Pinduoduo bargains for the secret behind it, 65438 + October 14, "Pinduoduo bargains, but always 0.9% worse", this topic once again appeared on Zhihu's hot search. Pinduoduo said that due to the limited number of digits for displaying percentages on the page, 0.9% was omitted and Pinduoduo bargained for the secret behind it.
The secret behind Pinduoduo’s bargaining 1 1 0 14. The topic “Pinduoduo’s bargaining, but always 0.9% difference” appeared in the hot search on Zhihu. This is a "murderous case caused by a lawyer's operation."
Zhihu blogger @法小V Liu Yuhang participated in the “Free Bargaining for a Mobile Phone” event on Pinduoduo in March 2021. But after inviting many people to bargain, he came first every time, but the bargaining progress was always "0.9%."
In anger, lawyer Liu Yuhang took Pinduoduo to court. Liu Yuhang submitted prosecution materials to the court on the grounds that Pinduoduo allegedly violated the principle of good faith and used false data to conceal rules when providing network services, which constituted fraud.
Recently, Liu Yuhang published an article on Zhihu, providing more details of his negotiations with Pinduoduo, but the article has been deleted.
Lawyer Liu Yuhang stated in the article that during the trial of the case, Pinduoduo argued that due to the limited percentage displayed on the page, they omitted to display the percentage with at least six digits after the decimal point, which is 0.9%. The 0.9% shown on the page is 0.9996427%, not 0.9%.
When the court asked why the full percentage was not displayed on the page, Pinduoduo said the omission was because the display screen was limited and the numbers could not be divided. Lawyer Liu Yuhang said, "At this moment, I feel that I have learned mathematics in vain for the past 30 years, and my life needs to be redefined as 0.9%."
"Cutter" means "liar fools"?
“Consumers have been cut for a long time.”
Geek Park searched for “Pinduoduo bargaining” on the Black Cat complaint platform, and there were 6,177 results. Some consumers said, "I asked a lot of people for help, and I succeeded with 0.01 gold coins, and suddenly I got 100 gold coins."
Most of the complaints are similar to those of lawyer Liu Yuhang. Lawyer Liu stated in the article that a mobile phone product he participated in bargaining with Pinduoduo was only 0.9% away from getting a mobile phone for free, and the progress bar stayed at 99.1%. But in fact, the progress bar has not changed since the first payment of 0.01 yuan was received, because many payments of 0.01 yuan have been cut off.
Xiao Ye, who has participated in Pinduoduo’s “One Sword” campaign many times, told Geek Park that he has experienced a permanent “One Sword” on Pinduoduo – the remaining bargaining progress will be completed soon. Times have changed. After the system prompts "It is expected that two more people will be invited to receive it for free", inviting two new users does not show that the bargaining was successful, but instead prompts "99.9% has been discounted, and 0.1% is still missing." After inviting a few friends, the page prompt changed to "$8 has not been found yet." During this process, the system will continuously prompt new users to bargain more, and they are very close to successfully bargaining.
The common "chopping knife" activity on the platform
Lawyer Liu Yuhang believes that Pinduoduo takes advantage of human weaknesses to allow consumers to complete various tasks set by Pinduoduo and purchase paid services. Just to increase the number of App activities and income has constituted fraud and seriously affected the social atmosphere.
Pinduoduo responded in April. Tang, senior director of the legal department, explained, “Because the cost of some products that are free of charge is relatively large, the amount of money that a small number of users can cut is not enough to change the percentage, which will make consumers The reporter believes that the bargaining price has not changed. Pinduoduo responded that the "Free Bargaining" activity is real and effective. * * * More than 1,200 products participated in this issue, and a total of 7.09 million products were shipped.
Liu Yuhang's. The demands are: Pinduoduo discloses the true information and data of its activities, refunds the service purchase fee of 9.9 yuan, and compensates itself for economic losses of 500 yuan and reasonable expenses of 1,000 yuan.
It is worth noting that Liu Yuhang said that since March last year. Since the Pinduoduo case attracted public attention, Liu Yuhang has given several interviews in just three months, saying, “This has seriously affected my normal work and life, and my family is even worried about my personal safety and more. revenge. ”
Lawyer Liu believes that anyone who uses Pinduoduo can sue Pinduoduo.
"The cause of this case is a tort lawsuit, not a contract lawsuit, and it violates consumers' right to know. Theoretically, everyone who uses Pinduoduo's free price negotiation service is a consumer and has the opportunity to become a litigant."
“Free bargaining is a way for Pinduoduo to attract traffic, and its game rules are opaque. Zhi Zhenfeng, a researcher at the Institute of Law, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said in an interview with reporters that such activities take advantage of people’s psychology of “taking advantage” , luring people to "keep betting" with seemingly "easy-to-get" rewards, just like "gamblers"
Zhi Zhenfeng pointed out that participating in activities such as Pinduoduo's "Bargain for Free". There are many users, the algorithm rules are complex, and the key data is not transparent to users, so there are many questions: “What is the probability of success for free? Is it suspected of misleading consumers? Is the successful user information scrolling on the page real? Are product prices inflated? These require further identification. ”
Similar “trends” have always existed, and the same marketing routines are also used by many Internet products. Even in November 2021, when ofo once again claimed to refund the deposit, the prerequisite was that a new friend must be invited in and a deposit of 99 yuan must be paid after he successfully registers.
