
Since the outbreak, the "live broadcast with goods" of physical business has rapidly climbed to the focus of the industry. According to the data of RET Ruiyide China Commercial Real Estate Research Center, the penetration rate of "shopping mall live broadcast" in first-and second-tier cities has reached about 30%, and the proportion of shopping mall head operators, department stores, Ole and other enterprises trying to live broadcast is higher.
However, except for some department stores, most operators who have tried live broadcast have failed to achieve the expected effect of bringing goods. In 2019, the annual sales of 177 anchors on Taobao platform exceeded 100 million yuan. Compared with e-commerce anchors, offline operators are mostly below the "waist" level. The preliminary survey shows that the leading operators in the industry have a single-day live broadcast of "cargo volume" of several hundred thousand yuan, and individual events have reached the level of one million yuan. More shopping centers can only carry a few thousand dollars a game, and some live broadcasts are simplified to online marketing in planning and organization, with "live broadcast" but no "carrying goods". Even some live broadcasts with good transaction figures often come from the price advantage subsidized by brands and shopping malls, which is not suitable for long-term high-frequency measures.
Therefore, for many shopping centers, live broadcast with goods seems to have become an "ineffective investment" again, which has caused questions such as "whether to continue live broadcast" and "whether to combine live broadcast with promotion". We believe that "live broadcast with goods" once again touches the essence of shopping centers as "traffic operation platforms". Only by breaking through the thinking barrier of shopping center traffic operation can we grasp the value role of shopping centers in the live broadcast industry.
The seemingly ineffective result is the thinking barrier of traffic operation.
RET Ruiyide defines the essence of shopping center as: physical space that attracts (customers) traffic with consumption function and scene experience, and retailers settle in to realize traffic and collect rent from retailers. The shopping center is responsible for attracting traffic, which is realized by retailers. Under the traditional asset management operation mode, the rent is the result of the retailer’s settlement and realization to the shopping center.
The live broadcast with goods can be another set of cash accounting system. From product selection and planning, to live broadcast, ordering, logistics and billing, the live broadcast of shopping centers is not only closely related to brand, marketing and platform traffic, but also self-contained, with the closed-loop potential of independent business. "Live broadcast with goods" has been fully flattened in the field of e-commerce, the ability of traffic attraction has been continuously verified, and there are mature solutions for traffic realization. The remaining problem is how to effectively reuse its business model and increase the flow value of shopping centers.
At present, although e-commerce live broadcast has become a trend in 2019, the starting point for shopping centers to do live broadcast is often the "last resort" during the epidemic period, and after the epidemic, it turns to marketing logic aimed at expanding sales. The neglect of realizing the commercial pain points of live broadcast limits the application scenarios of live broadcast in shopping center traffic operation.
We believe that offline physical business platforms, including department stores and shopping centers, actually have the ability to be turned into MCN institutions that do not rely on strong KOL. With the help of the increasingly mature CPS scheme of e-commerce, through the differentiated advantages of private domain operations and offline "sticky" services, the incremental cake of realizing traffic is cut off.
* MCN: Multi-channel Network, originally an intermediary between content creators and video platforms (such as YouTube), is now a company with the ability and resources to help content producers, ensure the continuous output of content and stabilize commercial realization.
* CPS: Cost Per Sale, originally an Internet advertising commission model, calculates the advertiser’s commission based on the actual sales brought by the advertisement according to a preset proportion. In the live broadcast scenario, it refers to the fact that after the consumer purchases the goods through the anchor, the anchor or its organization divides the commission on the actual sales of the goods.
Why is it "invalid"? Efficiency depends on the basic link, and the underlying logic depends on the growth mechanism.
To understand the business opportunities of shopping center live broadcast with goods, we need to clarify the "technical" efficiency problems in the existing attempts. One of the reasons for the popularity of e-commerce live broadcast is that the threshold for "broadcasting" is very low, and equipment, networks, personnel, etc. do not constitute entry barriers. However, in order to carry goods, we need to have complete "product functions" in product selection planning, site effect, atmosphere creation, rhythm control, payment logistics and so on.

Source: RET Ruiyide China Commercial Real Estate Research Center.
