2019 Pinduoduo user operation analysis!

This paper mainly analyzes the basic attributes, cognitive and behavioral characteristics, consumption habits and social relationships of Pinduoduo users by building a user model, and analyzes the influencing factors behind users' online shopping by refining online shopping scenarios and motivations and disassembling online shopping action links.

Product Introduction: As a new e-commerce pioneer, Pinduoduo is committed to integrating entertainment and social elements into e-commerce operations. Through the "social + e-commerce" model (users initiate group buying with friends, family, neighbors, etc., Pinduoduo understands consumers through group buying, and uses machine algorithms to make accurate recommendations and matches), more users can share benefits with fun and enjoy a new shared shopping experience.

Experience environment: Huawei nova3-EMUI9.0.0, APP version 4.66.0

1. Background: Two major premises, one major change

Figure 1-1 Background

The author would like to share a little history with you. As for the beginning of modern Chinese history, I believe everyone has learned in history textbooks that the Opium War opened the closed door of modern China. It brought a huge impact on China's social structure. The self-sufficient peasant economy was vulnerable to large-scale socialized production. It brought people at that time cheaper and more diverse industrial products.

The wheel of history continues to roll forward, and in the blink of an eye we have arrived at the modern era, at today. The development of urbanization and the expansion of mobile device penetration have broken down the rusty barriers of cities. This is the reason why e-commerce cannons can blast open the doors of low-tier cities. This has brought about tremendous changes in people’s social relations. The first is the change in geographical space relations , and the second is the change in social space relations . The changes in these two relationships are the two major prerequisites for the vigorous development of e-commerce in low-tier cities.

During the urbanization process, roads were built and people's living spaces were concentrated. Compared with the vast and scattered rural areas, towns are small and centralized. Therefore, the circulation of e-commerce logistics in towns is much more efficient than in rural areas. In addition, the popularity of smartphones has torn down the walls that trapped people in low-tier cities, allowing them to access a wider social circle and more colorful commodities. Cheaper and more diverse goods became the final bullet to capture the town walls. All this seems quite similar to the Opium War of that year.

The emergence of these two premises has brought about a change in people's consumption perception. The author believes that this change in consumption perception is a shift from "family consumption" to "socialized consumption."

In "household consumption", people are more likely to engage in need-based consumption, such as when toothpaste is running out, they need to buy more toothpaste. A notable feature of "family consumption" is "people looking for things" .

In "socialized consumption", people consume not only because they need it, but are more stimulated to consume by various information. For example, a lady usually uses an ordinary mop to clean the house every day, but one day she saw an electric mop recommended by an expert. It saves time and effort and the price is relatively reasonable, so the lady bought one. She found it very useful and also encouraged her acquaintances to buy this product. In "socialized consumption", consumption is increased by creating demand through stimulation. The salient feature of “socialized consumption” is “things find people” .

2. Overview of Pinduoduo

E-commerce has experienced more than 20 years of development and the basic conditions are basically mature. The leading e-commerce platforms occupy the main market, including comprehensive e-commerce platforms represented by Taobao and JD.com, as well as vertical e-commerce platforms such as Mogujie, Miya Baby, and Jumei Youpin. It could be said that the e-commerce market had become calm, but with the arrival of Pinduoduo, the e-commerce market has become turbulent again.

"Heroes are made by the times." Changes in the environmental background have pulled the e-commerce battle line from first- and second-tier cities to lower-tier cities. Pinduoduo is a new e-commerce company that is entering the field of "socialized consumption" in low-tier cities. In order to cope with the rise of Pinduoduo, both Taobao and JD.com have deployed e-commerce products to lower-tier cities, and social e-commerce has also become a hot word. This wave of social e-commerce offensive is aimed at catering to people's "socialized consumption", that is, the stimulation and re-creation of consumer demand. The author believes that the transformation to "socialized consumption" is a key point in e-commerce product design and is also the keynote of this article's analysis.

Pinduoduo's development can be said to have taken advantage of the sinking market to tear a hole in the red ocean of e-commerce. In just about four years, Pinduoduo has climbed to the position of a leading e-commerce company.

