Lao Duan said: Customers are no longer God!

Internet TV is popular. At 24:00 tonight, TCL iQiyi TV Classic Edition will be on sale on Tmall for 2,999 yuan. The pre-orders far exceed the current production. But two years ago, the entire Internet industry was still filled with the haze of "TV is dying". It seems that humans are really forgetful. We basically overestimate the difficulty of changing ourselves. I prefer to say that Internet TV is the Internetization of TV, because it can be compared with the Internetization of computers and mobile phones. The key to the Internetization of TV is to change the "information asymmetry", making the information between hardware manufacturers and customers, operators and users, and video content and viewers more and more symmetrical.

In the era of information asymmetry, the principle is that “buyers are not as smart as sellers”, marketing is the key, and the core of marketing is how to give customers the feeling of being God. But as information becomes more and more symmetrical, marketing becomes less critical, that is, customers are no longer God, but users instead.
Although there is only one word difference between the word "user" and "client", their connotations are very different. Clients spend money to buy products and services, while users use products and services on a daily basis. For example, when you buy a TV, you are a customer, and when you watch it every day, you are a user. In the past, due to information asymmetry, it was very troublesome for you to compare the performance and price of various TVs, so it was very likely that you would be fooled in Gome and Suning and make an irrational purchase decision in an instant. But now, because of the Internet media, self-media, Weibo, and WeChat, it is very easy for you to obtain these comparative information, and the possibility of you being fooled in the store is greatly reduced. Even if you are fooled, you may easily spread this information so that subsequent people will not be fooled again, especially Weibo and WeChat Moments. In the past, you had to say it in person, but now you can do it in one minute with just a few clicks. For a long time, the customer experience of traditional TV manufacturers has been very good. Whether it is advertising in the media or doing one-to-one marketing in shopping malls, as long as the TV is sold, it will be fine, and generally speaking, as long as the quality is good, no one will really make trouble. But that is no longer possible, forcing Suning to painfully set the same price online and offline. In the past, prices in different places were different, and speculators could make a lot of money by selling goods in parallel, but now these opportunities are basically gone, the reason being, in addition to transportation, the Internet.
The core of the Internet is "free". Almost all Internet giants follow the successful path of "developing users for free, expanding market share, and finally making money through value-added services". The reason is that as a virtual service, the marginal cost of the Internet not only decreases but even reaches zero as the scale increases. Therefore, Internet TV should not only care about selling TV sets to customers, but also care about the user experience of using the TV sets in the future. Because if the user experience is not good, first, users will not use it much, so the future operating value will not exist. Second, the spread of this user will make subsequent customers not buy it, and the truth will come out. Therefore, we will see more and more TV manufacturers transfer the large amount of money they once spent on customer experience marketing to improving user experience. In the past, customers were God, and in the future, users will be God. The three major directions of user experience of Internet TV in the future are:

1. Design, including ID, UI, remote control design, as well as interaction and control;
2. Switching and interaction between live broadcast and on-demand;
3. Multi-screen interaction between mobile phones and TVs;
Whether a manufacturer does it independently or the upstream and downstream of the industry chain do it together, if they do these three things well, they may become the big winner of the future Internet TV. And the continued bluffing in publicity gimmicks and marketing will eventually prove to be just empty talk.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.