In the process of investigation, we found that the technical problems of live delivery in shopping malls include the following aspects:
Hardware support: fuzzy equipment, dim lighting, radio jitter, obsolete venue, etc., which greatly reduces the perception of live broadcast;
Choice of goods: most shopping centers only know the brand but not the goods, and lack control over which goods are more suitable for the live broadcast scene and the needs of the audience, which leads to the live broadcast without moving goods;
Content planning: Many operators’ own research shows that consumers often think that their live broadcast process is boring, and besides the live broadcast professionalism of the anchor itself, the neglect of script rehearsal, event planning and other links is the main reason;
Marketing preheating: for example, WeChat push, WeChat group notification, linkage between brand fans and shopping mall fans, etc., multi-terminal preheating is the premise of rapidly accumulating live traffic;
On-site team: Although there are only one or two anchors in front of the screen, as long as there are a little more viewers, it is necessary to increase on-site customer service and support teams to assist in real-time ordering, interaction, innovation, and fan precipitation;
Supply chain: offline commerce usually does not have the channel price advantage of e-commerce, and at the same time, it can’t control the delivery links such as inventory and logistics, so it can’t connect with the accounting scheme provided by the live broadcast platform;
Trading experience: due to the lack of supply chain, some shopping malls are forced to indirectly bring goods by issuing coupons online, but the long decision-making chain is basically equivalent to customer loss;
As an anchor in Chaoyang Joy City said in the media, the performance in front of the anchor camera only accounts for 30% of the live broadcast effect, and 70% of the success is attributed to team preparation. Different from the offline one-to-one sales scenario, the live broadcast process is one-to-many communication between anchors, which improves the efficiency of information transmission and magnifies the details.
The reason why the department store industry has obvious advantages in the current live broadcast war is that the department store has gradually opened up the link of live broadcast with goods in terms of supply chain and trading experience.
The financial report of over the rainbow Department Store shows that the online sales of its department store counters increased by 347% in the first quarter, and the order volume increased by 158% in the first quarter. The digital system independently developed by over the rainbow for several years has played an important role in the large-scale live broadcast operation during the epidemic. Relying on the digital system, brands are mainly responsible for live content, products and expressive force, and the threshold for additional investment is lowered, so merchants are willing to continue to cooperate.
Yintai has also shared the experience of live broadcast and digitalization on many occasions. Through the cooperation and deep transformation with Ali, Yintai has basically realized the digitalization of the whole link of goods, cashier, inventory, logistics and service. After the link is opened, the links including real-time linking of goods, inventory preparation, instant delivery and commission calculation can effectively support the live consumption process.

Source: RET Ruiyide China Commercial Real Estate Research Center.
When thinking about why the current live delivery mode is not effective, operators need to determine whether the problems directly observed are only the result of "improper basic operation". It can be seen that since April, some shopping centers have begun to lower their expectations for the online live broadcast, and the live broadcast mode has a tendency to be weakened into four scenarios:
First, operators no longer organize or participate in merchant self-broadcasting at high frequency, but encourage it to be normalized and give some support;
The second is to integrate "live broadcast with goods" into the annual promotion activities and focus on its own brand building;
Third, from live broadcast with goods to "live broadcast with powder" or "live broadcast with stores", and strive to plant grass for consumers to "visit the scene";
The fourth is to operate the live broadcast in isolation, hoping to verify the feasibility of changing the brand through live broadcast;
And these strategic adjustments seem to have returned to the comfort zone of "managing brands but not goods" and "paying attention to traffic but not operating traffic".
We believe that the lack of basic link is the direct cause of the current operator’s live broadcast becoming "ineffective investment", and most problems are actually "efficiency problems", including the efficiency of brand cooperation, fan drainage, launch planning, consumption transformation, follow-up service and so on, and the construction of basic link is the corresponding scheme to effectively improve efficiency.
What’s more, operators have still failed to get through the two-way growth mechanism with brands, including building traffic pools, sharing traffic revenue, matching people and goods, and promoting the empowerment of both parties. Problems such as product selection, supply chain, continuous traffic introduction, online traffic turning to offline, etc., can not be solved only by basic link construction. This kind of deep-seated problem is manifested in the intuitive experience of "no advantage in cost performance" and "no advantage in competition with e-commerce live broadcast", and the strategic goal shift from "bringing goods" to "assisting marketing, restructuring and attracting investment".
