From the early days of Paipai.com to today’s WeChat store, Tencent’s exploration in the field of e-commerce has never stopped, but the lack of infrastructure and operational capabilities is still an urgent problem to be solved. This article will delve into this new attempt by WeChat e-commerce, analyze whether it can replicate Pinduoduo’s fission myth with its social advantages, and the possibilities for future development.
On the eve of 618, WeChat Store launched the “buy with friends” function, which means that Tencent is once again making efforts in the field of e-commerce. This is not only a signal for WeChat stores to compete against Pinduoduo and seize the high ground of social e-commerce, but also a key drop for Tencent to bet on WeChat and build its own e-commerce ecosystem.
It has been 16 years since Tencent Paipai was launched in 2009. In the past ten years, from the sad departure of Paipai.com, to the quiet shutdown of Xiaogoe Pinpin, to the comprehensive upgrade of the Channels store to a “WeChat store” and the establishment of a first-level e-commerce department, Tencent’s exploration in the field of e-commerce has never stopped.
Even though it has billions of social traffic, a closed-loop ecosystem and the endorsement of users’ social trust, WeChat e-commerce is also burdened with the accusations of “poor infrastructure” and “lack of customer service” by users. There have been more than 5,000 complaints about WeChat stores on Black Cat Complaints, and users have reported that “management personnel cannot be contacted”.
Infrastructure and operation are urgent problems for WeChat e-commerce, but in May this year, WeChat set up an e-commerce division, which has revealed WeChat’s determination to do e-commerce to the outside world.
The establishment of an exclusive e-commerce department is enough to catch a glimpse of Tencent’s ambition – not willing to just be a traffic entrance and add wedding dresses to others, but to end up in person and reshape the e-commerce logic with social genes.
When Tencent is determined to build the WeChat e-commerce ecosystem “patiently and systematically” in five years or even longer, can WeChat Store carry this heavy dream, overcome the “Tencent e-commerce curse” left over from history, and become the final answer to Tencent’s e-commerce breakthrough?
01 “Buy with friends”, WeChat e-commerce is eyeing social fission
On the eve of 618, WeChat Store conducted a closed beta of the “buy with friends” function.
On the homepage of the first batch of merchants who cooperated in the test, you can see the eye-catching “Buy Together” entrance, which shows “1.7% off over 1,500 yuan”.
After clicking into this window, you can see the progress of the order. Users can choose to purchase goods with a total of 1,500 yuan, or invite WeChat friends to join the order.
The gameplay of spelling sounds a bit familiar at first glance, and it is inevitable that it reminds people of Pinduoduo. However, the difference between WeChat store and Pinduoduo’s order is that there is no need to reach a fixed number of people, just reach a fixed amount to open the discount, and if it is not full, it will be automatically refunded.
In the “buy with friends” mode, the entire group process can be completed within the WeChat ecosystem. After placing an order, users can directly share the group link with WeChat friends or send it to the community, and others can click on it to complete the purchase, and then use WeChat Pay to checkout. The whole process does not need to jump to other APPs, and this “zero jump fission” is the core advantage of WeChat e-commerce.
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This model is essentially to obtain trust and endorsement through acquaintance social networking, and then social fission through communication, which helps merchants achieve low-cost and efficient recruitment.
For example, users can share outdoor equipment group information in hiking groups, or order snacks in the crowd at home, completing the closed loop of low price stimulation and quick order conversion.
WeChat e-commerce has been eyeing social fission. Social fission not only has strong viral ability, but also saves a lot of advertising and promotion costs for merchants.
Users can spontaneously broadcast and bring a large amount of low-cost or even zero-cost traffic to merchants and platforms, and the value of this gameplay is becoming more and more prominent now that the cost of customer acquisition is rising.
02 Positioning social e-commerce, but not building infrastructure
In addition to the gameplay of “spelling”, WeChat e-commerce still has essential differences compared with e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo, which rely on low prices and subsidies.
WeChat e-commerce relies on social trust and ecological closed loop to attract merchants and consumers. As a national social king, WeChat has billions of users. According to the “2024 WeChat Moments User Research Report”, it is estimated that about 1.032 billion users will enter WeChat Moments every day.
WeChat can not only use social advantages to promote the dissemination and sales of goods through social sharing and social fission, but also use multiple traffic entrances and components in the WeChat ecosystem to monetize huge social traffic and create a social e-commerce model unique to Tencent.
Social networking can be said to be Tencent’s biggest advantage, but this advantage has also become an obstacle on Tencent’s e-commerce road.
Some e-commerce analysts believe that Tencent relies too much on WeChat’s social attributes and ignores the complexity and professionalism of the e-commerce business itself. And Tencent’s layout in the e-commerce field may be too fragmented, resulting in ineffective use of resources.
Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Tencent has tried e-commerce several times without success.
As early as 2009, Tencent launched Paipai.com, as the first test of the waters in the field of e-commerce, and later launched QQ online shopping, QQ Mall and vertical e-commerce Yixun.com.
In 2014, Tencent merged the above-mentioned e-commerce businesses into JD.com, and successively invested in e-commerce platforms such as Pinduoduo and Meituan, and used the WeChat ecosystem to support these platforms for diversion.
In the same year, Tencent opened its first WeChat store business, which was subsequently shut down due to unmanned operation, and it was not until ten years later in 2024 that the WeChat store was launched again. Tencent also launched “Little Goose Pinpin” in 2020 to benchmark Pinduoduo, but unfortunately it will also be shut down in 2022.
Huang Zheng, founder of Pinduoduo, commented in an interview with Caijing: “Tencent failed to do e-commerce because they understand that e-commerce is traffic× conversion rate = GMV. The traffic logic cannot succeed today, Tencent has the largest traffic in China, and has invested in a bunch of vertical e-commerce, if Tencent follows this logic, Tencent has already become a long time ago.
