Pinduoduo, the “Master of Fission”

Pinduoduo has always been a classic example of fission marketing in the Internet field. Among them, the red envelope support activity is probably one of Pinduoduo's most well-known activities. By attracting new users and giving corresponding red envelope rewards to users, Pinduoduo has gained a large number of new users in a short period of time. Nowadays, there are multiple types of red envelope support activities on the Pinduoduo main interface.

Last Thursday, Pinduoduo’s red envelope sharing link appeared again in my group of relatives and friends. Before opening this link, I had never thought that my mood could be so up and down on this ordinary night, and the moods of my relatives and friends who helped me also fluctuated.

How deep is the water of Pinduoduo’s red envelope sharing?

At least after the experience, I redefined Pinduoduo's "fission marketing".

1. Fission red envelopes: In Pinduoduo, cents are not the smallest unit of RMB

The story began on the afternoon of June 10th, when a good friend shared a link to Pinduoduo in the group. After I refused to click on it, this friend tempted me with a treat after winning the prize. The verbal invitation from his good friend named Liu was the root of all evil that night.

So I downloaded Pinduoduo and entered the "Cash Roulette" event in which this friend participated by sharing the link. This is an event that Pinduoduo had launched as early as March. Just by sharing the link and getting help from friends, you might be able to get 500 yuan.

After I made some contributions, I also got several chances to draw a lottery. The lottery showed that I could get a reward of 500 yuan, but I needed to get the 500 yuan through the lottery by roulette. After getting the red envelopes from the roulette given by the system several times, I still needed a few cents to withdraw the 500 yuan.

Enticed by the 500 yuan bonus, I got involved.

The first step is to invite WeChat friends to help. Every time you share the link to help your WeChat friends, you can get at least 0.01 yuan through the lottery, so it seems that you can eventually achieve a total amount of 500 yuan.

When I was only 0.02 yuan away from transferring 500 yuan to WeChat in advance, according to previous experience, I only needed the help of two friends to achieve the goal. At this time, an unexpected variable appeared.

The neglected gold coin option on the turntable appeared in the lottery. The minimum prize for the lottery was no longer 0.01 yuan, but 1 gold coin. Correspondingly, 0.02 yuan became a goal that required 20 gold coins to achieve, and only a few gold coins could be obtained in each lottery.

However, as a technology reporter, it is a very embarrassing thing to not only fail to take advantage of Pinduoduo but also be fooled by Pinduoduo, so I decided to stick to it.

However, when there was only one gold coin left, the gold coins also changed - 0.1 gold coins appeared, which meant that it might take 9 more shares to get the final 0.9 gold coins.

I gritted my teeth and continued this long process, which became even longer when I only had 0.2 gold coins left. There is nothing that Pinduoduo cannot do that I can't think of. Another change has occurred. Users can only get diamonds through the lottery, and these 0.2 gold coins correspond to 20 diamonds.

It turns out that what Pinduoduo is doing is not user fission, but the fission of one cent, the fission of RMB in the Internet field. It can be split into 10 gold coins, then into 1,000 diamonds, or even diamonds counted in decimals...

This lottery wheel is not a wheel, it’s a sieve. At this time, I began to doubt myself for the first time in front of Pinduoduo. I realized that I might not be able to take advantage of Pinduoduo. After all, the Internet thinking of this app with a market value of hundreds of billions of US dollars must be more advanced than that of an ordinary Internet practitioner like me.

But at this moment I was in a dilemma. If I didn’t give up, would I encounter a deeper fission? But if I give up now, will I have actually taken the longest path but given up the easiest step?

At this moment, I was amazed at Pinduoduo for the first time. Pinduoduo's product manager must be a master who is well versed in economics, or at least a master who is well versed in how the sunk cost theory should be applied to users. However, a video sent by a friend made me give up this struggle.

