On Double Eleven, how to deal with the dissatisfaction of old users after paid products are sold at a discount!

Double Eleven is here, and it’s time to shop.

However, every time at this time, there are always some things that make us upset.

For example, you just placed an order to buy a mobile phone the day before, but found that the price of the phone has dropped the next day. If it is only a few dollars, it’s okay, but when you find out that the price difference is hundreds of dollars, you will most likely point your finger at the customer service and curse.

This sounds strange, but to be honest, there are now more than a dozen e-commerce platforms, large and small, with all kinds of store celebrations, activities, anniversaries, and national shopping carnivals such as 618 and Double Eleven. It is not impossible to find out that you have lost money shortly after buying something.

This is indeed a problem for the platform. Activities must be held every year, but all kinds of promotional activities are based on price reduction or a certain percentage of preferential benefits. It is hard to say that there will not be a small number of customers who suffer losses in consumption, which ultimately leads to bad reviews .

Especially during large-scale promotional events like Double Eleven, how to ensure the effectiveness of the event while avoiding negative reviews from old users becomes a problem that every platform must think about and solve. In response to this problem, price protection measures have emerged from major e-commerce companies.

Recently, we have briefly studied the promotional rules and common pricing measures of major e-commerce platforms. Today, we will look at the price protection behaviors in daily consumption and the price protection policies of the Double Eleven promotion respectively, and share with you how the e-commerce industry uses price protection measures to avoid bad reviews from old users, or even complaints and curses.

Conventional price protection measures

To put it simply, price protection is a mechanism that allows consumers to apply for compensation for the price difference after discovering that the price of the goods they have purchased has dropped.

To put it more simply, we can simply call it "price guarantee" .

E-commerce platforms including JD.com , Suning.com , Dangdang, and Gome Online all have similar price protection policies, and the processes are also similar. If consumers find that the price of a product has been reduced within a certain period of time after purchasing the product, they can apply for price protection on their own.

It sounds simple, but there are actually many things worth studying about how to formulate price protection policies. From our observation, there are two issues that deserve our attention.

First of all, which products are eligible for price protection?

Generally speaking, most of the products within the price guarantee range have the following characteristics:

1. The natural price fluctuation range is small . For example, large electrical appliances, mobile phones, books, daily necessities, etc., generally speaking, rarely have large price fluctuations in a short period of time.
2. The use cycle of goods is generally long . Most fast-moving consumer goods are not covered by the insurance policy. For example, paper towels, laundry detergent, towels and other products will be used up in a week or two, or a month or two. Even if these products are insured, it will not have much impact.
3. The sales volume of the goods is usually not small . Products such as jewelry actually also meet the first two characteristics. However, because the average order value is very high and the sales volume is very small, it is greatly affected by market trends and brands . It would be very embarrassing to guarantee the price.

So, basically, considering these three aspects, we can see that injecting household appliances, mobile phones, IT digital products, daily necessities and books will become the mainstream of price guarantee measures.

Secondly, how long should the price cycle be set?

Generally speaking, the price guarantee period is between 7 and 15 days, and the longest one we have seen so far is only 30 days.

This consideration should mainly be based on cost.

For most commodities, the price is guaranteed for 7 to 15 days, and the price fluctuation will not be too large, which the platform can bear. However, if the period is too long, it may be a bit unacceptable.

After such screening, there are actually not too many products that can truly enjoy price protection, and the period will not exceed two weeks. Although it is not perfect, it can still ensure that users will not be too disappointed or complain about some daily price changes.

For example, you bought a pair of headphones for 1,600 yuan on JD.com, and as soon as you received the goods, you found that the price had dropped to 1,400 yuan. At this time, if you apply for price protection, it will usually be approved. For users, some basic rights can still be protected.

But if it is a large-scale promotion event like Double Eleven, such price guarantee measures may not be enough.

Price protection during special periods (such as Double 11)

For a national shopping festival like Double Eleven, if there is only a simple post-price protection, users may not be satisfied, and it is likely to affect the effect of Double Eleven. Therefore, there must be some stronger and more effective measures to ensure that users will not give bad reviews due to price cuts.

In this regard, Tmall ’s actions are very representative. Its basic approach is -

• Anchored to the Double Eleven price to ensure the lowest price on that day. Allow users to enjoy the greatest possible benefits on Double Eleven Day.
• Control the price fluctuation range within a certain period of time. In this way, even if users are unable to shop on Double Eleven Day, they will not lose too much.

Next, let’s take a closer look at what actions Tmall took on Double Eleven from these two dimensions.

 Anchored to Double Eleven, ensuring the lowest price on Double Eleven

In order to ensure the lowest prices on Double Eleven Day, Tmall did several things in succession.

First of all, Tmall will officially monitor the transaction prices of all shops participating in Double Eleven. It is also stipulated that all products participating in the 2018 Double Eleven sale must have a 10% discount on the sales price on Double Eleven Day based on the lowest transaction price from September 15 to November 10.

What does that mean?

For example, if a piece of clothing is priced at 100 yuan, but it is sold for 90 yuan on September 20, this price will be recorded. On Double Eleven Day, the price of this product must be lower than 81 yuan (90*0.9=81), otherwise, this product cannot participate in the Double Eleven promotion.

Secondly, Tmall officially stipulates that within 15 days after the end of Double Eleven, the price of goods cannot be lower than the price on Double Eleven day. If it is lower than this price, the store will also be subject to corresponding penalties.

In other words, for the piece of clothing I just mentioned, after Double Eleven, its lowest price can only be 82 yuan, and it cannot be lower than this (excluding decimals).

With the above two measures, we can ensure that the price on Double Eleven Day is the lowest within a certain period of time.