“This is not just a marketing game. Zhi Zhenfeng pointed out that this one-way transparent algorithm is a relatively new issue in legal supervision. Its understandability and transparency are very important to consumers. It is very important for gamers, and whether it is honest or not is also related to the life and death of businesses. If consumers think it is a scam, both the game and the company may face the fate of being rejected.
The cutter performance is the lowest,
Pinduoduo breaks out from agriculture
In the past, the “Yidao” project brought a lot of new people and traffic to Pinduoduo, but now that Internet traffic has peaked, it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract new people. There are more and more "one-knife" products.
In the past, mobile phone advertising, dicing, and pre-installation were regarded as Pinduoduo's new "troika". Duoduo’s “Cut a Knife” project was rated the lowest “1” in the performance score of “271”. In other words, Pinduoduo believes that the “Cut” innovation is not that effective. In addition, it requires users to go to many orchards to water and fertilize. , and finally replaced dozens of cheap commodities with a box of grapefruit, and the effect was not that good.
What slowed down along with "Chop" was Pinduoduo, a train that once traveled at high speed.
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At present, the growth rate of Pinduoduo’s active users and advertising revenue has slowed down significantly. The Q3 financial report of 2021 shows that Pinduoduo’s revenue during the reporting period was 2.1506 billion yuan, which was far lower than market expectations (26.47 billion yuan); The number of active users of Pinduoduo is 867.3 million, a year-on-year increase of 18.6%, and the growth rate of Pinduoduo’s online marketing services (advertising revenue) has dropped to 40%.
In addition, by the end of September 2021, Pinduoduo’s annual growth rate of buyers has dropped from 40% two years ago to less than 20%, and the number of new users has also declined. From the first quarter to the third quarter of 2021, the number of new users on Pinduoduo was 35.8 million and 21.6 respectively. Wanhe 17.4 million. But by the end of September 2021, Pinduoduo’s number of buyers still reached a staggering 867 million, 4 million more than Alibaba. The latest annual report shows that Pinduoduo currently has less than 8,000 employees, while Alibaba and JD.COM. The total number of employees currently exceeds 250,000 and 360,000 respectively.
The growth of GMV (gross merchandise transactions) also faces challenges. Dongxing Securities’ research report shows that the company’s revenue is closely related to GMV. Pinduoduo in 2021. GMV growth may slow down further due to the slowdown in revenue growth. In the first three quarters of 2021, Pinduoduo’s revenue was 22.167 billion yuan, 23.046 billion yuan and 2.1506 billion yuan, respectively, with quarter-on-quarter growth of -1.7%, 4% and -7. %.
At the same time, the financial report also showed that Pinduoduo’s marketing expenses in the third quarter were 65.438+0.00506 billion yuan, a decrease of 3% from the previous quarter, showing a downward trend for three consecutive quarters.
The continuous reduction of expenses may not only make financial reports "better". In the second half of the mobile Internet, the style of play has also completely shifted to the long-standing dogma of focusing on R&D over marketing and insisting on investing in agriculture.
As of September 30, 2021, Pinduoduo has invested all its operating profits in the last two quarters into the "Yi Nongyan" project, and has currently invested approximately 765438+700 million yuan.
In the financial report conference call, Pinduoduo’s new style does not look like an Internet e-commerce company. Executives are constantly talking about agricultural digitalization, agricultural scientific research competitions, tens of billions of agricultural scientific research projects, and cultivating "100,000 new farmers."
Pinduoduo has regarded agriculture as the second growth curve. Data shows that in 2020 alone, the GMV of Pinduoduo’s agricultural products will reach 270 billion, accounting for 16% of the annual GMV, far exceeding the data of other e-commerce platforms. So far, Pinduoduo has become the world’s largest agricultural product retail platform.
But it’s not just Pinduoduo, but also Alibaba Rural Taobao, followed by community group buying. Giants facing growth difficulties are eyeing agriculture.
In addition, the question of whether Tencent will become "the next target to give up" after reducing its holdings in JD.COM has also shrouded Pinduoduo recently. Under the strict anti-monopoly regulatory environment, Pinduoduo, which relies on WeChat as a "traffic factory", will face considerable challenges.
Turn to agriculture is a right but difficult path. In the era of e-commerce that focuses on technology and services rather than marketing, Pinduoduo has to constantly "chop one knife at a time" to get closer to its goal.
The secret behind Pinduoduo’s price bargaining February 65438 + October 65438 + April 4, “Pinduoduo’s price bargaining, still 0.9% off”, this topic once again appeared on Zhihu’s hot search.
This incident can be traced back to March last year. Shanghai lawyer Liu Yuhang participated in the "Free Bargaining" event on Pinduoduo and got a "Super Free Card." But after inviting many people to bargain, the difference was still "0.9%".
