In the increasingly competitive Internet market, female and child users have always been the focus of competition for major e-commerce companies and platforms. The maternal and infant industry, as it takes into account the consumer needs of the two major groups, is increasingly valued and pursued by e-commerce companies. Especially with the opening up of the country’s two-child policy, the maternal and infant industry has ushered in greater room for development.
Relevant research data shows that the market size of my country’s maternal and infant industry will exceed 2 trillion yuan in 2015. With the development and popularization of the Internet and e-commerce, people have greater recognition and acceptance of online shopping. The e-commerce field still maintains a high growth level, and the market scale continues to expand (the scale of online shopping in 2014 reached 2.8 trillion yuan, A year-on-year increase of 48.7%). Maternal and infant e-commerce has become the new favorite of the Internet capital market after fresh food e-commerce and has achieved rapid development.
For example, in January 2014, Babytree, the largest parenting website in China, received a strategic investment of up to 150 million yuan; Beibei.com, a maternal and infant product sales platform established in April 2014, At the beginning of 2015, it received another US$100 million in financing, with the overall valuation reaching US$1 billion. Other maternal and infant e-commerce companies, such as Mi Ya Baby, La Ma Bang, Youyi Youpin, Xiaohe Special Sale, etc., have also received high amounts of strategic investment.
Generally speaking, there are three main forms of maternal and infant e-commerce: first, traditional chain physical brands, which are undergoing e-commerce transformation driven by the Internet, such as Liyingfang, Leyou, etc.; later, with the With the further development of the Internet and the maturity of the e-commerce model, some pure maternal and infant e-commerce brands have rapidly emerged, such as Redbaby, Maternal and Infant Home, etc.; at the same time, there are also some platform websites, such as Baby Tree, Mama.com, etc., which are not directly Instead of selling products, it focuses on the sharing and dissemination of maternal and infant knowledge, creating a community platform with high-frequency interactions and strong relationships.
After rapid development in recent years, maternal and infant e-commerce has shown the following four major trends.
◆Deepening from the traditional e-commerce model to the vertical e-commerce model
The rise of Taobao has promoted the rapid development of the domestic e-commerce field and cultivated people’s online shopping habits. The traditional offline shopping model has been greatly impacted by the growing e-commerce model. More and more traffic is shifting from offline to online, which has promoted the e-commerce transformation of traditional maternal and infant stores.
As far as the specific transformation model is concerned, although some powerful maternal and infant brands are also trying to build their own e-commerce platforms, such as Hongbaizhi. However, due to the lack of mature online operation and management experience, these traditional physical brands’ self-operated attempts often have little effect. In the end, like other brands, they have to enter large e-commerce platforms such as Taobao, Tmall, and Amazon.
However, as competition in the e-commerce field becomes increasingly fierce, the traffic acquisition costs of large platforms are gradually increasing. Therefore, more and more maternal and infant e-commerce companies are beginning to find new ways to deeply segment the market and explore vertical e-commerce models with a more focused and professional attitude to enhance their market competitiveness with the help of precise differentiated brand positioning. For example, Beibei.com, Miyabaobao, etc. are maternal and infant vertical e-commerce companies.
◆From community to e-commerce
Maternal and infant communities in China are not uncommon, and some community platforms are also very large in scale. Judging from the current development, the biggest problem of these community platforms is the lack of effective profit models and the inability to convert huge user traffic into real product consumers.
For example, the BabyTree community, launched in March 2007, provides an all-round high-quality platform for parents to exchange and share their parenting experiences, and has been widely welcomed. Currently, BabyTree has developed into the largest and most popular parenting website in China, with 16 million registered users, 55 million monthly user visits, and 20 million family diaries uploaded. The number is increasing by 10,000 articles per day.
Although BabyTree has a huge user base and high user stickiness, it has even surpassed Baby Center in the United States to become the world’s largest mother and baby community. However, BabyTree’s revenue still mainly comes from on-site advertising and online education products. The profit model is relatively simple and cannot effectively tap the market value of huge traffic.
Based on this, in February 2015, BabyTree launched its own maternal and infant e-commerce platform “Meitun Mama” to transform the community into e-commerce through special sales of maternal and infant products to maximize the Maximize traffic monetization and enhance your own revenue-generating capabilities.
In addition to BabyTree, some other domestic maternal and infant community platforms are also moving toward e-commerce, hoping to occupy a place in the blue ocean of maternal and infant e-commerce. For example, in September 2014, Mama.com officially launched a special sales platform for Koala imported maternal and infant products on its mobile “Mommy Circle”; and the Lamabang platform, which is targeted at maternal and infant mobile social networking, also launched its own Maternity and baby sale mall.
From domestic trade to international trade
Affected by various factors, consumers prefer foreign products and brands in terms of maternal and infant products. However, in the past, domestic e-commerce platforms mainly focused on self-operated products or agents for other domestic maternal and infant brands. Therefore, it is often difficult for consumers to buy the foreign products they need directly from maternal and infant e-commerce platforms, and they can only purchase them at high prices.
However, with the further development and improvement of domestic e-commerce, more and more maternal and infant e-commerce companies have begun to make arrangements for imported maternal and infant brands and attract more consumers through overseas shopping. , in order to gain an advantage in the increasingly fierce market competition. For example, maternal and infant vertical e-commerce companies such as Miyababy and Maitesco, as well as large comprehensive e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Suning.
Imported maternal and infant e-commerce has fully catered to consumers’ urgent needs for foreign products, and has developed rapidly in recent years. According to statistics, in 2014 alone, more than 10 start-up maternal and infant cross-border e-commerce companies received social financing.
◆From PC Internet to Mobile Internet
With the development and popularization of mobile Internet technology and smart terminals such as mobile phones, mobile terminals have gradually replaced PC terminals and become people’s main access to the Internet. Faced with the new characteristics of the mobile consumer market (the fragmentation of time and the mobility of scenes), more and more maternal and infant e-commerce companies have begun to deploy in the mobile Internet field to cope with market competition in the mobile Internet era.
For example, Lamabang advertises itself as “the first mobile community maternal and infant e-commerce in China” and transforms its mature mobile social platform into a mobile maternal and infant e-commerce community. Suning Red Kids plans to develop and launch 10 maternal and infant vertical APPs in 2015, using the mobile shopping client as a platform to integrate shopping, sharing, social networking and other content.
In short, the arrival of the mobile Internet era, changes in consumer behavior characteristics and market pain points are all driving the shift of maternal and infant e-commerce from the traditional PC side to the mobile side. With the help of mobile APP, maternal and infant e-commerce not only achieves more efficient and convenient connection and interaction with consumers, but also integrates social networking, shopping sharing and other content to better realize traffic monetization.