Alibaba’s marketplace Taobao has dropped its presale period for the upcoming 618 shopping festival, a promotional mechanism that it had been using for a decade to stimulate sales. Previously under the strategy, consumers were required to pay a deposit in advance, and then pay the final amount within a specified date range, but would not receive the goods until after the latter had cleared, leading to longer delivery times than usual.
Why it matters: Alibaba is expected to focus on optimizing user experience during the mid-year shopping bonanza in an effort to offer more straightforward shopping steps akin to rival Pinduoduo.
Details: According to local media outlet LatePost, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu finally made the decision to cancel presale promotions after employees “overwhelmingly supported” the proposal in internal debates.
- The report added that presale deals would still appear in e-commerce livestreams, a major channel for presale items, mostly in the makeup category.
- The presale mechanism was seen as limiting for shoppers who wanted goods to be delivered immediately after placing their orders, a situation that has emerged as one of the sources of dissatisfaction during China’s largest shopping festivals. Taobao and Tmall have announced that they will kick off the country’s second-largest festival on May 20 this year, offering discounts for almost a month until June 18, or 618.
- Alibaba has also recently sharpened its focus on optimizing Taobao’s web-based platform, LatePost reported, after website version had been played down for years due to the popularity of mobile phones. Compared to the comprehensive shopping experience on mobiles and especially in app, Taboo’s website offers fewer features and consistently directed shoppers to download the app instead.
- “The only thing we’re doing at the moment is trying desperately to make up for some of the experiences we’ve lost in recent years,” said Zhao Kun, head of Taobao’s website, on Alibaba’s internal forum according to LatePost. The media outlet quoted his post as saying the team has launched more than 60 new features in less than two months.
Context: The changes are in line with Alibaba’s newly revived “user first” approach, one of the two key strategic areas emphasized by Eddie Wu, who currently also holds the chief executive position at the tech giant’s domestic e-commerce group and its cloud computing unit.
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