immune. After the outbreak of the idle fish incident, such news is still full of ears, some platforms use the marginal ball of service classification to sell improper services in disguise. As an open Internet platform, if it fails to implement strong market supervision and ensure a healthy trading atmosphere, it will undoubtedly disappear in the second-hand market where survival of the fittest is determined.
Now, after years of e-commerce holiday shopping spree, people’s rational consumption consciousness is awakening, and there is no place to put the goods they bought before “chopped hands”, so people’s disposal of idle goods has changed. With the help of e-commerce and capital, second-hand trading platforms represented by Xianyu and Zhuan have risen, realizing more possibilities for the transaction of idle items in the second-hand market, and the second-hand consumption force is slowly taking shape. In the face of new problems, giant platforms represented by Xianyu and Zhuan are leading the trend of the whole industry in front, while second-hand platforms are still on the way.
Liu Kuang, meditation on the Internet, wechat official account: Liukuang110