Dangdang, known as "the world's largest Chinese online bookstore", now needs to add the prefix "once". In recent years, Dangdang. Every time it comes into public view, com is associated with words such as piracy, lust and marital war. Especially with the decline of market share, it is difficult to bear this good reputation and keep those book lovers who once loved themselves.
Dangdang, which is in an awkward situation, has not given up "self-help". "You are not good!" On the evening of July 6th, Dangdang official Weibo publicly "shouted" ByteDance, saying that "pirated bookstores are very active in headlines and Tik Tok. The headline chasing the direction of traffic has become the magic finger of pirated booksellers. " Track hot events to create topics, and use this as a traffic password, and send six Weibo in succession. Publishers cooperate with famous scholars to fight piracy.
However, after half a month, the forwarding volume of these Weibo is still three figures, and obviously Dangdang's "wishful thinking" is not as loud as expected. This can't help but make people feel embarrassed: how did the well-known e-commerce that once ruled online books get abandoned by people and gradually get away from the public eye?
Piracy chaos that cannot be left behind
Although Dangdang pretends to be a defender of piracy on the Internet, in fact Dangdang has never completely drawn a line with piracy, and sometimes even stood in the completely opposite camp with netizens who want to defend their rights.
More ironically, when Dangdang focused on cracking down on piracy in Weibo, it was sued for piracy again. According to the Yangzi Evening News, on July 14, Ms. Zhu, a consumer from Zhengzhou, Henan Province, sued Dangdang and the bookstore. Because she "bought nine books on Dangdang", she contacted Dangdang customer service several times by phone, so she chose legal channels to demand triple compensation according to the Consumer Protection Law and made an apology.
It is not uncommon for Dangdang to appear as a defendant. In May this year, China. It is reported that a user bought a copy of Cui Yutao Parenting Encyclopedia through Dangdang's "Bosiyuan Book Store". Because of the "poor quality, blurred picture and rough paper" visible to the naked eye, he sent the book to the publishing house and got the appraisal certificate provided by the publishing house, which was confirmed as piracy.
However, it is not easy to get compensation from Dangdang: Dangdang's customer service asked it to provide the "unpacking video" for receiving the express delivery, and refused to handle the complaint on the grounds that it could not provide the "unpacking video". Finally, we can only complain to the third-party complaint platform and ask the media for help. I finally got a set of new books mailed by this third-party bookstore on Dangdang platform.
Search for the word "Dangdang pirated book" on the black cat complaint platform, and you can see the 3 184 complaint entry. On many domestic third-party complaint platforms, there are also complaints about "buying pirated books on Dangdang". Even under the anti-piracy statement of Dang Guanwei, many netizens directly commented that "Dangdang's third-party bookstore bought pirated books".
However, due to the difficulty in safeguarding rights, many users have chosen to eat this "dumb loss", so the authentic image of Dangdang has already collapsed in their hearts.
Vertical e-commerce has only a "weak sense of existence"
Today, Dangdang has lost a feather, but looking back more than a decade ago, Dangdang was also a blue chip that countless people expected. Dangdang was founded in 1999, and it is one of the earliest e-commerce companies in China listed in the US stock market. 20 10, on the day of listing on Dangdang NYSE, the issue price was as high as 16 USD/share, the highest share price was 30.08 USD/share, and the market value exceeded 2.3 billion USD. Its price-earnings ratio on the day of listing reached the highest level of price-earnings ratio of listed companies in the United States at that time.
However, the glory is extremely short-lived. In September of 20 16, Dangdang completed its privatization and delisting in 14 months, with a market value of only 536 million US dollars, less than14 when it went public in 20 10. In sharp contrast, various topics about Dangdang have been active in various media platforms: "Cup-breaking incident", "Chongqing divorce war" and "official seal grabbing incident", but these have not brought more positive effects to Dangdang except to ignite the gossip of netizens.
According to Analysys report, by 2022 1 quarter, the transaction scale of online retail B2C market in China will reach1698.85 billion yuan, but Dangdang's market share has dropped to 0.5%. It can be said that the "category verticality" of vertical e-commerce is Dangdang's advantage and Dangdang's disadvantage. Focusing on Dangdang books has a distinct positioning and characteristics. Over time, everyone has formed the cognition of "buying books to find Dangdang", and it is this cognition that makes Dangdang's performance rise.
However, with the entry of integrated e-commerce companies such as JD.COM, Taobao and Pinduoduo, "book" is almost a category that every integrated e-commerce platform will have. On SKU, Dangdang is not as good as Taobao; On logistics efficiency, Dangdang is not as good as JD.COM; On the price, Dangdang is not as good as Pinduoduo ... The advantages accumulated over the years have also instantly turned into nothingness.
Dangdang has never tried to sell other categories, such as clothing, mother and baby, but because of the large investment in the early stage and the stereotype of Dangdang, it has not persisted.
Nowadays, in the long river of history, as one of the few vertical e-commerce companies that have survived for many years, Dangdang has been striving to enhance its sense of existence, but it has always developed innocently, and the most serious piracy problem has not been significantly improved.
The supervision of piracy is testing Dangdang.
ByteDance, who was accused by Dangdang, has begun to rectify the rampant pirated books on the platform. Xinhuanet reported that in April, 20021,Tik Tok e-commerce launched an anti-piracy initiative in conjunction with the anti-piracy alliance of the 15th Society of Beijing Edition, and signed a memorandum of cooperation with it in June this year. At the same time, Tik Tok e-commerce launched an intellectual property protection platform to actively eliminate illegal businesses and cooperate with law enforcement agencies to crack down on piracy and infringement.
In contrast, Dangdang, which released the initiative of "rejecting pirated books and resolutely advocating legal rights protection" in Weibo on 20 18, and raised the banner of "combating piracy and protecting intellectual property rights" again in 2022, is still mired in piracy, and the time to "sit firmly on the Diaoyutai" is still far away.
Especially after many complaints from consumers, Dangdang, as an e-commerce platform, should pay more attention to platform supervision, solve its own problems, and provide consumers with a quality shopping environment, instead of requiring users to "unpack videos".
Piracy is not just a problem of a single platform, but a "chaos" faced by multiple platforms. Strengthening piracy supervision is the responsibility and responsibility of each platform. As "the largest online Chinese bookstore in the world", Dangdang should take itself as the center, talk to users with genuine books, and face and solve problems from the standpoint of users. In this way, even vertical e-commerce that is difficult to do can become stronger and bigger.