Why does the second place always fail to bargain? After Liu Yuhang believed that the platform data was untrue, he submitted prosecution materials to the court on the grounds that Pinduoduo's provision of network services was suspected of violating the principle of good faith and using false data concealment rules to constitute fraud.
He believes that when providing online services, Pinduoduo is suspected of violating the principle of integrity, using false data, concealing rules, and taking advantage of human weaknesses to allow consumers to complete various tasks set by Pinduoduo and make purchases. Paid services are just to increase the activity and income of the app, which constitutes fraud and seriously affects the social atmosphere.
Recently, Liu Yuhang published an article on Zhihu, providing more details of his negotiations with Pinduoduo. However, this article has now been deleted.
How did Pinduoduo explain in court?
According to the original article provided by Zhihu users, during the trial, regarding Liu Yuhang’s lawsuit and the resulting doubts, Pinduoduo said that due to the limited number of percentage digits displayed on the page, they omitted to display decimal points. The percentage of at least six digits at the end is 0.9%, and the 0.9% displayed on the negotiation page is 0.9996427%, not 0.9%.
When the court asked why the full percentage was not displayed on the page, Pinduoduo said the omission was because the display screen was limited and the numbers could not be divided.
“At this moment, I feel that all the mathematics I have learned in the past 30 years has been in vain, and life needs to be redefined by 0.9%.” Liu Yuhang lamented in the article.
Shortly after the details of the case negotiation were exposed, there were many consumer reactions. Many people left messages on this topic to express their support for Lawyer Liu: "Pinduoduo cannot blame the algorithm, the algorithm is also operated by humans." "I feel like he worked very hard to make up the reasons given by this agent. After all, there is no Good reason to make it up"...
In response to this matter, Pinduoduo responded that the "Bargain for Free" campaign is real and effective. In this issue, * * * more than 1,200 products participated, and a total of 7.09 million products were shipped. For lawyers who invite multiple people to bargain, but the bargaining progress bar does not change, Tang, senior director of Pinduoduo’s legal department, explained: “Because the amount of free discounts for some products is large, the amount of discounts for a small number of users is not enough to change the percentage. Let consumers think that bargaining has not changed."
Pinduoduo's "glib words" made netizens lose confidence.
Previously, reporters had actually tested Pinduoduo’s “chop-off” activity, which was similar to that of lawyers. Every time it looks like it's nearly done, the unit of measure for bargaining changes again. For example, at the beginning, the system prompts "It is expected that if you invite two more people, you can get it for free." However, after successfully inviting two new users, the pop-up window on the page does not show that the negotiation was successful, but prompts "99.9% has ended, and the difference is 00.1%." ". Later, the reporter invited several friends to have a chop. At this time, the page prompt changed to "8 dollars missing".
During the entire process, the system will continuously prompt new users to do more things than old users, which is very close to success.
In addition, it is worth noting that Liu Yuhang said that since his case against Pinduoduo attracted public attention in April last year, he has accepted multiple interviews in just three months. Liu Yuhang said: "This has seriously affected my normal work and life. My family is even worried about my personal safety and more retaliation."
When explaining the type of prosecution, Liu Yuhang explained through his Zhihu account "Legal V Liu Yuhang" said: "The cause of this case is an infringement lawsuit, a non-contract lawsuit, which infringes on consumers' right to know. Theoretically, everyone who uses Pinduoduo's free price negotiation service is a consumer and has the opportunity Become the right holder of the lawsuit. "
Liu Yuhang's demands are: Pinduoduo discloses the true information and data of the activities, refunds the service purchase fee of 9.9 yuan, and compensates himself for 500 yuan in economic losses and 1,000 yuan in reasonable expenses.
In response to this matter, other netizens said: "Obviously fake!" "Too many tricks" "This is a character issue. Pinduoduo has no bottom line, and such a company will not last long"...
The secret behind Pinduoduo’s price bargaining 3 In March last year, Pinduoduo launched a price bargaining activity. In this event, many consumers still showed 0.9% after bargaining with friends. Regarding this issue, Pinduoduo responded that the bargaining page showed 0.9%, not 0.9%.
It is reported that Shanghai lawyer Liu Yuhang’s case against Pinduoduo for “price bargaining” has made new progress recently. According to the details of the case, Pinduoduo said that due to the limited percentage displayed on the page, they omitted to display the percentage with at least six decimal places as 0.9%, and the 0.9% displayed on the negotiation page was 0.9996427% instead of 0.9%.
Pinduoduo also stated that the “Free Bargaining” activity is real and effective. More than 1,200 products participated in this event, and 7.09 million products have been given away. For lawyers who invite multiple people to bargain, but the bargaining progress bar does not change, Tang, senior director of Pinduoduo’s legal department, explained: “Because the amount of free discounts for some products is large, the amount of discounts for a small number of users is not enough to change the percentage. Let consumers think that bargaining has not changed.”
Many netizens said that Pinduoduo’s marketing method would give people a bad impression. At the same time, they also hope that the regulatory authorities can strengthen the supervision and regulation of this kind of marketing, instead of letting consumers be teased by merchants every time.