At the same time, in order to ensure sales on Double Eleven, merchants will try their best to get customers to place orders on Double Eleven day. This kills two birds with one stone, avoiding negative reviews from users and promoting the popularity of the Double Eleven event.

However, there is another question: what should be done for those customers who cannot place orders on Double Eleven for some reason?

 Control price fluctuations.

Tmall has also proposed corresponding solutions for this situation.

The Double Eleven event regulations also stipulate that during the Double Eleven warm-up period, the price fluctuation of goods participating in the event cannot exceed 10% of the average price in October.

For example, if a piece of clothing is priced at 100 yuan throughout October, then before Double Eleven, even if the price increases, it cannot exceed 110 yuan. Of course, the price reduction cannot be lower than 90 yuan.

In this way, even if the price you buy is higher, you can still accept it, after all, the price difference is still within a certain range.

From this simple perspective, Tmall’s core approach is to find a way to anchor the lowest price on Double Eleven Day and ensure that the price fluctuations will not be too large during the rest of the time. This way, users can enjoy the benefits of low prices, while significantly reducing negative reviews and increasing the popularity of Double Eleven activities. It is really good to kill three birds with one stone.

Of course, there are still many specific details that need to be considered in the actual implementation. Due to space considerations, I can only list a few of them here.

Are there any other approaches?

To sum up, the practices of major e-commerce platforms are actually similar, and can basically be summarized in these few sentences.

For Double Eleven-level site-wide promotions, do a good job of pre-control and control prices over a period of time to ensure that users get the lowest price during the promotion or event . Let price-sensitive users buy products on Double Eleven as much as possible to avoid negative reviews.

For daily purchasing behaviors, in addition to basic price regulations, price protection measures are strengthened for some commodities . Within a period of time after purchase (usually 15 to 30 days), if users find that the price of the commodity has dropped, they can obtain price protection in advance and obtain certain compensation.

Basically, these two types of measures protect the rights and interests of users as much as possible while keeping costs under control.

However, there are a few points worthy of our attention. Whether it is the investment rules of the whole site promotion or the price protection policy, they are almost passive behaviors. In other words, as long as users do not actively give bad reviews, they rarely take the initiative to compensate.

After all, for most users, a two-month time interval can basically ensure that they will not be deprived of products due to price changes. After all, if you buy a mobile phone in September and find the price is lower in November, you usually won’t chase the merchant. Similarly, if you have been using a household appliance worth several thousand yuan for a month and you find that the price on an e-commerce platform is a few hundred yuan lower, you can accept that.

This is an important prerequisite for the current price guarantee measures to be effective.

However, there still seem to be problems for some special industries and products.

For example, we are currently preparing for our third anniversary celebration at Sanjieke . We are also faced with the need to hold a one-month Thanksgiving promotion for all users.

But we will find that the method mentioned above is only applicable to physical e-commerce. It seems difficult to copy it directly for educational companies like Sanjieke.

The core problem is that physical e-commerce can delay the price reduction for one to two months so that users can gradually accept it, but this is almost impossible for educational products.

To give the simplest example, if you bought a mobile phone two months before Double Eleven, and the phone has arrived, and then the phone is discounted during Double Eleven, you will most likely just feel that you are unlucky and missed the good time of the Double Eleven discount.

But education itself is a service delivery product. If you buy a course from Sanjieke, in order to ensure the value we deliver to users and be responsible for the learning outcomes, Sanjieke will continue to provide you with services in the next 1-2 months through methods such as urging you to complete training in class groups, and providing 1V1 teaching assistant comments and feedback.

Now, imagine that you may have originally spent 1,000 yuan to buy a course, and the service of this course has not ended yet, but now the school where you are taking the course tells you that they are going to have a promotion and the original 1,000 yuan course will only be sold for 800 yuan. What would you think?

Basically, unlike users of e-commerce platforms, you will most likely feel very unhappy, think you paid too high, and think this school is not authentic.

Therefore, as an education company, if we want to do something like a big promotion, how to ensure the effectiveness of the event while not making old users too uncomfortable is actually a big challenge.

You may say: Why bother so much? It’s so troublesome. Why not just not do the big promotion?

However, considering the context of the 3rd anniversary of Sanjieke, we find this choice unacceptable.

Because we all feel that Sanjieke is a company nurtured by its users, and its relationship with its users is special. It is difficult for us to accept that on the occasion of Sanjieke’s 3rd anniversary, we do nothing ourselves and have no feedback or expression to our users in any form.

So, how to solve the problem of price difference for old users while promoting big sales and even giving them some special exclusive benefits at the same time? We finally came up with a plan like this:

1. For users who have just purchased courses within 3 months before the big sale, price difference compensation will be implemented. The standard for implementation is: take the lowest price of a single course in the past 3 months and give 1.3 times the price difference as compensation to ensure that there is enough sincerity for these users;

2. Give an exclusive benefit to a larger number of old users across the entire site during the 3rd anniversary school celebration promotion: a 3rd anniversary school celebration exclusive commemorative gift box worth 200 yuan (including a notebook, a matte gel pen, a bookmark, an iPhone prototype picture book, and an exclusive 925 silver commemorative medal) + a Thanksgiving card worth 600 yuan (The Thanksgiving card is the only card that can be used in conjunction with other coupons on the site during the promotion period). All old users only need to pay 99 yuan to purchase it.

As for other users, they can still enjoy various activity discounts and benefits during the promotion period.

Through such mechanism design, we have managed to take into account both the feelings of old users and the effectiveness of the promotion activities to the greatest extent possible.

The above are roughly some of our thoughts and observations on the issue of "how to deal with the dissatisfaction of old users after paid products are sold at a discount". I hope it will be inspiring to you.

Source: Zhang Chengyi