September 1, 2007 – 6:25:12 | by Bill Han in Thinking
Today I have sold two second-hand books on Douban.com whose English website is Douban.net, one of the books is “Technical Analysis of the Futures Markets: A Comprehensive Guide to Trading Methods and Applications” written by John J.Murphy. This book is sold in 80 yuan (more than 11 dollars) at many bookstores and my transfer price on Douban.com is 50 yuan. Apart from selling the books itself, the reason I sold the books is that I want to do an experiment, whose simple purpose is to know if we can sell the books on Douban.com. The following is my thoughts about this experiment.
What is Douban.com in essence?
People generally believe that Douban.com is a Web2.0 website affected deeply by The Long Tail written by Chris Anderson. On Douban.com, the users spontaneously offer the contents for the users themselves. The contents provided by the users include mainly the Books ( Wo Du), the Films ( Wo Kan ), the Music ( Wo Ting ) and the Blogs ( 9 Dian ).To the website team, Douban.com is similar to a “Perpetual Motion Machine”, because they only need take the website’s framework to guide the users and make them finish the rest.
At the Books ( Wo Du ) on Douban.com, the users enrich the website’s contents by to recommend the books which they have read, and more users visit Douban.com to find their favorite books and share them. Due to group effect, more and more users constantly update the Books on Douban.com, and the Books has become a books marketplace or community in a short time.
Why can we sell the books on Douban.com?
Although Douban.com is not Dangdang.com or Joyo.com which can sell the books or else, Douban.com is still a books community, and so It has also the function of selling books as the bookstores. In fact, as Dangdang and Joyo’s sales union, Douban.com in long-term cooperation with them obtains the royalty from its sales revenue. In this cooperation, Douban is equivalent to a salesman or sale agent of Dangdang and Joyo.
Douban acts as the intermediary of B2C in this cooperation with Dangdang and Joyo. And similarly, Douban can act as the intermediary of C2C and become a trade platform between the users and the users. Douban has done so. And It put the commercial site’s sales ( etc. Dangdang and Joyo ) and the personal user’s sales together on its website. Douban treats the commercial websites and the personal users’ sales as equals, although it does not get any intermediary fee from personal transactions.
Well, why did we have sold the books on Douban.com? I think, the first reason is that Douban.com is a books community and this is the relevance between Douban.com and the books. Secondly It is the convenience of selling books, because there are some users who want to buy the books in the visitors of Douban.com. Finally, It is also important that the characteristics of the books including the second-hand books itself. The effect of the product’s characteristics to the sale is attributed to whether the total customer cost that get the product is less than the total customer value.
What is the inspiration to us to sell the books on Douban.com?
The relevance and convenience bring it to realization to sell books on Douban.com, but there are contingency and uncertainty, especially to the personal user. I can’t calculate the quantity that Douban.com sells books for Dangdang and Joyo each month, but the quantity to personal users is very small. Maybe one factor is that the personal users have not lots of books to sell.
In consideration of the strengths and weaknesses to sell books on Douban, I discovered the personal or small websites as Douban can form a kind of direct or terminal sale model, the foundation in existence is their convenience and creditability, and the chance may become an obstacle to the more large sales that they hope.
Link: 在豆瓣卖二手书的商业思考 ( by Bill in Chinese)
Tags:B2C C2C Douban Ecommerce Internet Joyo marketing Sale
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