How long can it be ＂fragrant＂ from barbaric growth to rational live broadcast？
As the "explosion" of the new format of the digital economy, in the past year or so, live broadcast has been in the limelight. Both professional anchors, stars, bloggers and amateurs have entered the live broadcast room one after another. From selling lipstick to selling houses, the anchors are all eloquent: "delicious", "beautiful" and "buy it" … … More and more consumers have also adapted to live shopping. According to the data released by China Internet Network Information Center, as of December 2020, the number of live e-commerce users in China has reached 388 million, ranking first among all live webcasts, and 66.2% of live e-commerce users have purchased live products.
While the live broadcast of goods is booming, some live broadcast rooms also gather many consumption traps such as counterfeiting, exaggeration, improper goods and poor after-sales service. How long can the live broadcast be "fragrant"? Can we return to rationality from barbaric growth in 2021?
It’s annoying to watch the excitement
Today, watching live shopping is a common thing. Open Taobao, JD.COM, Suning, Mushroom Street and other online shopping platforms at any time, and you can hear the call of "friends" and "babies" from the anchors. Every few minutes, there are airborne red envelope gift certificates. Often, consumers have not had time to understand whether they really need it, and they are already hot-headed. "Order, buy!" However, when the courier arrives, the products that many people buy are far from what the anchor said.
Liu Jing, who works for a media company in Daxing District, Beijing, recently stepped on a live broadcast pit with goods. She listened to the neck pillow recommended by a platform anchor to relieve neck and shoulder pain, so she took the idea of giving it a try and spent more than 500 yuan to place an order. Unfortunately, after she got it, she found that this pillow was shoddy and completely different from what the anchor said. I wanted to return it, but I found that I couldn’t even find the live broadcast platform. Liujing said: "I thought it was worth more, but it was cut ‘ Leek ’ I think that the complaints from relevant departments can’t produce evidence. "
Zhu Jianqiao, secretary-general of China Consumers Association, analyzed the main reasons why it is difficult to protect rights with live broadcast. He said that the main body of live broadcast with goods involved in sales is diverse, and the responsibility is unclear, which makes consumers not know who to look for when defending their rights. Consumers bought it by watching the live broadcast. As a result, the anchor may say that you are trading with Taobao and JD.COM, and it has nothing to do with me; Looking for the seller of the flagship store, he may say, you are drained through the live broadcast room; Looking for a platform, he may say, I just provide the venue, and you have to find the anchor.
The problems of live broadcast with goods include old problems such as poor quality, false propaganda, and inadequate after-sales, as well as new problems such as fraud by public figures with goods, traffic fraud, and false reports. Brushing the bill and brushing the flow is one of the worse behaviors. Industry insiders told reporters that although the shopping platforms such as Tmall and JD.COM are increasingly cracking down on swiping bills, it is not difficult to find traffic dealers on the Internet, and even you can find sellers by directly entering keywords such as "pink" and "live traffic" on some websites. On the quotation sheet of an online shop, the annual price of machine brushing package ranges from 1000 yuan to 5,000 yuan, while the manual account is more expensive, and it also corresponds to the number of different viewers, likes and shares, sales volume with goods and the number of real people’s comments. Even for the sake of good-looking data, the data of different commodities in the same store, such as apples, are grafted onto bananas. These false data seem to maintain the "worth" of artists or online celebrity, but they seriously mislead consumers, and at the same time, they are just fleeting losses for businesses.
Innovating supervision and standardizing management
The current situation of concentrated consumer demands makes live broadcast with goods one of the 11 hot spots of consumer complaints in the Analysis of Complaints Accepted by National Consumers Association in 2020 issued by China Consumers Association. On March 15th this year’s International Consumer Rights Day, local consumer associations have also drawn their priorities according to local conditions. For example, the Consumer Protection Committee of Anhui Province specially reminded consumers in the No.1 consumption reminder in 2021 to try to buy goods in the official flagship store or the live broadcast room of well-known anchors. Don’t trust the propaganda made by merchants such as "special price", "clearance price" and "lowest price in the whole network", and keep relevant vouchers, and actively defend their rights when their rights are damaged.
Since the second half of 2020, from industry associations to regulatory authorities, a series of rules and regulations have been issued for live webcasting, especially for live webcasting. The intensity of policy release is rare over the years, precisely to promote the healthy development of live webcasting as soon as possible.
First of all, from the perspective of activating the consumer market, relevant functional departments give more confidence to webcasting with positive support and expectation. In July, 2020, 13 departments, including the National Development and Reform Commission and Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, issued the Opinions on Supporting the Healthy Development of New Business Forms and Models, Activating the Consumer Market, and Promoting Employment Expansion, which clearly stated that it is necessary to cultivate new individuals, support independent employment, and support diversified independent employment and time-sharing employment such as webcasting. In the same month, among the new occupations jointly released by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the General Administration of Market Supervision and the National Bureau of Statistics, "Live Salesman" ranked among them, which means that "e-commerce anchor" and "online celebrity with goods" have obtained official certification as a new occupation.
In regulating the rules of online shopping behavior, the supervision mode of "internet plus" is constantly innovating. There are three main bodies of live delivery, namely, platform, anchor and merchant. Who should I look for in case of consumer disputes? In the "Guiding Opinions on Strengthening the Supervision of Webcast Marketing Activities" issued by the General Administration of Market Supervision in November 2020, the responsibilities and obligations of all parties involved in the process of live delivery were clarified, and at the same time, eight common illegal acts in live delivery, such as illegal product quality, illegal advertising and infringement of consumers’ legitimate rights and interests, were required to be investigated and dealt with according to law.
The fraud of live broadcast data was mainly rectified. In the "Regulations on the Management of Internet Live Marketing Information Content Service (Draft for Comment)" issued by the Network Information Office in November 2020, it is clearly required that operators and live marketers engaged in Internet live marketing information content services should publish goods or service information truthfully, accurately and comprehensively, and must not "fabricate or tamper with data traffic such as attention, page views, likes and transaction volume". For those who violate the above provisions and cause damage to others, clear penalties have been made for the corresponding degree of behavior.
Innovative regulatory measures are also adopted for the management of the network platform. The consultation draft of the Internet Office has increased the management responsibility of the e-commerce live broadcast platform. In the Notice on Strengthening the Management of Online Show Live Broadcasting and E-commerce Live Broadcasting issued by the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television, specific management rules are put forward on the registration, content, audit, anchor and reward of online live broadcasting and e-commerce live broadcasting. It is clearly required that the overall ratio of the number of first-line auditors of relevant platforms to the number of online live broadcast rooms shall not be less than 1: 50.
In 2021, whether the new format of live broadcast with goods can continue the prosperity depends on whether it can move from barbaric growth and quick money to legal and standardized operation. After all, only by legal compliance can we go far.