As early as April this year, a blogger named "Lan Xi" made an attempt. In the video, after collecting the help of 500+ friends, he successfully unveiled the final mystery of the "Cash Roulette". He entered the last step, which means that he can no longer draw the last gold coins or diamonds, and can only draw the "Blessing Scroll".

Source: Video screenshot

The function of this prop is to give you a blessing. Yes, a blessing of "I wish you good luck and continue to draw cash." However, even after the video host had received support from more than 500 friends, he still did not receive the final cash reward.

2. Withdrawal steps of fission: Can withdraw ≠ withdraw the full amount immediately

Although I decided to give up the roulette wheel game, I was still a little unwilling. At this time, I saw another Dragon Boat Festival event of Pinduoduo - "100 million cash shake event".

The two activities are very similar. The interface shows that the amount of cash I can withdraw in the "100 Million Shake Cash Activity" is 600. While I need to share the support of WeChat friends, a shake method has been added, and I can receive red envelopes from Pinduoduo on a regular basis.

This time, to my surprise, I easily reached the withdrawal amount of 600 yuan.

Is this Pinduoduo’s sincerity during the Dragon Boat Festival?

While I couldn't believe it, I excitedly clicked the withdrawal button. At this moment, I was completely shocked. Although it showed that I had a withdrawal amount of 600 yuan, I only withdrew 0.1 yuan. After paying 20% ​​tax, I received 8 cents from Pinduoduo on my WeChat.

After taking a closer look at the withdrawal interface, I realized again that this time Pinduoduo was not trying to split the red envelope amount, but to split the withdrawal steps. Although it says, "Only XX yuan is needed to unlock 600 yuan withdrawal." However, 600 yuan cannot be withdrawn at one time. Although you have obtained 600 yuan in cash from the previous assistance, the opportunity to withdraw the money still requires assistance.

After withdrawing 0.1 yuan, you need help from your friends three times before you can make the second and third withdrawals. After four withdrawals, I successfully withdrew 1.63 yuan. At this point, the amount of power required to unlock the next cash withdrawal opportunity has become ten times, and there is not much time left before the 600 yuan red envelope expires (expires at 24:00 every night)...

Faced with such pervasive "fission thinking", I can only applaud and praise: It's so brilliant, Pinduoduo is worthy of being the Internet fission master. When I decided to completely give up on taking advantage of the bargains and put an end to this Pinduoduo night with a period of surrender. Xiaoba, a colleague who helped me before, sent me an unexpected message: she was almost fleeced by Pinduoduo.

When I was confused, Xiao Ba said that after entering the Pinduoduo support interface, she received a pop-up window indicating that she had a chance to get a free meal for the entire store. Specifically, Xiao Ba can choose any product from a batch of goods with the maximum amount not exceeding 45 yuan, and the official will eventually return the cash to her directly through WeChat.

In the end, Xiao Ba bought a Bull socket worth 43 yuan with free shipping. Before placing the order, the payment interface clearly stated "Once receipt is confirmed, the full payment amount will be refunded." However, the reminder from Pinduoduo after placing the order made Xiaoba, who is also a technology reporter, feel hurt.

This time the prompt clearly states the steps to achieve cash back: 1. The payment application has been submitted, 2. Check in for 7 consecutive days to get WeChat change, 3. The payment has been received.

Xiao Ba thought he had resisted the temptation of a 500 yuan red envelope, but unexpectedly he stumbled when it came to shopping cashback. After Xiaoba angrily refunded the money and uninstalled the app, I received another piece of bad news from my mother – “You cheated me into buying something for 7.9.”

It turned out that while she was doing her best to help me today, she had also been wandering in the temptation city of Pinduoduo. In the end, my mother also received the message that the entire meal was free, and she spent 7.98 yuan to buy an air freshener. And because the amount was small, my mother decided not to refund.

I don’t know whether my mother can successfully get back the 7.9 yuan after signing in for seven consecutive days. I don’t know how many people like me were eventually "convinced" by Pinduoduo's fission, and I don’t know how many middle-aged women like my mother contributed a few yuan of turnover to Pinduoduo under such circumstances.