Figure 2-1 Number of independent devices of Pinduoduo per month and month-on-month growth rate (data source: iResearch)

From the data in Figure 2-1, we can see that Pinduoduo has more than 330 million independent devices per month, and its user base is already huge. Judging from the growth trend, the growth in the number of Pinduoduo users has slowed down, and the product has passed its explosive growth period and entered a stable development period. Therefore, in addition to user growth, it has become particularly important to deepen the development of existing users and release their consumption capacity .

Figure 2-2 Penetration rate of e-commerce in each city and installation ratio of competing products (data source: Jiguang Big Data)

From the data in Figure 2-2, we can see that in terms of user penetration rates in cities at all levels, Taobao is ahead of other e-commerce companies in first-tier and second-tier cities as well as in lower-tier cities, and Taobao's penetration rate in first-tier and second-tier cities is slightly higher than that in lower-tier cities. Pinduoduo's penetration rate among all netizens is second only to Taobao, but its penetration rate in lower-tier cities is higher than that in first- and second-tier cities, reaching 39.5%.

From the perspective of the installation ratio of competing products:

First, as many as 80% of Pinduoduo users are Taobao users, with a high degree of user overlap , and the competition for user wallets will become increasingly fierce. Therefore, for Pinduoduo, it becomes increasingly important to improve user loyalty and enhance the ability to "lock in customers".

Second, as many as 46.6% of JD.com users use Pinduoduo, while only 37.0% of Pinduoduo users use JD.com. Pinduoduo has a strong appeal to JD.com users, while JD.com has a weaker appeal to Pinduoduo users.

This data indirectly reflects that even among users who pursue high quality (JD users), they will seek higher cost-effectiveness for some products. Low price is still an attractive enough strategy for many people , especially considering the overall domestic and international economic environment in recent years. For some low-priced products with low quality requirements, e-commerce platforms can act as "hook products" to attract users.

So who are the people using Pinduoduo?

Figure 2-3 Gender and age of Pinduoduo users (data source: iResearch)

The accuracy of the data in Figure 2-3 may be debatable, but it generally shows the gender and age distribution of users. In terms of gender, women account for a large proportion of Pinduoduo users. One reason is that female users are more sensitive to low-price shopping. Another reason is that female users are more responsible for household shopping and have stronger shopping needs.

In terms of age, users aged 25-35 account for the largest proportion. The notable characteristics of this group of users are that they are in the rising stage of their careers and the stage of establishing marriage and family. Users in this age group are in a period of strong consumption demand, but their economic accumulation is relatively weak.

3. User Feedback Analysis

By collecting and refining the feedback data on the usage of Pinduoduo APP users, we obtained the keywords of user feedback, as shown in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1 Keywords in user feedback (data reference: Penguin News)

The keywords for positive reviews are mainly concentrated in two aspects: one is the product dimension such as low price that can save money and rich products; the other is the entertainment dimension of killing time such as interesting and fun software.

For negative review keywords:

• The first is the product quality issues caused by low prices;
• The second reason is the aversion to Pinduoduo’s user growth routines, the harassment caused by bargaining, helping and other means of spreading and attracting new users, and the frustration of users’ task failure;
• The third is the technical issues of lag and crashes, which are partly due to the fact that most Pinduoduo users own thousand-yuan phones, with limited phone memory and unfamiliarity with issues such as cache clearing.

Among all the negative review issues, the most critical and difficult ones are product quality issues and false transactions (there are many unscrupulous merchants who buy A and sell B).

Regarding quality issues, the first is the real problem of poor quality. After all, price is often a direct reflection of the value of the product. The second is the subjective poor quality caused by the user's mind.

Everyone must have heard the story of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Because people subjectively think that Coca-Cola tastes better, even if there is no difference between the two colas, people still subjectively think that Coca-Cola tastes better.

Therefore, when it comes to quality issues, we need to start from two aspects: product quality control and improving the platform image . When it comes to false transactions, the platform should be resolute and deal with them seriously, providing users with more ways to provide evidence, so as to avoid affecting the reputation of the entire platform due to a small number of bad merchants.

In short, users have both love and fear towards Pinduoduo.