The dimension-increasing perspective of live broadcast with goods: what can MCN-like mode bring to shopping centers?
We believe that the significance of "live broadcast with goods" in physical commerce lies not in the inherent operation and its income structure, but in the innovative flow realization model. The opportunity we can see is that the strong confrontation of MCN e-commerce live broadcast industrial chain structure has brought the entry point of asymmetric competition and the possibility of increasing revenue sharing to the physical business platform.
Back to the problem of "no cost-effective advantage". In fact, all live broadcast subjects, whether e-commerce or physical businesses, head anchors or general anchors, are trying to achieve the selling point of "cost performance". "Cost-effective" is one of the core elements to compete for price-sensitive public domain traffic. "The lowest price of the whole network" is often the most important traffic harvesting strategy for Li Jiaqi and Weiya. During the period of double 11 in 2019, Baique Ling even temporarily canceled the "lowest price of the whole network" given to Li Jiaqi’s team, which caused many denunciations. However, the cost-effective strategy is only suitable for global traffic competition, and it is difficult for shopping centers and department stores to imitate e-commerce and compress the supply chain cost to the extreme.

Source: RET Ruiyide China Commercial Real Estate Research Center and CITIC Securities.
But price competition is not the only choice, and it is not a necessary means for shopping centers. The existing e-commerce companies prefer this strategy, which is closely related to its industrial chain structure. In particular, the competitive advantage of MCN, the key bridge responsible for realizing content, has been compressed in many ways, and supply chain competition has become a choice that MCN has to make.

Source: RET Ruiyide China Commercial Real Estate Research Center.
The online live broadcast industry chain lacks the inherent flow and credit endorsement of offline entities, so it relies heavily on live broadcast platforms and KOL anchors. On the one hand, MCN must obey the trading rules formulated by the platform and cannot bargain with the platform; On the other hand, the anchor’s own traffic is almost the only effective competitiveness of online live broadcast, and MCN must also compete for scarce anchor resources.
In terms of platform rules, e-commerce live broadcast general CPS mode (Cost Per Sale). The platform side determines the fixed proportion of brand owners (such as 80%). The rest is first divided within the platform, then cut to MCN and anchor, and finally MCN and anchor divide the residual income. Taking the mechanism of Taobao live broadcast as an example, the typical subcontracting scenario is:

Source: RET Ruiyide China Commercial Real Estate Research Center and CITIC Securities.
1. Taobao live broadcast platform merchants connect MCN and anchor through V-task and other channels, and clinch a deal with 100 yuan, with a commission of 20%, of which 6% is charged by Ali platform, and the remaining 14% is charged by MCN and anchor;
2. The e-commerce live broadcast of Aauto Quicker platform is diverted to Taobao platform, Ali platform charges 7.4%(6% content scene service fee +1.4% technical service fee), Aauto Quicker platform charges 6.5%, and MCN and anchor points remain 6.5%;
3. The e-commerce live broadcast of Tik Tok platform is diverted to Taobao platform. Ali platform charges 7.4%(6% content scene service fee +1.4% technical service fee), Tik Tok platform charges 0.2%, and the remaining 12.8% is MCN and anchor.
In terms of anchor sharing, the anchor’s traffic resources have obvious bargaining advantages. In the face of MCN, the head anchor can usually get a great commission tilt; For anchors of small and medium-sized fans, the share of MCN ranges from 60% to 70%. Therefore, small and medium-sized waist anchors become the profit point of MCN, but the instability of their traffic also brings risks; Head anchor is a sharp weapon for MCN to cut global traffic, but it also constitutes direct competition for MCN. A similar case in the real estate industry is the "28 structure" in industrial real estate operation: large enterprises in the park play an important role in industrial introduction, but for the park side, this part of the rent does not constitute a profit point; Small and medium-sized enterprises and small enterprises constitute the main rental profit points, but their stability is relatively poor and their risks are relatively high.
Of course, even the head anchor with huge traffic depends on MCN content support ability. For example, in Weiya’s team, there are more than 100 people who only choose products, and the product pass rate is only 5%. However, under the current market conditions, the personal characteristics and growth process of the head anchor have been difficult to replicate. On the one hand, the head anchor has unique live broadcast characteristics, such as Li Jiaqi’s uniqueness and attraction as a male beauty anchor.
