Taobao Rolls Out Special Offer Edition in Direct Competition With Rival Pinduoduo
Liao Shumin
DATE:  Mar 19 2018
/ SOURCE:  Yicai
Taobao Rolls Out Special Offer Edition in Direct Competition With Rival Pinduoduo Taobao Rolls Out Special Offer Edition in Direct Competition With Rival Pinduoduo

(Yicai Global) March 19 -- Taobao (China) Software Co., e-commerce affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., has developed a new application called Taobao Special Offer Edition, which is now available on major app stores. It aims to compete with Pinduoduo, another online trading platform which has been growing rapidly and attract many users with its low prices and appealing products, Lanjing.com reported, citing insiders.

The data shows that the app mainly attracts users through the low prices of its products which cover 16 categories including garments, cosmetics, general merchandise, household appliance and home decoration. It offers flash sales for some products with special prices ranging from CNY6 (USD0.94) to CNY30 on the home page.

Taobao positioned its special edition as a powerful shopping app, through which users can also obtain red packets, digital money gifts, it said. New users can register on the app easily and receive rewards if they introduce new members. They can also benefit interactive operations.

Rolled out in September 2015, Pinduoduo, run by Shanghai Xunmeng Tech Information Co., is a third-party e-commerce platform operating on consumer-to-business (C2B) model, which allows users to purchase goods in groups. Users can initiate group shopping with friends, family members and neighbors to buy products with lower prices. Per official data, its single-day transactions exceeded CNY10 million within three months of its unveiling. At present, it has over 200 million paying users and a monthly turnover of about CNY3 billion, it says.

As of December 2017, Pinduoduo had become the third largest e-commerce platform after Taobao and JD.com, showed data from QuestMobile. In terms of user activity, it ranks second after Taobao.

The data also indicate that some 50.3 percent of users who uninstalled Taobao on their devices switched to Pinduoduo, while 78.3 percent of users who removed Pinduoduo app opted for Taobao, showing appeal of both platforms to similar consumer groups, which further triggers competition.

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Keywords:   Taobao,Pinduoduo,E-COMMERCE,Flash Sales