IV. Questionnaire Survey on Online Shopping among College Students

Since college students are the representative users that Pinduoduo needs to expand into, the author conducted a questionnaire survey on their online shopping behaviors and e-commerce app usage. The questionnaire data and conclusions are shown in Figures 4-1 and 4-2. (Purpose of the survey: To investigate the usage of online shopping apps and key online shopping habits among college students)

Figure 4-1 Questionnaire collection results

Figure 4-2 Questionnaire survey conclusion

Pinduoduo's penetration rate among college students is not high, but its competitor Taobao's penetration rate is extremely high. Among college students, they have a relatively bad impression of Pinduoduo. Even if they have never used Pinduoduo, they still think that Taobao products are of better quality than Pinduoduo products. Increasing the sense of trust among college students is a key factor in Pinduoduo's expansion of college student users.

5. Analysis of the relationship between Pinduoduo and users

By dividing different groups of people, a relationship diagram between Pinduoduo and user groups is drawn, as shown in Figure 5-1.

Figure 5-1 Relationship between Pinduoduo and users

The figure lists five types of Pinduoduo user groups. The inner circle is Pinduoduo’s current core users. They are more sensitive to prices, tend to be price-oriented when shopping, and have relatively low requirements for product quality. As for college students living outside the ring road and office workers in first- and second-tier cities, although they also care about prices, they usually choose low prices for goods that do not require high quality, such as buying some daily necessities on Pinduoduo. College students and first- and second-tier office workers are groups that Pinduoduo must expand in order to expand its user base, and their coping strategies will also be different from those for low-tier user groups.

Pinduoduo establishes a connection with its users through two key elements: saving and leisure . "Saving" is a characteristic of Pinduoduo users, and most users also have more free time. Because of their leisure time, they can spend more time on Pinduoduo to gain income and entertainment. "Saving" and "leisure" are the areas that can be focused on when designing a product in order to better meet user needs.

6. User Model Construction

The user model will involve basic user information (demographic information, location information, economic information, character description and APP usage, etc.), cognitive characteristics, behavioral characteristics, social relationship maps, usage stories and journey maps, etc.

The establishment of a user model is of great help in conducting user research and analysis, building empathy, etc. Understanding users personally is a key step in product development. The user model can be used to visualize users and deepen understanding of all aspects of user information, thereby better understanding user needs and predicting their needs. (Information source: inference based on online data, observation of surrounding people, questionnaire survey, and comprehensive information such as shopping photos and comments of users in the Pinduoduo app)

(1) User Model: College Students

Figure 6-1 College Student User Model

For the student user group, the key points of their needs are cost-effectiveness, discovering good products, and brand pursuit.

The student population is a rising group in society and a new force in the future. Due to limited economic resources, they pay more attention to price in consumption, but price is not an absolute measurement factor. They pay attention to quality and the experience the product brings them. Therefore, while they are pursuing cost-effectiveness, they are willing to spend money on certain products that can bring great experience, and they will also pursue brands or big-name products. The student group has strong action ability and strong curiosity. They will discover good products through various channels such as social media, information, etc. to satisfy their own novel and unique psychological motivations (the five major motivations for online shopping will be introduced in detail below).

(2) User model: young people in low-tier cities

Figure 6-2 Young user model in low-tier cities

For young people in low-tier cities, the key points of their needs are cost-effectiveness, discovering good products, saving and making money.

Young people in low-tier cities are the creators of social wealth and also one of the main forces driving consumption growth. The income of young people in low-tier cities is not particularly high, but the cost of living they face is relatively much lower. Cost-effectiveness is the key factor they consider when consuming. They are relatively less pursuing brands or even big brands (due to the influence of interpersonal relationships and the reduction of showing off and comparison brought by brands), and low-priced and high-quality products are more popular. Of course, they also have a certain pursuit of quality of life, and will satisfy their consumer psychology by discovering new products. As their income is not high but their consumption demand is strong, while saving money, they hope to satisfy their consumption desires by earning "pocket money".

(3) User model: middle-aged people in low-tier cities

Figure 6-3 Middle-aged user model in ground-line cities

For the middle-aged groups in low-tier cities, the key points of their demands are low price, usefulness and liveliness.

