As we enter 2025 and await the first sales event of the new year on e-commerce platforms, likely centred around the Chinese New Year, platforms are already making moves to optimise ahead of the occasion. The biggest change is that Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall Group, Douyin, the Chinese sister app of TikTok and PDD Hold’s Pinduoduo are all gearing up to make their merchants’ lives easier.
On 6 January, Douyin made the first move by announcing its 9 new measures to support its merchants. From free listings for nearly 100 merchandise categories, lowered insurance premiums and subsidising small merchants, most of the new measures are cost-saving initiatives for Douyin merchants. The platform is also updating its algorithm, introducing measures to reduce return rates, as well as cracking down on destructive competition, especially price wars.
Pinduoduo was reported to have established a committee to protect merchant rights. To show that they mean business, the chair of the committee is none other than Pinduoduo’s Executive Director and Co-CEO Zhao Jiazhen. The move comes after last year’s 10 billion RMB (1.36 billion USD) subsidies in fee waivers and cuts. The group will strive to coordinate platform management, new business, customer service, technology and product teams to study merchant needs and optimise the merchant experience.
Taobao and Tmall Group, on the other hand, has created the first-ever credit system among e-commerce platforms. This system will allow merchants to report cases of no/fake returns after a refund and other misuse cases from customers, as well as referring serious cases to the police. This credit system comes at the same time as Taobao relaxing its rules and streamlining processes for merchants. The platform will also be cracking down on “neijuan” (内卷, lit. involution, meaning useless competition).
Indeed, as e-commerce platforms shift from an absolute low-price strategy to a gross merchandise volume (GMV) -centric one, taking care of merchants has become a common factor. In fact, some of the customer-friendly rules like “refund only” policies that don’t require returns after refund created a high refund rate which hurt many merchants. With these new measures across each platform, the next sales event might be very interesting to observe as the balance between customers and merchants shifts.
