Huang Zheng’s “Disney” is hidden in Pinduoduo’s live broadcast . After removing the threshold for live streaming, the wildly growing businesses and users have created a multi-dimensional space that blends complex live streaming formats. From live broadcasts in shops and stalls as busy as hypermarkets to singing, dancing, chatting and shouting, to trading games such as guessing the pearls from clams and auctioning raw stones, there are also many fragments of life shared by ordinary people. We selected seven representative slices and tried to restore the embryonic form of this "Disney" theme park.

Huang Zheng’s “Disney” is hidden in Pinduoduo’s live broadcast.

Huang Zheng has repeatedly emphasized that "Costco+Disney" is Pinduoduo's development goal and the future of the consumer retail market. The construction of "Costco" is gradually progressing, but in terms of building "Disney", Pinduoduo once only had three small games such as "Duoduo Orchard".

The emergence of live streaming provides a core amusement facility for Pinduoduo's "Disney". If Pinduoduo wants to increase user retention time and build user dependence on the platform by selling happiness, it needs a sufficiently solid entertainment and content ecosystem. Live streaming that combines content, entertainment and strong conversion effects is a proven feasible solution.

Since its official launch in January, the "Buddhist" Pinduoduo Live has been a complex object of observation. Unlike Taobao Live, which does not have top anchors such as Wei Ya and Li Jiaqi who can easily make over 100 million yuan in sales, it relies on massive store broadcasts and ordinary users as its main force. Unlike Douyin and Kuaishou, which set up independent traffic entrances for live broadcasts, it scatters them on the store homepage, live broadcasts in the same city and follow-up lists.

Different live streaming entrances in Pinduoduo

But there is still value in restoring the overall appearance of Pinduoduo's live broadcast. Restricted by the low average order value and low-profit product structure, professional MCNs and institutional anchors are unable to enter the market. In order to break the dilemma of the vacuum of anchors, Pinduoduo began to vigorously promote store live broadcasts, using stores as the basic unit to leverage live broadcasts. At the same time, it decentralized the live broadcast capabilities to ordinary users, launched a same-city live broadcast entrance, and built a live broadcast ecosystem in a more "Pinduoduo" way.

After removing the threshold for live streaming, the wildly growing businesses and users have created a multi-dimensional space that blends complex live streaming formats. Live broadcasts and walking broadcasts from shops and stalls with different selling methods, live shows ranging from singing and dancing to chatting and shouting, trading games such as guessing the pearl from clams and auctioning raw stones, as well as more fragments of life shared by ordinary people, together constitute the content ecology of Pinduoduo's live broadcast.

We selected seven representative slices and tried to restore the embryonic form of this "Disney" theme park.

01 Store Broadcast

The camera in the live broadcast room of "Zhou Ji Local Specialties" is aimed at the containers by the door and the long street outside the store.

Outside the door were strolling old men and women carrying baskets on their backs. From time to time, passers-by came into the store to shop, holding local specialties and bargaining with the owner. While greeting customers, the boss was paying attention to the live broadcast interface. If any viewer was interested in the mung bean skin and fermented tofu in the product link and sent the product number in the comment area, the boss would stand up and show the product to the camera.

Store live streaming is the main force of Pinduoduo's live streaming. Unlike Taobao Live, many of Pinduoduo's store broadcasts are based on real offline stalls, stores and warehouses. There are no professional live broadcast room settings such as exquisite lighting and luxurious backgrounds. Only a mobile phone is used to copy the real transaction scenes online.

After leaving the "Zhou Ji Local Products Shop", I walked into "Cool Eagle Auto Products". This electric car dealer placed the live broadcast scene in its warehouse. The shopping guide explained the different models to the audience in front of the rows of electric cars in the warehouse. Home Supplies Direct, a store that sells lazy mops, demonstrates the mops they sell in the living room at home. In addition, the real and diverse sales scenes in offices, factories, and workshops create a magical "shopping" feeling.

In these scenarios, the host’s role is closer to the traditional offline “shopping guide”. They no longer explain and put products on the shelves one by one according to existing scripts. Instead, they select corresponding products to explain from dozens to hundreds of product links based on the needs of the audience in one-to-many interactions.

Pinduoduo’s women’s clothing channel is a typical case. In the live broadcasts of popular women's clothing stores such as Qiaojis Women's Wear and Linzifang Women's Wear, where the number of people online at the same time exceeded 10,000, the anchors stood in the middle of several rows of hangers. They served as shopping guides and fitting models at the same time. According to the clothing numbers sent by the audience in the comment area, they quickly selected clothes between the shelves, tried them on to show the effects, and introduced the selling points at a very fast speed. The V-neck is slim-fitting, the fabric is comfortable, and the price is affordable. During the introduction without pause, the camera also zooms in for a close-up to show the fabric details and elasticity of the clothes.