The middle-aged group in low-tier cities is a group with declining social consumption. Due to the growth environment and historical background of middle-aged people in low-tier cities, they tend to be conservative in consumption and will spend their money on useful things in most cases. They are very sensitive about prices. Just think about the aunties buying vegetables in the vegetable market and you will know this. Middle-aged people in low-tier cities are more interested in low-priced products, so low-priced and useful products are their attraction. Similarly, they also like the feeling of hustle and bustle. In addition to the fact that it is human nature to follow the crowd, the middle-aged group also likes hustle and bustle because their children are studying or working outside or starting a family, and their life begins to become deserted. Hustle and bustle can bring fulfillment and a sense of security.

In addition, for first- and second-tier office workers, their needs in some aspects are similar to those of students, but because they have higher independent incomes, they also have higher requirements for quality of life, and quality is what they value more. Migrant workers in first- and second-tier cities pay more attention to price factors and do not have high requirements for quality. Their situation is similar to that of young people in low-tier cities. Due to space constraints, we will not describe them in detail.

Figure 6-4 Cognitive-behavioral characteristics radar chart

By separately representing the user's cognitive and behavioral characteristics with a radar chart (Figure 6-4), better comparative analysis can be performed. From this picture, we can roughly see the levels of cognitive and behavioral characteristics of different users. It is an important reference for us to consider user needs and experiences in product design. For example, what do users do when shopping online, are they wandering around out of boredom or looking for products with a purpose, do they like to collect products, why do they collect products, etc.

In terms of familiarity with online shopping, there are significant differences between young users and middle-aged users, and a larger proportion of middle-aged users make up the Pinduoduo user group. Therefore, in product design, usability design for middle-aged users will be more important (conforming to the user's offline shopping mental model, simplifying operations, etc.).

Whether young or middle-aged people, they all have a strong desire to share after shopping. This is an important factor in the spread of goods among acquaintances and strangers. It is crucial to make good use of this in product design. Of course, cognitive and behavioral characteristics are not only helpful for us in product design, but also help us understand the pros and cons of a product’s design when analyzing it.

7. Online shopping scenarios - motivation extraction

Figure 7-1 Online shopping scenario-motivation

There are many sub-scenarios for online shopping, including office, clothing, baby and children, food, etc., but at its root, online shopping all comes from three major scenarios, namely, clear purpose, vague purpose and no purpose. Regardless of whether you see someone buy something delicious or the seasons change, the three major shopping scenarios of users are relatively fixed. In product design, channel entrance planning and page layout can be carried out according to these three scenarios. For example, adding product information flow recommendations to a product is taking advantage of purposeless scenarios.

The author has distilled the motivations for online shopping into five points: price, quality, novelty, community, and entertainment.

(1) Price: refers to price motivation. Price is a major motivation for people when shopping, and of course seeking low prices will be a major motivation for most people to shop, but there are also motivations for high prices.

(2) Quality: refers to quality motivation. People always hope to buy good quality products when shopping.

(3) Strange: refers to a new and unusual motive. “Curiosity kills the cat.” When we shop, we also look for new and unique products, hoping to discover new and good stuff.

(4) Social: refers to social motivation. As people in society, first of all, many of our decisions are subtly influenced by the social environment. For example, due to the herd mentality, everyone will buy popular products and compete with each other to show off. People will choose branded products (on the one hand, brands provide quality endorsement, and on the other hand, they satisfy users' desire to compete and show off). In addition, we also hope to enhance our sense of social participation through shopping. When we buy good things, we will think about showing off and sharing our experiences with others to gain recognition from others.

(5) Entertainment: refers to the motivation for entertainment. After people's material needs are met, shopping is not just about satisfying basic material needs, but also about seeking fun and shopping while entertaining themselves.

Of course, it is impossible to consider the five motivations in a general way without prioritizing them when designing product functions. Instead, we should reasonably use these five motivations to design functions based on the product development stage and the intensity of various motivations of the target users. Pinduoduo attracts so many users to shop by making full use of their motivation to seek low prices. Of course, if Pinduoduo wants to attract more user groups and increase the platform's GMV, it is naturally necessary to satisfy other shopping motivations. Combining the three major scenarios and five major motivations of users' online shopping, we can think and design the product's information architecture, shopping channel planning, shopping page flow, etc., to achieve the product's business goals and user goals. In the product analysis section, the author will use the scenario-motivation flow chart to compare and analyze the design points of Taobao and Pinduoduo in terms of shopping scenarios and motivations.

