Chapter 7 --Business Marketing

Different from the B2B electronic commerce mentioned in the chapter 7, Tencent’s e-commerce is more focus on C2C and B2C. According to the research, Chinese C2C e-commerce marketing share is far more than B2C, which is different from American. However, the trend of changing from C2C to B2C has begun. So does Tencent.

Paipai.com and QQ Mall focus on C2C e-commerce, Buy.QQ.om focuses on B2C e-commerce. In March, 2013, Tencent announced that they are going to merge its own brands QQ Mall and Buy.QQ.com to one and the only brand open platform of Tencent B2B e-commerce. And Paipai .com will still exists in the form of C2C. After merging, Tencent will cancel signing contract with those sellers with bad service and trading records, and keep the high reputation sellers, in order to offer customers the best products and services.

In addition, before 2013, China's most influential shopping rebate site (fepai.com) and Tencent announced to be strategic alliances. Tencent has 300 million users and over 90% of them are potential online shopping customers. This group of customers is more likely to shop online, or group shopping. But they also lack of rebate information. With the cooperation between fepai.com and Tencent, Tencent users can buy products from fepai.com without register a new account. They can log in with their QQ account and share the products or rebates they get in QQ community. Tencent used the chance of cooperation with fepai.com (B2C e-commerce); they can be familiar about the B2C e-commerce. Therefore, in 2013, as I mentioned before, Tencent has internal merge for its own brands, and make its products more mature.

 

Even though Tencent seems to be the NO.1 in online world in so many aspects, like instant messenger, online games, Taobao.com is still the boss in B2C or C2C e-commerce. As you can see from the chart, Taobao.com (blue slice) occupies 71.6% market share, and Paipai.com only has 7.97% market share (Beige slice).

 

Tencent has large amount of users, but compared to Taobao.com, Paipai.com has less suppliers and sellers. So that the products and services they offer and less than Taobao.com. I am the users of Tencent for more than ten years, but I never shop on Paipai.com. I buy products on Taobao.com most of the time. First of all, I think Taobao website has more organized and attractive. They specify every product exactly in different category so that buyers can easily find out the products they want. Then, Taobao will design webpage depend on Chinese tradition holiday, in order to create a festive atmosphere. Second, they have so many registered sellers in Taobao.com than Paipai. Paipai is C2C commerce, but Taobao also has B2C e-commerce. That means Taobao offers business companies or suppliers directly selling products to customers. Therefore, the price of each product is more competitive that buyers can get the cheapest price in Taobao.

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Chapter 8-- Segmenting and Targeting Markets

Tencent has different products category for different customers’ needs. First, Tencent has divides their products into the following ways: communication, community exchange, casual games, action games, online games, mobile and life style. Second, based on customer’s needs, communication also can be divided into QQ, QQ mail, QQ software, QQ micro-blog, QQ show, QQ membership etc. QQ zone, Friend, photo albums, QQ music, QQ live, Podcasts are all included in the range of community exchange.

Tenccent marketing segmentation mostly reflects on its games. Tencent Games is one of the biggest open platforms, as well as the largest online game community in China.  It is divided into six market segments: action, shooting, MMO, sports, casual, online games, in order to meet millions of Tencent users’ demands. The new games Tencent recently released have different characteristics. In the action games, Tencent released dark style “Sura” and comicize style “Swiftwind Blade”; Tencent also develops the first third-person shooter online game "Gun Gods" and Science-Fiction style game “Metro Conflict”. “The segmenting of games market is conducive to business growth.” As one of the Tencent Game development department employees said.

 

After the long time marketing research of Tencent, they found that action online games market is far from saturated. Different styles, different type of play action game has great appeal to players. Therefore, not only Tencent continue has their internal independent research and development, they also focus on the open platform to attract different companies to released games in Tencent open platform.

 

The Games mentioned above like “Sura” and Gun Gods” are more suitable for the professional players. It needs time to finish one level and continue to the next. At the same time, this games needs to buy “weapons” in order to defeat the enemy. It is also a way Tencent earn the profit from, “weapons” need money to buy. As a non-professional game player, I won’t spend thousands of RMB to buy “weapons” that I can’t even touch. In addition, some action games are too more violent for girls to play. Therefore, I usually play casual games. Table Tennis, Tennis Games or QQ speed are the games I used to play. What I want is to relax and having fun during playing games, but playing the acting games make me feel pressure.

 

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