Recently, a number of new gameplays have emerged in book sales, which not only brought freshness to the traditional book publishing industry, but also caused a lot of controversy.
Liu Yuanyuan, a former anchor with goods, "prepared 500,000 books that sold for less than 10 yuan, and 100,000 copies of 1 yuan." The sales of a single book live broadcast exceeded 100 million, and was criticized by people in the publishing industry for interfering with the book market; The bookstore borrows the concept of tide play to launch a "blind book box", that is, book selectors select and combine books according to different themes for blind buying and blind selling. The price is generally about 50% off the total price of the included books or even lower. People frequently "step on thunder".
Under the dual impact of e-commerce and the epidemic, traditional book retail channels are in a difficult situation, and many well-known bookstores have fallen into a "trend of closures", making it more urgent to deploy online sales channels.
Price-breaking live broadcasts and blind cassette delivery are essentially attempts to break through and innovate.
As far as live streaming is concerned, it is a relatively common marketing method to distribute low-priced products at a profit and attract target consumers to "seckill".
The low price of 10 yuan book and 1 yuan book may not cover the cost of pulp and logistics, but in limited cases, it can be used as a "drainage fund" - after attracting a large number of target consumers, the "profit fund" with the highest share of the product structure will be used. "Pick up the girders.
Blind boxes with goods are similar to live broadcasts at low prices. They are both ways of attracting traffic, especially for groups who have difficulty choosing and want to expand their reading range.
Whether the operation of the drainage method is appropriate depends on the balance and grasp of the attributes of book products and cultural products.
"Low sale" is the most criticized part of the new way of book sales.
According to the monitoring data of third-party websites, there were 124 books and entertainment products listed in Liu Yuanyuan’s live broadcast room before, of which 58 products were priced below 10 yuan.
Even after subsidized by the anchor and the platform, the overpriced goods accounted for nearly 50%, which obviously exceeded the normal "drainage money" range.
The frequent price hikes of books will undoubtedly reduce the enthusiasm of creators and publishers to polish cultural boutiques.
Under the vicious competition of low prices, consumers buy mostly fast-moving consumer goods.
The "blind book box" can also easily mutate into a bookstore borrowing and recommending machine to handle unsalable books and clear inventory.
A book with a lot of connotation is difficult to put into the "fracture price" marketing field - the cost is always the hurdle that the book can't be sold at a broken price, and the content quality of cultural products will become "risk".
In the current price segment, my country's book pricing system has yet to be improved, and the awareness and joint action of industry insiders are important measures to stop price wars and protect high-quality content.
Book discounts are getting bigger and bigger, cultivating consumers' habit of "don't buy without discount".
Books are cultural products with different opinions. Individuals have different hobbies and evaluation systems. Consumers receive a "blind book box" and give negative evaluations because they feel that they do not meet their psychological expectations. This problem is unsolvable.
In the live broadcast room, deciding whether to participate in the "seckill" is actually a "blind buy" based on book discounts rather than the quality of the content.
The advantage of bookstores is that, on the one hand, consumers can make accurate purchases on the basis of full understanding and comparison, and the repurchase rate is high; Provide differentiated and diverse niche books for more segments and groups of people.
Offline bookstores are declining, in addition to the diversion of e-commerce platforms, there is also the impact of changes in people's reading habits in the digital age.
In addition to making good use of online channel marketing, it is also a general direction to give full play to its own advantages and achieve integrated development.
(Yang Yue)