Each piece of clothing will be displayed for no more than 1 minute, but there will be multiple opportunities to be displayed. As long as the audience requests, the host will repeatedly try them on and explain them. The product numbers kept scrolling in the comment area, and messages of successful group orders popped up one after another. The entire live broadcast room was like a high-speed assembly line, and the anchor was the key gear.

The live broadcast of Qiaojis women's clothing lasts from 7 am to 1 am, with three anchors taking turns. The live broadcast of Linzifang women's clothing also lasts from 7 am to 12 pm that night. The live broadcast lasts for a whole day, like an online version of a women's clothing stall. The audience are the customers coming and going, and the host is the shopping guide in the store, thus restoring a shopping experience that is closer to offline.

02 “Small Supermarket”

"It can stick to anything, even your broken cell phone." "Hard plastic, soft plastic, workers' helmets, TV covers at home, everything is secure after sticking."

On Pinduoduo, a bottle of glue that costs five yuan can also set up a live broadcast room - the pre-recorded glue demonstration video is played in a loop, and the background music is the jingle that I often hear in the market and on the street, which is played in a loop on the loudspeakers at the stalls.

In Pinduoduo live broadcast, "gadgets" represented by glue can be seen in many live broadcast rooms. Combined with the down-to-earth selling method, the process of visiting these live broadcast rooms always reminds me of the small supermarkets near my hometown.

Unlike first-tier shopping malls, cheap electrical appliances can also have their own areas in "small supermarkets", and Pinduoduo's digital area plays this role. Pinduoduo once used "10 billion subsidies" to break into first-tier cities with digital products such as Apple mobile phones and Lenovo computers, but outside the scope of platform subsidies, "Little La Jiao" was the "top streamer" in Pinduoduo's digital zone live broadcast room.

Founded in 2012, "Xiao La Jiao" mainly sells products with a unit price of around 500 yuan. It has opened a flagship store on Pinduoduo, and a single live broadcast can attract more than 30,000 viewers.

"Xiaomi X9, 6.3-inch high-definition water drop screen, MediaTek 6763 octa-core processor, 8-megapixel front camera and 16-megapixel rear camera, 32GB starting at 388 yuan..." In the live broadcast room, the anchor introduced the configuration of Xiao La Jiao's new mobile phone and answered questions left by the audience in the comment area from time to time.

A viewer left a message asking: "Can this phone play King of Glory?" The anchor immediately replied that the X9 with 64GB storage space and above can run King of Glory smoothly, but he recommended another high-end configuration phone from Xiaomi - the Xiaomi P40, which starts at 600 yuan and has a back panel that is extremely similar to the Huawei P40. Afterwards, the host began to introduce the Xiaomi Mi 5 P40.

In addition to the "digital area", Pinduoduo's live broadcast room also formed a "vegetable market" with a full range of products. The agricultural products sold on Taobao Live are mainly fruits and vegetables, while Pinduoduo covers multiple categories including fruits and vegetables, meat, seafood, eggs, etc.

"Liuhe Youxuan" located in Linyi, Shandong, started selling pork in the live broadcast room. Spare ribs, tenderloin, pork belly and pig's trotters were displayed in turn, and the host introduced the color, fatness, quarantine status and price of each part with a level of detail comparable to that of a beauty host introducing lipstick.

Exit the "Liuhe Youxuan" live broadcast room and return to the "Fruits and Fresh Produce" category. Live broadcast rooms for beef, fish, shrimp, fruits, vegetables, etc. appear on the screen one after another. From time to time, you can see more distinctive local specialties such as "Golden Box Purple Garlic" and "Jinzhou Dried Tofu".

Live streaming has extended deeper into life because of “cloud grocery shopping”. Users can enjoy the full experience of selecting and buying vegetables in the “vegetable market”. The only drawback is that it cannot be delivered instantly - meat products arrive in one day, but vegetables and fruits require two to three days.

03 Walking Broadcast

The "down-to-earth" Pinduoduo is very close to offline transactions. In addition to store owners broadcasting themselves and selling products in their stores, many users' live broadcast rooms also use a walking broadcast method, focusing the camera on local specialty markets and sources of goods, connecting offline sources of goods with online consumers.

