"Competition in the market?" Hu Jing was truly taken aback this time. Could she really determine that the opponent was about to launch a full-scale competition just from a detail like a price reduction on milk powder?
"Yes!" Seeing Hu Jing's genuinely bewildered and confused expression, Huang He felt greatly satisfied. He then continued, "Just looking at the milk powder incident alone, of course, you can't tell. But you have to combine it with other intelligence!"
Huang He presented the report from yesterday, along with a detailed data report from Jiangnan Mall. He said, "The merchant data here at Jiangnan Mall is showing some abnormalities. Hundreds of merchants who were originally very dedicated to their business have suddenly seen their enthusiasm for operations decline. It's likely they are preparing to open new shops elsewhere!"
"Merchants losing their operational enthusiasm, you can tell that too?" Hu Jing was shocked.
"Of course!" Huang He smiled slightly. "Look at these few merchants. A month ago, they were listing and delisting products more than 300 times a day! But they were selling the same old items. So, their frequent listing and delisting was an attempt to use the product recommendation mechanism to try and push to the top of the refreshed search recommendation list."
"Listing and delisting a product requires manual input of dynamic passwords each time. This is not something that can be done with script tools; it can only be done manually."
"If a merchant lists and delists 300 times a day, do you think they aren't enthusiastic about operating their shop?"
"But now, these merchants' daily operations have dropped to about 10 times, and many merchants aren't operating at all. This indicates that their spirit and attention are no longer focused on this shop."
"Also, the response speed of their customer service has started to slow down, and they are responding all at once after accumulating for a period, unlike before when they would reply almost immediately within a minute."
"All of this indicates that these merchants are not spending all 24 working hours in front of their computers as they used to, but are busy with other things in reality!"
"If one or two merchants showing this situation is normal, but hundreds of merchants are all showing this situation, and the product categories these hundreds of merchants are selling are exactly the same as the product categories that Haigou Mall is currently running promotions on, do you think there's no connection between them?" Huang He asked calmly. Hu Jing was instantly speechless; her intelligence was not sufficient to support such complex thinking.
In fact, this was not Huang He's personal credit, but the result of the collective efforts of hundreds of secretaries. After Boss Huang ordered them to figure out the anomaly with milk powder, a large number of secretaries began to specifically collect and review more detailed relevant data intelligence, which was then compiled by a deputy director in the secretariat.
These deputy directors were all directly responsible to Huang He, and Hu Jing, the chief secretary, had no authority over them. Naturally, she was unaware of the messages and intelligence they possessed.
Huang He could not possibly entrust all matters to one person; otherwise, he would become deaf and blind, only able to hear and see what Hu Jing wanted him to know.
"I understand Old Brother Ma. He is a very meticulous person, but he is also very open-minded. Therefore, he generally won't make a move, but once he does, he pursues the maximum!" Huang He rubbed his nose and said.
"But Boss, didn't you say before that it would take Old Brother Ma at least several years to stabilize the overseas daigou market and then start competing with us?" Hu Jing asked, confused.
"Yes, I also thought Old Brother Ma would need at least three years to settle down, but now he's making a move in less than half a year. It seems that Old Brother Ma's 'Money Maker' has earned too much money, so much that Old Brother Ma doesn't know how to spend it all, and can only use it for war with us!" Huang He smiled faintly.
"Then do we need to do anything? We can get ahead of them and launch a large-scale promotion first to suppress their momentum!"
"Or we can issue an order to the merchants below, prohibiting them from registering on any other e-commerce websites, otherwise, we will delete their shops and all recommendations," Hu Jing suggested softly.
"Boss, currently Jiangnan Group has no reaction. Our informants in Jiangnan Mall reported that Jiangnan Group has not made any arrangements against us. The entire operation of Jiangnan Mall is proceeding as usual, everything is normal!" Lou Wensheng, one of the Forty Bandits and the head of the marketing department, said from their headquarters in Hangzhou.
Among the Eighteen Arhats of the Forty Bandits, he was known for his meticulousness. While he was officially the head of the marketing department, he actually controlled the commercial intelligence team of the Forty Bandits.
Originally, the Forty Bandits did not have a commercial intelligence team. However, with the emergence of Jiangnan Group as an opponent, a commercial intelligence team became a necessary product for company development. They had successively dispatched over a dozen employees into Jiangnan Mall to obtain a continuous stream of intelligence.