3. What Pinduoduo is fissioning is its own sense of shame

During the entire process of wandering around Pinduoduo's City of Desire, I have been thinking about a question: Has Pinduoduo committed any illegal acts in this series of actions?

When I reflected on it afterwards, I carefully looked through the rules of the "Cash Wheel" and found that it did not explicitly mention that one cent is the lowest unit of measurement for RMB. It also mentioned the existence of the "gold coin" item, although it did not give a specific conversion method. For the 100 million yuan cash draw activity, it only stated "You can withdraw XX yuan if you only need XX yuan", instead of "You can withdraw the full amount". As for the shopping cashback activity, it only stated "The WeChat change will be directly deposited into your account", instead of clearly stating "After signing in for seven days, the WeChat change will be directly deposited into your account".

When I tried to contact customer service, I finally saw the complete rules of several activities under "Guess what you want to ask". But these rules, which were not clearly stated at the beginning, inevitably misled me and guided my subsequent series of behaviors.

There are many people who have been misled in this way. On Heimao Complaints, there are many complaints about activities similar to Pinduoduo, including other cash activities and some bargaining activities. They are all similar routines that break down when users think they have succeeded.

Regarding the above experience, Yan Wenping, senior partner of Beijing Dongwei (Chengdu) Law Firm, said that when users participate in activities such as "100 million shake for cash", "Cash Roulette", and "Bargain and Get It for Free" on an e-commerce platform, from the perspective of the "Civil Code of the People's Republic of China", a contractual relationship is established between the user and the platform. The main reason for the dispute is that the platform's contract (rules) are unclear and the user's lack of understanding of the rules of the activity has led to the platform's infringement of the user to some extent.

From the perspective of the "Consumer Protection Law of the People's Republic of China", different situations and operating methods of the platform will infringe upon the user's right to know to varying degrees; from the perspective of the "Advertising Law of the People's Republic of China", some non-compliant practices of the platform may be suspected of deceiving and misleading consumers.

Of course, there are factors such as the platform taking advantage of users' psychology and the opaque rules. There are also factors such as users' unfamiliarity with the rules and being exploited and misled by the rules. There are also factors such as the country's inadequate supervision of this sector. But no matter what the reason, the platform's compliant operation is the general trend. Otherwise, the platform will only suffer the consequences.

Just last month, Pinduoduo released its first-quarter 2021 financial report, which showed that Pinduoduo's revenue in the first quarter was 22.17 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 239%; as of March 31, 2021, Pinduoduo's annual number of active buyers reached 823.8 million, a net increase of 195.7 million from the same period last year, allowing Pinduoduo to surpass Alibaba and become the number one e-commerce company.

Despite such a large scale, it can still achieve such rapid growth. Behind the scenes, fission marketing has played an indispensable role. With the sudden rise of Pinduoduo in recent years, its many activities of bringing in new customers (bargaining, group buying, etc.) have swept the entire Internet and caused widespread discussion in various circles.

Pinduoduo's simple, crude yet effective product means and operational strategies are a classic case of Internet marketing and have brought about many imitators. The reason why my friend is willing to participate in such sharing and red envelope activities is that she and the people around her have indeed received rewards from Pinduoduo after bringing new users to Pinduoduo.

However, what is splitting apart now is not just Pinduoduo's users, but perhaps also its own sense of shame.

If it is true as Huang Zheng repeatedly emphasized on the day of listing: "Pinduoduo relies largely on luck. This is driven by deep-seated underlying forces, very similar to the driving force of Shenzhen's reform and opening up thirty or forty years ago. We who are flourishing on this will experience explosive growth in whatever we do."

Then Pinduoduo should not treat these deep-seated underlying forces in this way. Even if treated in this way, the underlying forces will continue to bring them growth.

Author: Yin Zixuan

Source: Lieyun.com (ID: ilieyun)