Anchor "Chi Yali" is one of them. Shuangyang District of Changchun City where she is located is a famous "hometown of sika deer" and is rich in deer products. Every morning, Chi Yali brings her mobile phone to the local antler square to live broadcast her shopping and selection of goods, restoring the original trading scene of antler for users.

In the camera, there are several large iron basins and an electronic scale at each stall. In the iron basins are whole pieces of antlers that are stained with blood and hair and have not yet been sliced. Chi Yali has several sellers she is familiar with. After she brings the audience from the live broadcast room to the stall, the sellers weigh the antlers on the spot and quote prices. Chi Yali then bargains with the anchor based on the messages from the audience in the comment area.

Most of the live broadcasts are of a "traceable" nature. The anchor leads the audience to the upstream wholesale market of the origin, using "no middlemen to make a profit" and lower retail prices as selling points to help merchants sell their products.

Taking Chi Yali’s live broadcast room as an example, the deer antlers with an original price of 500 yuan were finally sold at a price of 460 to 480 yuan. While the two sides were bargaining, a truck was parked in the distance waiting to be loaded and shipped. The tug-of-war between the two sides lasts about five minutes before an order is completed. Chi Yali said goodbye to the seller with satisfaction and walked to the next stall with the camera.

Live broadcast hosts like Chi Yali act as transaction middlemen, helping viewers to view and select goods, helping viewers and merchants negotiate more favorable prices, and asking for some small benefits, such as a bottle of wine, and free delivery of the goods to their homes. As a third party in the transaction, the characteristics of "neutrality" and "knowledgeableness" make it easier for the anchor to gain the trust of the audience and earn agency fees from the transaction.

The anchor of the live broadcast room "Yuancui Jewelry" is online for more than ten hours every day, taking the audience into the jade market on the China-Myanmar border. She stopped in front of different stalls and selected products for the viewers based on the styles or budgets they left in the comment section. For every order completed, she would charge a 10% purchasing fee.

04 "Game Hall"

If we talk about the most "Disney" and playful slice of Pinduoduo's live broadcast, it must be the jewelry and cultural relics live broadcast. Other live broadcast rooms provide goods and meet users' consumption needs, while the jewelry and cultural relics live broadcast room provides users with exciting gaming experiences in the name of transactions.

In categories such as digital products, women's clothing, and fruits, a live broadcast room with tens of thousands of simultaneous online viewers is already a top live broadcast room. However, in the jewelry and cultural relics channels, popular live broadcast rooms can attract hundreds of thousands of viewers. The number of viewers for the top live broadcast room "Dong Yu Di Jewelry" can even reach 3 million. This makes the live broadcast room of jewelry and cultural relics the most lively "game room" in Pinduoduo.

Picking up bargains at low prices is the most common way of playing in the live broadcast room. Jade articles, walnuts, bracelets and other collectibles are put on the shelves in limited quantities in the name of "picking up a bargain", with only a few pieces in stock. The anchor announces at the top of his voice that the items are ready for sale, and users begin to compete in hand speed - the first one to enter the product number or the number specified by the anchor represents the successful pick-up of the bargain.

Afterwards, the anchor wrote down the buyer's ID and price on a label and stuck it on the product in front of the camera. This represented that the ownership of the product had been settled and also proved to the audience that the merchant would not exchange goods privately. The inventory of a product will be cleared out within a few seconds, and then the next round of "picking up bargains" will begin.

The prices of bargain hunting items range from several thousand yuan to as low as twenty yuan, and no one can tell whether the price is worth it. However, under the dual stimulation of the "bargain hunting" mentality and the high-paced operation, the audience often enjoys this way of playing the game.

"Auction" is another very popular game, and compared to ready-made products, jadeite raw stones with their own gambling nature have increased the fun of the auction to a certain extent.

The price of the raw stone auction was not as shocking as imagined. In the live broadcast room of "Guangshuo Jewelry", the starting price of a raw stone was 200 yuan, and the price increased by 100 yuan each time, and finally it was sold at a price of 1,100 yuan. Most of these raw stone auction live broadcast rooms have their own familiar customer base, and the users in the live broadcast rooms are also familiar with each other. When the anchor shows the raw stone, regular customers predict the quality of the stone in the comment section, or share their experiences of buying raw stones. Someone said that he opened a "black chicken" (a kind of jade) in this live broadcast room a few days ago, and was chased by many people who wanted to "share in the good luck."

Unlike vertical cultural relics trading platforms, Pinduoduo Live does not have an "auction" trading model at the functional level, but in the absence of infrastructure, merchants and players jointly invent and follow a set of rules. Generally speaking, merchants put virtual goods on the shelves at a unit price of 50 yuan. Interested parties bid in the comment area, and the winning buyer buys the corresponding number of virtual goods based on the transaction amount. The gameplay born from the underlying ecology has surpassed the original official technical concept.