Although these employees were currently at lower levels, responsible for frontline work, it was precisely because of this that they could obtain a lot of important information at the execution level.
"Huang He is too arrogant. Now, he probably doesn't even see me in his eyes anymore, so he won't pay attention to our actions!" Old Brother Ma said self-deprecatingly, but his gaze was sharp and fierce.
He was actually an extremely proud person, and what he couldn't stand the most was someone daring to disregard him. However, the current Huang He genuinely had the qualification to disregard him. After all, the man had started playing with advanced technologies like vacuum high-speed rail, which sounded unattainable to Old Brother Ma. And he, Old Brother Ma, was, to put it bluntly, currently just an overseas daigou, which was what pained Old Brother Ma the most.
But this also spurred Old Brother Ma to take further action. He was determined to strike hard in the e-commerce field and cut a slice from Jiangnan Mall to prove that he, Old Brother Ma, was not much worse than Huang He.
"How are your talks with the merchants in Jiangnan Mall going? How many people are willing to open stores on our platform?" Old Brother Ma asked.
"It's going well. We have contacted the top 1000 individual merchants by sales volume in Jiangnan Mall, and 900 of them have expressed their willingness to join our brand new 'Gouhuaisuan' mall!" Lou Wensheng replied.
"Only 90%? I thought with our favorable terms, at least over 95% of merchants would be willing to join!" Old Ma's words, though spoken this way, were accompanied by a very happy smile.
The top 1000 merchants in Jiangnan Mall almost monopolized more than 50% of the entire mall's sales. Now that 90% of them were willing to join their new mall, it meant they already possessed 40% of Jiangnan Mall's volume. This was a figure Old Brother Ma had never dared to imagine before, so of course, he had to smile!
"It's mainly because you, Chairman, have a firm grasp on these merchants' hearts and their weaknesses, and have given them very generous terms. We just presented the terms, and these merchants immediately agreed!" Lou Wensheng said with admiration.
The terms offered by Old Brother Ma were indeed very attractive. Firstly, all merchants who joined would receive a 5,000 yuan entry signing fee and be directly granted a five-star merchant title. This alone was enough to make countless merchants eager. And directly giving them a five-star merchant title!
After all, when they opened stores in Jiangnan Mall, let alone an entry signing fee, they also needed to obtain various certificates and undergo various inspections. While the staff of Jiangnan Merchants assisted them throughout the process, the various procedures were still too cumbersome.
Once a merchant opened a store, their shop title had no stars. If they wanted to obtain stars and become a star-rated merchant, they had to pay a deposit of at least 10,000 yuan. If any problems occurred during operation, such as fake goods, non-delivery, or fake shipments, money would be directly deducted from the deposit to compensate the buyer.
And the deposited amount was only for a one-star merchant. To obtain a five-star title, they had to complete various sales tasks and ensure customer satisfaction ratings reached over 99.9%, etc. In short, most merchants were stuck at the three-star title level. Merchants who could obtain a five-star title throughout the entire network were less than 20 in total.
Of course, if they could obtain a five-star merchant title, it represented absolute high credibility in Jiangnan Mall and was the preferred choice for all buyers. Even if the price of similar products was about 10% higher, many buyers were still willing to choose five-star merchants to purchase from, because it represented guaranteed quality and reliability.
Therefore, a five-star merchant was definitely a priceless title in Jiangnan Mall.
Now that Old Brother Ma was directly giving them the five-star merchant title, they were naturally enticed. After all, the five-star title had become a source of frustration for many merchants.
At the same time, a portion of Jiangnan Mall's advertising recommendation slots were rewards for various activities, but most of them had to be purchased with money.
It wasn't that buying advertising slots made these merchants unhappy; on the contrary, if Jiangnan Mall's advertising slots could be bought freely with money, they would be overjoyed.
The real problem was that Jiangnan Mall's most important hidden recommendation slot could not be bought with money; it could only be obtained by incurring losses.
This hidden recommendation slot was the search results page.
According to the merchants' actual observations, most customers chose to purchase goods by entering the desired product into the search bar and then selecting from the product information displayed on the search results page.
Merchants and products that could preferentially appear on the search results page would naturally have a higher chance of being selected by customers, and at the very least, the number of people attracted to click into their stores would be the highest.