The blind box APP has become popular since 2019, covering digital, beauty, home, clothing, daily necessities, food and other product categories, and sets rules for consumers to obtain different products in the form of online lottery. Advertising slogans such as "must hit" and "super value guarantee" attract consumers to place orders continuously.
On the morning of August 22, the Sichuan Provincial Consumer Protection Committee (referred to as "Sichuan Provincial Consumer Committee") and the Chongqing Municipal Consumer Rights Protection Committee (referred to as "Chongqing Consumer Committee") jointly released a special investigation report on the consumption of blind box APPs. Try to uncover the truth of consumption behind the blind box market.
1/4 of respondents
Buy your favorite product after spending 10 times or more
The investigation focused on information disclosure, product quality, blind box prices, logistics and distribution, after-sales service, and consumer behavior.
The report shows that 71% of the respondents believe that the blind box APP platform is affordable and can buy value-for-money products; 64% of the respondents believe that they have the opportunity to draw the products they want.
41% of the respondents shopped 5-10 times through the blind box APP, 22% shopped 10-20 times, and 17% shopped more than 20 times.
Why do you shop multiple times on the Blind Box APP?
61% of the respondents believed that if they continued to buy, they would definitely get their favorite products; 57% said they couldn't control their desire to buy; 47% said they wanted to collect a complete set of products.
The results of the report show that more than 1/3 of the respondents purchased their favorite products after 5 to 10 consumptions; 1/4 of the respondents purchased their favorite products after more than 10 consumptions.
More than 1/3 of the respondents spent 1,000-5,000 yuan on the blind box APP platform; 1/5 of the respondents spent 5,000-10,000 yuan; and 10 respondents spent 100,000 yuan on the blind box APP above.
Over 3/4 of the respondents reported:
The product has quality problems or is "three no products"
The report shows that more than 3/4 of the respondents reported that there are quality problems in the products purchased in the blind box APP, or "three no products" (no production date, no quality certificate, no manufacturer), or secondary sales. (unboxed products), or inferior or defective products, or fake, counterfeit products, or products that are close to the expiration date, expired products, etc.
61% of the respondents reported that the price of goods purchased through the blind box APP is higher than the market price.
In addition, 4/5 of the respondents reported encountering obstacles to return or exchange.
The Blind Box APP platform agreed to return/refund, but 46% of them did not receive the exchange/refund for a long time; 41% of the merchants denied the quality problem and refused to return.
There are many blind box APP routines
The probability of a blind box drawing a hidden model is only 0.0007%
An experiential survey conducted by investigators simulating consumer behavior, using market share, cumulative downloads, and complaints from Sichuan and Chongqing as the comprehensive selection criteria, and selected 10 mainstream blind companies such as Yuanqi Tribe, Cloud Purchase Blind Box, and Blind Box Planet. Box APP as the survey object.
It was found that there are many problems, including incomplete information disclosure, infringement of consumers' right to know; game play "routines", infringement of consumers' right to fair trade; inconsistent product quality and price; many obstacles in after-sales service;
The investigators commissioned by the Consumers Committee of Sichuan Province and the Consumer Council of Chongqing Municipality calculated the actual winning probability and the expected value of winning the prize based on the winning probability of these 10 APPs.
Taking the blind box package of Yuanqi Tribe APP "This box is gifted" as an example, according to the publicity of the platform, it is known that the price of opening the blind box is 69 yuan, and there are 83 kinds of goods in the box, worth 99 to 19,999 yuan, which are divided into ultimate, special, and advanced. , Intermediate four categories of winning money, the announced winning probability is 0.014%, 0.633%, 79.588%, 19.764% respectively.
It is calculated that the expected revenue of this 69-yuan blind box product is 115.56 yuan (that is, the average revenue of multiple draw boxes). If you want to win the final prize of a specific product, you need to draw 71,428.57 times on average, costing 4,928,571.43 yuan.
Judging from the probability calculation of the blind box products selected by the 10 blind box apps, the probability of the blind box planet winning the highest award (that is, the hidden product) is the highest, which is 0.6944%; the probability of winning the highest award of the vitality magic box is only 0.0007 %.
In the next step, the 10 blind box apps involved in the investigation report will be rectified at the request of the Sichuan Provincial Consumer Committee and the Chongqing Municipal Consumer Committee. It is expected to submit a written rectification plan by the end of August.
Chengdu Business Daily-Red Star News reporter Yan Xue