The "Pearl Opening Clams" game that became popular on platforms such as Taobao, Douyin and Kuaishou is also welcomed by Pinduoduo users. By bidding 150 yuan for the "live pearl opening" service, users get a ticket to participate in the game. They can choose the type of clams in the live broadcast room, and the host will open the clams on the spot, showing the camera the pearls of different sizes, colors and shapes in the clams. With the help of the clam-opening gameplay, live broadcast rooms such as "Zhu Xiaoming Pearl" can attract hundreds of thousands of online viewers.

Over time, these live broadcast rooms will be able to gather a group of regular customers, and in addition to transactions and games, the possibility of social interaction will also be created. The live broadcast gameplay that extends from transactions to entertainment interaction is in line with Huang Zheng’s "Disney" dream - to achieve long-term user retention and mind building through an entertaining and content-based live broadcast ecosystem.

05 Show

When you open Pinduoduo’s “Same City Live Broadcast”, most of the top recommendations are live broadcasts of celebrity shows.

Pinduoduo’s show mainly features singing and chatting. The anchor turned on the beauty filter and sang popular songs such as "Buddhist Girl" into the microphone. He interacted with the audience in the comment area from time to time and called on "family members" who clicked into the live broadcast room to follow him. Different from the handsome men and beautiful women in Huajiao and Yingke, atypical show hosts such as the "Rose with Thorns" in the 1980s dance hall style and the Northeastern rap master "Mujian" are also very popular. With the huge decibel DJ background sound, they skillfully greet the friends who walk into the live broadcast room.

To some extent, Pinduoduo’s live show reminded me of the early days of “Kuaishou”, which was low-end and crude.

"Yelang Chengming" is a well-known comedian who wears a melon-shaped hat and speaks in a hot Northeastern accent. During a live broadcast, he repeatedly joked about the appearance of a female anchor: "If I look like a peacock, she is at most a crow. "Some of the jokes were even risqué," Send her to the South. You won't make a penny as her agent. "In addition to telling jokes, he also performs social shaking, drinking Coke upside down and imitating an old lady, and is skilled in operating the computer to play pre-recorded sound effects such as laughter and applause.

The emergence of show live streaming and the diversification of show styles all stem from the fact that Pinduoduo has delegated the live streaming capability to ordinary users with a very low threshold. Users only need to click "I want to start broadcasting" and upload a photo of their ID card to have their own live streaming room.

Rewarding is the soul of the show. Pinduoduo has also opened a reward function for the live broadcast room, with virtual reward props such as beer, crowns, rockets, and dream castles, with prices ranging from 1 yuan to 500 yuan. However, the method of rewarding with virtual gifts is not popular in Pinduoduo live broadcasts. I rarely see a user giving gifts and the anchor immediately thanking the user. High-priced virtual gifts are even more insulated from most anchors.

In order to increase their income, show hosts will "incidentally" put up dozens of product links in the live broadcast room, mainly common commodities such as food and daily necessities with low customer unit prices, and simply recommend one or two sentences to the audience in between singing.

There are also anchors who mainly sell goods and use rap as a supplement. When the anchor is "eyes" rapping and sees a viewer asking in the comment section if there are any socks, he immediately picks up his phone and goes to the merchant to ask for the goods while the music is still playing.

06 Pinduoduo’s “Lifestyle”

When Pinduoduo delegated its live streaming capabilities to more ordinary users, Pinduoduo's live streaming, which has zero threshold and is easy to use, has become a stage for users to share their lives.

Brother Doudou, who sells egg-filled pancakes, likes to start live streaming in the early morning. His live streaming room is called "Brother Doudou's Shop" and the camera is aimed at his egg-filled pancake stall. When he was busy, Brother Doudou flew up and down with a spatula in his hand to make egg-filled pancakes. He had no time to communicate or interact with the audience. All he could hear in the noisy background was customers asking him to "add an egg and sausage" and the frequent WeChat payment notification sounds.

At first, Brother Dou Dou just wanted to share his daily business life, which attracted him a group of fans. Every live broadcast had hundreds to thousands of viewers. They watched Brother Dou Dou make egg-filled pancakes and wrote "I'm so greedy" in the comment section. Some people even advised him to open an online store. Recently, Brother Dou Dou started to post the product link of "Tianche Brand Chili Sauce" in the live broadcast room.

