電子商務如何加劇中國的通貨緊縮 (2/2)

Recently the New York Times on-line reported the following:

How E-Commerce Is Making China’s Deflation Worse (2/2)

The push by Pinduoduo to lower prices has helped it become one of China’s fastest-growing e-commerce apps, and epitomizes a broader force plaguing the economy.

The NYT Asia Section - By Daisuke Wakabayashi and Claire Fu

Oct. 7, 2024, 12:01 a.m. ET

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Economists have studied the consequences of e-commerce on pricing for years.

In the mid-2010s, economists started citing something called the Amazon Effect, for the influence wielded by the dominant online retailer Amazon.com to drive down prices across the web and at brick-and-mortar stores. Almost all retailers, including Amazon, track each other’s prices and then adjust their own using so-called dynamic pricing, when prices move according to market conditions.

The conventional thinking was that the Amazon Effect helped to keep prices down. But Alberto Cavallo, a professor at Harvard Business School, argued in 2018 that e-commerce was making prices more sensitive to economic shocks, such as higher energy costs. He noted that prices could rise sharply if the shocks were inflationary.

Prof. Cavallo said China might be experiencing something similar but in the opposite direction. The economic shock of a slumping economy is applying downward pricing pressure, and the effect is being accelerated by e-commerce platforms.

Pinduoduo’s success has prompted its two largest rivals, Alibaba and JD.com, to join the low-price competition.

Last year, Alibaba’s shopping site Taobao started a campaign to rate sellers based on how their prices compared to other e-commerce platforms, according to Chinese media. The sellers with better prices would receive more traffic and exposure for their products. JD.com, once known for selling high-end electronics, has also created a series of low-price campaigns.

For its part, Chinese regulators established a new rule in May preventing online platforms from imposing “unreasonable restrictions” on merchants’ prices, transaction rules and traffic.

Zhang Zhuo, a Chinese journalist, wrote a post entitled “The Better Pinduoduo Is, the Worse the Times Are.” In the article, which has been removed from WeChat, China’s dominant messaging app, she said that Pinduoduo has conditioned shoppers to ignore brands and look for the cheapest options.

Online merchants, Ms. Zhang wrote, “have only two choices, either lower price or sacrifice sales.”

Lulu Qi started selling clothing accessories, towels, phone cases and charging cables on Pinduoduo in 2018, but she said the platform’s demands had become too much.

Pinduoduo kept offering to drive potential customers to her products if she would meet the app’s suggested prices. But she couldn’t do that because they were well below the prices she had paid to procure the goods.

“It’s impossible to do business at that price,” said Ms. Qi, who lives in Shenzhen, a city in southeastern China.

Other Pinduoduo policies also make it difficult for merchants to make money, she said. Buyers who are dissatisfied with a product can demand a refund without returning the item. This happens to Ms. Qi about five times a day, she said.

Still, merchants said it was hard to leave Pinduoduo because the customers were loyal.

One shopper on Pinduoduo, Gao Ning, an office administrator in Beijing, said he had initially been wary of using the platform but found it to be a convenient way to buy groceries. Now, he also purchases toilet paper, garbage bags, trash cans, dish soap and cat food from the site.

“Pinduoduo is still a little cheaper,” he said. He found that the same items were less expensive there than on other sites, because “everyone goes there expecting good value for money.”

(Daisuke Wakabayashi is an Asia business correspondent for The Times based in Seoul, covering economic, corporate and geopolitical stories from the region. More about Daisuke Wakabayashi

Claire Fu covers China with a focus on business and social issues in the country. She is based in Seoul. More about Claire Fu)

Translation

電子商務如何加劇中國的通貨緊縮 (2/2)

拼多多推動降價已使其成為中國成長最快的電子商務應用程式之一，也是困擾經濟的更廣泛力量的縮影。

（繼續）

多年來，經濟學家一直在研究電子商務對定價的影響。

2010 年代中期，經濟學家開始引用 “亞馬遜效應” ，即佔主導地位的線上零售商 Amazon.com 所發揮的影響力，壓低了網路和實體店的價格。包括亞馬遜在內的幾乎所有零售商都會追蹤彼此的價格，然後在價格根據市場狀況變化時, 使用所謂動態定價來調整自己的價格。

傳統的想法是亞馬遜效應有助於壓低價格。但哈佛商學院教授Alberto Cavallo 在 2018 年表示，電子商務使價格對經濟衝擊（例如能源成本上漲）更加敏感。他指出，如果衝擊是通膨性的，價格可能會大幅上漲。

Cavallo教授表示，中國可能正在經歷類似的事情，但方向相反。經濟衰退帶來的經濟衝擊正在施加價格下行壓力，而電商平台正在加速這種影響。

拼多多的成功促使其兩大競爭對手阿里巴巴和京東加入低價競爭。

根據中國媒體報道，去年，阿里巴巴的購物網站淘寶發起了一項活動，根據賣家的價格與其他電子商務平台的比較來對賣家進行評級。價格較好的賣家將獲得更多的流量和產品曝光。曾經以銷售高端電子產品而聞名的京東也推出了一系列低價活動。

就中國監管機構而言，五月制定了一項新規定，禁止網路平台對商家價格、交易規則和流量施加「不合理限制」。

中國記者Zhang Zhuo發表了一篇題為《拼多多越好，時代越糟》的文章。在這篇已從中國主要通訊應用程式微信中刪除的文章中，她表示拼多多讓購物者習慣於忽視品牌並尋找最便宜的選擇。

Zhang女士寫道，網上商家 “只有兩個選擇，要么降低價格，要么犧牲銷量。”

2018年，Lulu Qi開始在拼多多上販售服飾配件、毛巾、手機殼和充電線，但她表示，平台的索取已經變得太多了。

如果她滿足應用程式的建議價格，拼多多就會不斷出發建議去吸引潛在客戶到她的產品。但她不能這樣做，因為建議價格遠低於她採購貨物所支付的價格。

住在中國東南部的城市深圳的Qi女士說:「以這個價格做買賣是不可能的」。

她表示，拼多多的其他政策也讓商家賺錢變得困難。對產品不滿意的買家可以要求退款而無需退貨。Qi女士說，這種情況每天大約會發生五次。

不過，他們商家表示，很難離開拼多多，因為顧客很忠誠。

拼多多的一位購物者、北京的辦公室管理員Gao Ning表示，他最初對使用該平台持謹慎態度，但發現這是一種購買雜貨的便捷方式。現在，他還從該網站購買衛生紙、垃圾袋、垃圾桶、洗碗精和貓糧。

他說:「拼多多還是便宜一點」。他發現同樣的商品在那裡比在其他網站上便宜，因為「每個人去那裡都希望物有所值」。

              So, this article suggests that no company embodies China’s deflationary moment quite like Pinduoduo, and that shoppers flock to this app for its staggering discounts because of its unyielding effort to push for lower prices. I am wondering how far is Pinduoduo is responsible for creating China’s deflationary trend currently seen in the country.