After the WeChat store was launched, merchants also had mixed reviews about it, some people made a lot of money on the WeChat store, and some people complained that the WeChat store “had too poor infrastructure.” ”
On Douyin Mall, merchants can submit a material to complete the review within 30 minutes. But in the video account, this time is stretched to one or even two days.
In Douyin, there is a special person to connect with customer service to share the preferential policies for opening a store halfway through the store registration, while in WeChat stores, it is difficult for merchants to see manual customer service. Some merchants told Lei Feng.com: “In the WeChat store, the store is blocked and I don’t know whose phone number to call.” “This is because the operating volume of WeChat stores is far smaller than that of other platforms.
There is more than one complaint about the lack of manual customer service in WeChat stores. Some netizens shared on social platforms that after authenticating the identity of the expert, it could not be operated, and “customer service was pure human-machine” and “I couldn’t find a place to complain”.
Some merchants reported that they were a drop shipping store without a source of goods, and they could no longer do it.
Because WeChat does not display the buyer’s receipt information, it forces merchants to only ship directly from the WeChat platform and not from other platforms. Some commented that “WeChat is not suitable for e-commerce, and all kinds of anti-human operations.” ”
Some merchants complained that the process of opening a WeChat store was too troublesome, and they failed several times. And there is neither real customer service nor complaint channels for feedback problems.
03 New actions are frequent to build a WeChat e-commerce ecosystem
But these complaints cannot shake WeChat’s determination to do e-commerce ecology, and since the beginning of this year, WeChat e-commerce has made frequent new moves.
In May this year, Tencent announced the establishment of an e-commerce product department in the WeChat Business Group (WXG), with Zeng Ming as the head and reporting directly to Zhang Xiaolong, president of the WeChat Business Group. The person in charge of the research and development and operation of the WeChat official account and mini program reported directly to Zeng Ming.
To put it simply, the WeChat e-commerce team has jumped to a first-level department under the WeChat business group, and its weight has been increased. Moreover, WeChat should engage in e-commerce closed-loop, allowing users to complete the whole process of e-commerce transactions directly within the WeChat platform.
In the past, Tencent provided payment functions, mini programs and other infrastructure for e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Pinduoduo, but the establishment of an independent e-commerce product department means that WeChat no longer wants to make wedding dresses for others, but only serves as a traffic entrance, but deeply participates in the transaction process.
Looking further ahead, in April this year, WeChat Store Grayscale tested the function of “directly sharing products to the circle of friends”, and products can directly generate pictures and post them in the circle of friends.
In March, Channels experts were upgraded to “WeChat store carriers”, which can carry out global delivery in the WeChat ecosystem such as video accounts, official accounts, and service accounts.
This circular action shows that WeChat e-commerce is trying to build a new ecosystem. In fact, the idea of building a WeChat ecosystem was proposed as early as last year.
In August 2024, Tencent President Martin Lau said that it would establish an e-commerce ecosystem within WeChat, not only based on video accounts and live broadcast channels, but also including official accounts, mini programs, enterprise WeChat, etc.
So that month, the Channels store was upgraded to a WeChat store, and fully intervened in the core scenarios in the WeChat ecosystem.
The merchant’s store and product information can be displayed on various WeChat scenarios such as official accounts, video accounts, mini programs, and searches, which greatly increases product exposure and drives the growth of merchants’ business.
In December 2024, WeChat launched the “Gift Gift” function, amplifying Tencent WeChat’s social e-commerce genes and expanding the boundaries of e-commerce business.
During the Spring Festival, some merchants have eaten “gift-giving” dividends, such as the total GMV of WeChat stores on Chinese New Year’s Eve increased by 20 times month-on-month, and the WeChat stores of Dongfang Selection New Year’s Day increased by 661% month-on-month, with a GMV of more than 5 million yuan throughout the day.
Some industry insiders believe that the functional direction of “giving gifts” matches the social attributes of WeChat e-commerce. Different from shelf e-commerce and interest e-commerce, WeChat e-commerce is based on “people” for e-commerce design, and WeChat is the first social attribute. Commercial products are fitted to the base of basic social products, and traffic and sales will naturally be there.
For the construction of WeChat e-commerce ecosystem, Zhang Xiaolong adheres to a unique concept, believing that product information should be like an “atomized transaction component”, freely shuttling and flexibly circulating in various scenarios of WeChat.
This determines that WeChat store is not only a simple “selling platform”, but a basic ability in the WeChat ecosystem, which can be flexibly changed and combined at will to achieve empowerment and fission in social scenarios.
In the WeChat ecosystem, merchants and product information can be freely circulated through various scenarios such as Moments, communities, official accounts, and searches, building a decentralized transaction network.
Unlike traditional e-commerce centralized advertising transactions, everyone can publish product information within the WeChat ecosystem.
For example, if you open the WeChat public platform responsible for managing the background of the official account, a WeChat store will pop up with a notice of bringing goods. The product will be embedded in the article in the form of a card, and the official account needs to be bound to the WeChat store account.
E-commerce analyst Wu Jun told the media: “What WeChat wants most is to do a good job in ecology, and growth and making money may be secondary.” Tencent President Martin Lau also said that he hopes to build a larger and higher ceiling e-commerce ecosystem in a very patient and systematic way.
As Ma Huateng emphasized, the development of WeChat e-commerce is a long-term and systematic project that takes five years or even more to carefully carve. Zhang Xiaolong also said that it will take at least five years to slowly polish the product.
However, WeChat e-commerce still has shortcomings, such as lack of supply chain, logistics and strong operational capabilities. Compared with several other e-commerce giants, WeChat e-commerce is still far from enough.
Let’s wait and see where WeChat e-commerce will go in the future.