Lao Xue likes to start broadcasting while he is taking a walk. His live broadcast room "Lao Xue's Home" is like a small lecture hall of financial knowledge. He told the audience very frankly that he had not received any professional subject education, but he usually liked to "read books and newspapers", and what he shared with the audience were his own reading experiences. His recent topics are the impact of urban clusters and the 10th anniversary of Xiaomi. He can often be seen discussing concepts such as AIoT with the audience, and they will even argue when they disagree.

Anchor Sister Zhou has her own store on Pinduoduo, selling Wuchang rice produced by her own family. But Sister Zhou rarely shouts or calls out to sell her products during live broadcasts. Every morning from six to eight o'clock, she goes to her own rice fields and vegetable greenhouses, takes viewers on a tour of the agricultural production areas, and shares tips for growing rice. Many viewers got up early to watch Sister Zhou’s live broadcast, and shared with her their impressions of the Northeast fields and their own farming memories in the comment section.

Weiwei Yiren does yoga exercises live from 6 to 8 every morning in her own living room. She takes a break every half hour and interacts and chats with thousands of viewers in the live broadcast room. She "learned the movements from the computer" and also "paid for the lessons." After two hours of yoga, she would say goodbye to the audience, go offline, pack up and go to work. This 40-year-old female anchor has begun calling on some sisters of similar age to check in and do morning exercises in her live broadcast room.

Some people wore headsets and led the audience in doing aerobics, while others held a book and talked about "Romance of the Three Kingdoms". By sharing their own "lifestyles", users contributed a three-dimensional picture of life to Pinduoduo. When the entry of professional MCNs has not been very effective, the spontaneous production behavior of grassroots users has accumulated a rich and diverse content ecosystem for Pinduoduo.

07 Live streaming of goods

Compared with the reward model with limited acceptance, e-commerce is still a smoother conversion method for Pinduoduo in the live broadcast scenario. Pinduoduo also hopes to see the emergence of professional anchors selling goods. As early as the beginning of its launch, Pinduoduo's promotion platform "Duoduo Jinbao" has connected e-commerce and local live streaming. After the anchors accumulate fans through local live streaming, they can directly connect with merchants to do live streaming and selling goods.

Yunyun is a live-streaming anchor who grew up in Pinduoduo. The number of people online simultaneously during her single live broadcast can reach hundreds of thousands. The background of her live broadcast room is two huge shelves, which display the products sold that day.

Although the average customer spending is low, the prices of goods in the live broadcast room still have room for decline. Each product is equipped with live broadcast room exclusive coupons of different amounts and quantities. Users need to collect the coupons first and then jump to place an order. Anchors like Yunyun who have hundreds of thousands of viewers are considered top hosts, and a single product can get thousands of exclusive live broadcast rooms.

The average coupon collection rate in Yunyun's live broadcast room is about 50%. 14 rolls of paper towels, which originally cost 9.9 yuan, can be purchased at 4.9 yuan with a 5 yuan coupon in the live broadcast room; the "Procona" lipstick priced at 59.9 yuan can be sold at a "limited time flash sale" price of 9.9 yuan with a 50 yuan coupon.

In addition to issuing coupons, Yunyun will also put some "welfare orders" on the shelves, such as an electric toothbrush priced at 4.9 yuan. After the audience grabs the order, they also need to follow the anchor before the goods can be shipped. In addition, she will also distribute cash red envelopes from time to time in the live broadcast room, or provide full cash back for product purchases.

Through professional live-streaming hosts like Yunyun, Pinduoduo hopes to gain its own Viya, Li Jiaqi and Simba. However, compared with the highly mature Taobao Live, and Douyin and Kuaishou, which have quickly built up a live streaming ecosystem for selling goods, Pinduoduo's budding speed is not fast enough. Pinduoduo also tried to replicate the live streaming style of celebrities, inviting celebrities such as Marbury and Wallace Chung to join, and created a benchmark case in which host Zhou Tao's debut show earned 140 million yuan, but the overall effect was not obvious.

The strategy of leaving the possibility of live streaming to merchants and users to "grow wildly" has brought Pinduoduo a variety of gameplay and a rich content ecosystem. Even in the interweaving of many slices, the "Disney" that Huang Zheng repeatedly mentioned has taken shape. This is a success in terms of promoting vitality.

The next question we need to consider is how to further diversify the levels of the live streaming ecosystem, such as adding professional live streaming with products that have higher conversion efficiency. This bizarre and diverse "Disneyland" will eventually become the content engine that maintains Pinduoduo's efficient internal operations.

Author: Liu Haochuan

Source: "New Business Intelligence NBT" (ID: newbusinesstrend)