According to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 6,000 "online celebrity Live" practitioners in Yiwu, Zhejiang, involving more than 3,000 market operators. The picture shows that in a clothing store in Beixiazhu Village, Yiwu City, anchor online celebrity is broadcasting live. Photo by Gong Xianming (People’s Vision)
Screenshot recommended for the homepage of an APP on a grass planting platform in online celebrity.
Guo Dexinzuo (Xinhua News Agency)
"All girls!" "Too cheap!" "Grab it! Grab it! Grab it! " On October 21st, just a few hours before the first day of the pre-sale of Tmall double 11, Li Jiaqi, the first brother of lipstick, brought 30 million viewers in the webcast room into the atmosphere of "double 11" shopping spree in advance. That night, Li Jiaqi reached the top of the Taobao live broadcast anchor list, and the sales of 10,000 lipsticks in Zhong Chao were amazing. More brands have sold more than 100 million yuan in 6 minutes in the live broadcast.
A similar legend of online celebrity’s goods delivery is staged on the e-commerce live broadcast platform every day. Correspondingly, on various social networking platforms, online celebrity products are recommended in a dazzling array. online celebrity, who has a large number of fans, recommended various online celebrity products to fans through illustrated notes on "planting grass", vivid videos on "planting grass" or live broadcast. Words such as "pro-test is easy to use", "must-buy list" and "online celebrity explosion" have stirred up the consumption desire of social platform users.
In August this year, Xiaohongshu APP (mobile phone software) was removed from the shelves of major application malls. The official said that it would start a comprehensive investigation and rectification of the content in the station, conduct in-depth self-examination and self-correction, actively cooperate with relevant departments, and promote the optimization and upgrading of the Internet environment. Xiaohongshu, which has over 200 million users and advocates young lifestyle sharing, has become one of the most representative social platforms of "planting grass with goods". The development of Xiaohongshu is also the epitome of the whole online celebrity market with goods. While online celebrity, with goods, gathers huge traffic and drives huge sales, the uneven online celebrity products gradually expose the industry chaos behind the "sales miracle".
influencer marketing
Fans of professional online celebrity realized.
Who is the top online celebrity that is now all over the network? The answer to this question will be updated every once in a while.
In recent 20 years, the development of online celebrity has experienced a rapid iteration from 1.0 era to 4.0 era. Nowadays, online celebrity is gradually becoming a specialized profession, and online celebrity’s management mode has also changed from individual creation to team and enterprise management. Publishing content on social networking platforms, accumulating fans, creating personal brand influence, and realizing the realization of fan traffic through commercial channels have become the way for many first-tier online celebrity to get rich.
According to the White Paper on Eco-development of E-commerce in online celebrity in 2019 released by Crowley, in 2018, the number of netizens reached 829 million, and the number of online shopping users reached 610 million. On average, 73 out of every 100 netizens chose online shopping. Since 2015, the proportion of online retail sales of physical goods in the total retail sales of social consumer goods in China has soared from 8.04% to 18.4% in 2018. A huge number of online shopping users, huge online shopping demand and fast-growing online shopping market provide a fertile land for professional online celebrity.
Online celebrity, a professional who is eager to realize the flow, is a loyal fan with spending power. "When the golden wind meets the dew," online celebrity brings goods as the times require.
In the White Paper on Eco-development of E-commerce in online celebrity in 2019, online celebrity is defined as "online celebrity E-commerce", that is, content producers (network celebrities) with network influence recommend and sell products to users through content or e-commerce platforms. The main bodies of e-commerce in online celebrity include self-media, live anchors, stars, celebrities, shopkeepers, professionals and grassroots celebrities.
With the deepening cooperation between e-commerce platform and online social platform, online celebrity’s goods delivery gradually moves towards the category of "social e-commerce". Online celebrity brings goods on social platforms and interacts with fans in e-commerce live broadcast, which is a common way to bring goods in online celebrity at present.