8. Analysis of the key action links of online shopping

Before proceeding with this section, I would like to raise a few questions.

Q1: Do you open shopping apps and browse around when you are bored? Why?

Q2: When you want to buy a piece of clothing, do you think of Taobao or Pinduoduo? Why?

Q3: When you find that the prices of clothes on Taobao and Pinduoduo are similar and the services are not much different, which APP will you place your order on? Why?

No matter how varied user shopping behaviors are, just like no matter how lush the branches are, they must come from a tree trunk. Combining the Fogg behavioral model, the author summarizes various user behaviors in online shopping into an action chain. This link starts from the user being stimulated by information , to taking action-plan evaluation-decision execution-action feedback. This series of action stages together constitute the entire action link, as shown in Figure 8-1.

Figure 8-1 Action link

The author breaks down each stage of users' online shopping behavior and obtains Figure 8-2. By building and breaking down action links, we can more clearly understand what triggers users to take action, what the product wants users to do, what factors influence users to make decisions, and what actions users may take.

Figure 8-2 Disassembly of the online shopping action link

From the link disassembly diagram, we can see that:

In the information stimulation stage , information stimulation can be divided into external stimulation and internal stimulation. Intrinsic stimulation refers to factors within the product itself that motivate users to use the product; whereas extrinsic stimulation refers to various environmental and scenario factors that motivate users to use the product. Internal stimulation can make users use Pinduoduo directly, such as daily check-in, watering the orchard, etc., but external stimulation may not necessarily make users use Pinduoduo. Users may use competing products such as Taobao. So when designing a product, if you can convert external stimuli into internal stimuli, you can effectively encourage users to use the product directly. Whether it is to promote user activation and retention or to attract new users, information stimulation is extremely important for products. Especially under the trend of socialized consumption, people's shopping needs are stimulated by various information stimuli.

The key to the action phase is to understand the business goals and user goals that the product wants to achieve. Because sometimes the user's actions may not be the ultimate goal we want, we hope that the user can complete related tasks while taking action. For example, when designing the bargaining function, we certainly don’t just want others to simply help their friends bargain, but we hope to guide users to participate in the activity by helping to bargain. Therefore, in the action phase, it is necessary to design direct tasks and even add related tasks based on business goals and user goals.

The main influencing factors in the user's shopping plan evaluation stage are demand and three-dimensional attributes. The degree of demand can be divided into strong need, general need and no need. Among them, "general need" is the point that requires us to spend more effort on design to improve order conversion.

Three-dimensional attributes mainly refer to product attributes, marketing attributes, and behavioral attributes . The product list page and detail page are designed around these three elements. Therefore, information exposure and key prompts need to be reasonably performed in product design.

(1) Product attributes are mainly to let users know what it is, involving elements such as title, main image, details, price, quality, etc.

(2) Marketing attributes are mainly to make users understand why they buy, involving factors such as discounts, limited time, gifts, discounts for purchases over a certain amount, and free shipping.

(3) Behavioral attributes are mainly to make users trust the product, involving popularity, comments, sales, collections, etc.

In the decision-making and execution stage of users' orders, group buying (participating in group buying or initiating group buying) and collection are two important execution actions for users. Their reasonable design can effectively increase users' ordering and dissemination growth (group buying sharing).

In the experience feedback stage , the important point for shopping is how users can share good shopping experiences with others (acquaintances and strangers). Therefore, at this stage, how to design sharing channels and how to promote user sharing are the points that products need to focus on.

Summarize

This paper mainly analyzes the basic attributes, cognitive-behavioral characteristics, online shopping scenarios-motivations and key action links of Pinduoduo users. In the product analysis section, the author will combine the content of user analysis to conduct relevant analysis and discussion on Pinduoduo's page design based on scenario motivation, the analysis of each link in the online shopping action chain, the growth of communication based on interpersonal relationships, and the construction of a "selling to support consumption" growth system with new product opportunities.

Welcome everyone to discuss and move forward together on the road of product development!

Related reading:

1. Analyze Pinduoduo’s activity operation system and coupon gameplay!

2. Analyze Pinduoduo’s event operation system and coupon gameplay! (two)

Author: Half past three

Source: 3:30