According to the "2019 Taobao Live Ecological Development Trend Report" released by Taobao List and Taobao Live, the number of anchors who joined Taobao Live in 2018 increased by 180% year-on-year, and the Taobao Live Platform brought over 100 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of nearly 400%. There are more than 400 live broadcast rooms with a monthly delivery scale of more than 1 million.
"online celebrity’s delivery of goods is essentially a new way of docking supply and demand: consumers and businesses are docked through online celebrity. These online celebrity attract fans to conduct business activities through their own characteristics and high-quality content." Wang Xintian, a lecturer at the Business School of Ningbo University, said in an interview that the essence of online celebrity’s economy is to rely on social platforms to promote, form a loyal fan base by gathering a lot of attention, and derive various consumer markets around online celebrity, and finally form an economic model with a complete industrial chain.
According to relevant data, the main influencing factor of 83% young consumers’ purchase decision is the "online celebrity" and "Talent" sharing. On social media, it is normal for stars to bring goods, and fans are more willing to "plant grass" to buy products endorsed or recommended by stars.
"The essence of online celebrity’s delivery is still a marketing method, which transforms the gathered fans into actual product consumers through socialization and entertainment." Liao Huaixue, a lawyer of Taihetai Law Firm, analyzed in an interview that in this "consumption transformation" mode, online celebrity with goods, as an assumed consumer, directly uses, explains and displays goods. Compared with the traditional one-way static dissemination of goods information by e-commerce, this mode can interact with consumers and narrow the distance between them. "As a new format of e-commerce development, online celebrity’s delivery of goods enriches consumers’ shopping methods and has great development potential, but at the same time, there are frequent chaos in the industry, and it is urgent to standardize governance."
Grey secret
There are many routines and chaos.
The cat’s claw cup, the double yellow egg ice cream, and the exotic enzyme … … On the social platform of planting grass in online celebrity, you can find rich and detailed notes on "planting grass", whether it is cheap and easy to get daily snacks and good things in life, expensive and professional cosmetics and health products, or various international luxury brands.
Online celebrity with goods has become an artificial identification filter for mass products, with personal reputation and word of mouth as the guarantee, recommending various goods worth buying for its fans. However, due to the uneven quality of online celebrity, the different screening mechanisms of e-commerce platforms and social platforms, and the lag in supervision of relevant institutions, there are various problems hidden behind the phenomenon of online celebrity bringing goods.
Wei Wei, who works in a state-owned enterprise, is worried about losing weight recently. On a grass planting platform in online celebrity, Wei Wei planted a popular Japanese enzyme. Bloggers in online celebrity recommend this enzyme to decompose fat and sugar well and help to lose weight without affecting diet. After buying it and trying it twice, Wei Wei found that this enzyme is not as "fantastic" as bloggers said.
"Let’s not talk about the effect of losing weight. Every time I eat enzymes, I start to feel chest tightness and nausea. This is also the case when I asked some friends around me. " Wei Wei said, "These products are under the banner of being beneficial to health, and many bloggers in online celebrity have personally experienced them. The recommendations seem particularly convincing, and hundreds of comments are basically praised and applauded, which makes people easily believe them. However, the instructions on the product are all in Japanese, and there is no detailed Chinese translation. After we buy it back, the specific method of taking it depends on the blogger’s recommendation notes, which actually has certain security risks. "
The quality and safety of products can not be guaranteed, the product promotional pictures are inconsistent, and the data such as praise forwarding on the platform are falsified … … While online celebrity is in full swing, more and more users have discovered the gray "secret" behind the popularity of online celebrity products.
Xiao Zhao, a graduate student in Hongkong, has always been a loyal user of online celebrity Grass Planting Platform and Short Video Social Platform. A while ago, after watching the live broadcast of a beauty blogger, she bought a online celebrity neck cream. "The biggest highlight of this neck cream is that it has a push-pull roller, and it feels particularly good to watch the live broadcast. After buying it back, I found that the composition of this neck cream is similar to that of ordinary moisturizer, and the effect is also very general, and the actual utilization rate is not high. " Xiao Zhao said frankly that watching the live broadcast of "planting grass" often leads to impulsive consumption. The live broadcast can show the products very intuitively and concretely, but there are often cases where the live broadcast does not match the real thing.
Wang Xintian believes that the chaos in these industries is on the one hand an issue of industry evaluation mechanism. The intensification of industry competition in online celebrity has led to the increasingly obvious drawbacks of the evaluation mechanism on the mainstream online celebrity platform. For example, on some platforms, online celebrity is ranked by likes and sales volume, which leads some companies to "brush data" in order to get higher exposure. On the other hand, it is the problem of supervision mechanism. If "brushing data" can also be regarded as a kind of online marketing behavior, then false advertising is suspected of commercial fraud and needs the intervention of market supervision departments. At present, this aspect needs to be strengthened urgently.
Have a scale in mind
Governing by law and strengthening identification
"It is a comprehensive management process to solve all kinds of problems existing in online celebrity’s goods delivery." Liao Huaixue believes that at present, China’s Advertising Law, Electronic Commerce Law, Anti-unfair Competition Law, Product Quality Law, Food Safety Law and Consumer Rights Protection Law have relatively perfect provisions on legal issues such as false propaganda, data fraud, product quality, food safety and consumer rights protection. In online celebrity, different subjects involved in the behavior of carrying goods should participate in the link of governance according to law.
First of all, online celebrity with goods should improve the ability to control the quality of goods, carefully choose cooperative brands, and merchants should standardize the supply chain, work hard on the quality of goods, and ensure after-sales service. Secondly, the short video live broadcast platform should earnestly fulfill its responsibilities, strengthen the audit of live broadcast content, establish a "blacklist" system for online celebrity with goods and sellers, implement a platform ban system for online celebrity and merchants who infringe on consumers’ interests, standardize consumers’ payment methods, and establish and improve the platform order tracking system. The regulatory authorities should strengthen supervision. If online celebrity’s goods-carrying behavior infringes on the interests of consumers, the merchants and the goods-carrying online celebrity should share the responsibility. At the same time, if the short video live broadcast platform fails to fulfill the corresponding regulatory obligations and platform management responsibilities, the live broadcast platform should also bear the corresponding responsibilities.
"Everyone has a steelyard in their hearts. I will trust evaluation bloggers who have more fans, more pertinent evaluations, advantages and disadvantages, and choose products from reliable brands. " Xiao Ning, who often browses the evaluation videos of skin care products on the short video platform, has her own experience in identifying online celebrity’s "planting grass". "After watching the video, first brush the comments under the video, then check the ingredients of the products on the special software, choose the products that really suit you, and then go to the e-commerce platform to search and buy." Strengthening the ability to identify products with goods in online celebrity and improving the network literacy of users of e-commerce and social platforms is a self-defense technique for netizens to deal with the problem of goods with goods in online celebrity.
From June to November this year, the State Administration of Market Supervision and other eight departments jointly launched the 2019 special action of online market supervision (Network Sword Action) to severely crack down on online sales of counterfeit and shoddy products, unsafe food and counterfeit drugs. From September to December next year, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, State Administration of Market Supervision and National Medical Products Administration will jointly carry out "Implementing Food and Drug Safety ‘ The four strictest ’ Request "special action, to online celebrity food safety violations. National laws and supervision of relevant departments are "racing" with illegal activities in online celebrity.
The authenticity of online celebrity products is being tested by consumers and the market; Online celebrity’s routine of bringing goods is also gradually being found out by users and supervision platforms; Online celebrity’s brand image has become more and more true after the flushing of flow realization. With the improvement of consumers’ discriminating ability, the tightening of platform supervision and the strengthening of law enforcement, online celebrity will eventually return to its original intention: let more high-quality goods meet people who really need them.