On the other hand, the reason for the formation of the current head anchor is largely due to the traffic bonus of the early Taobao live broadcast. When the e-commerce live broadcast just developed in 2016, there was an extreme lack of natural traffic dividends formed by anchors. In 2018, the number of anchors who joined Taobao live broadcast increased by 180% year-on-year, and more than 200 institutions with professional production backgrounds joined simultaneously. The natural bonus no longer exists, and the competition for incubating, screening and signing the head anchor of MCN will be more intense in the future.

Source: RET Ruiyide China Commercial Real Estate Research Center, QuestMobile.
The opportunity of shopping centers lies in the "private competition" of the existing MCN industrial chain:
First of all, the existing traffic of shopping centers has obvious characteristics of "loyalty to the project". Once it is formed, it is difficult to change, and MCN lacks control over the whole platform traffic loyal to the anchor;
Secondly, the rules of the live broadcast platform and the existing settlement scheme improve the transparency of the industry, which can reduce the internal friction between shopping centers, brands and anchors in co-constructing live broadcast cooperation;
Thirdly, MCN must compete in global traffic, but shopping centers have the ability to accurately identify regional customer groups, so there is no pressure to incubate top traffic anchors strategically;
Finally, in the face of the natural private domain operation scene, the efficiency of merchant live broadcast is more important than the traffic scale, and with the goal of "improving the efficiency of merchant live broadcast", e-commerce live broadcast has produced a relatively mature scheme;
In the case of staggered global traffic competition, on the one hand, shopping centers can establish a digital income system with the help of the accounting rules of the e-commerce industry chain; On the other hand, by promoting the anchor to become the operating carrier of private domain traffic, it is also possible to build channels to connect surrounding consumers outside the physical space. If there is no need to rebuild the live broadcast platform or introduce Li Jiaqi, then the mall operators can enjoy the maximum benefits that MCN can get under the existing platform rules. Taking the aforementioned Taobao CPS rules as an example, without relying on the head anchor, the maximum score of each order of MCN may reach about 14%.
It is conceivable that when the selling point of "price advantage" becomes more competitive, existing industrial entities will also look for relatively relaxed market space. Even if the shopping center can’t form MCN function, cross-industry competitors may appear spontaneously. The trend that has emerged is that MCN is looking for opportunities to break through the Red Sea, and its "flow pool" is getting bigger and bigger, while individual flow channels are more streamlined. MCN is more and more inclined to the strategy of multi-anchor, in order to improve its bargaining power between upstream and downstream and reduce its dependence on a single anchor and its fan base.
MCN is further transforming from a "broker" to an incubation and empowerment organization, which is naturally adapted to the platform structure of shopping centers. The relationship between the brand and the operator is symbiotic. Rent-based is a traditional ecological scene, while live broadcast is a collaborative innovation of traffic realization through re-division. Operators can focus on improving the live broadcast efficiency of merchants, directly apply the rules of e-commerce platform in the sharing scheme, and learn from MCN’s existing content organization model. Under this circumstance, the e-commerce platform’s strong control over market rules is beneficial to the mall operators to control their own boundaries.
No MCN will consider recreating a Taobao live broadcast platform, but under the public domain, every MCN wants to recreate Li Jiaqi. For shopping centers, under the private scene, operators should find their own exclusive advantages in the live broadcast boom by changing their role thinking and making full use of the existing industrial framework.
From off-site to on-site, business orientation promotes the digital value of live broadcast with goods.
RET Ruiyide always believes that "off-site digitalization" is a more suitable path for shopping center digitalization. At present, most shopping centers are investing in "on-site digitalization", which is essentially optimizing the efficiency of "stock" of shopping malls with digital methods. "Off-site digitalization" is to expand the scope of commercial "field" to online, so as to obtain the increment of sales.
The live broadcast of the shopping center seems to be the starting point for the shopping center to start off-site digitization. On the one hand, the MCN-like model brings the shopping center the conditions to guide the off-site incremental business scene, on the other hand, the business form of live broadcast also requires the full integration of on-site and off-site digital construction. Here, we put forward three suggestions for the live broadcast of shopping centers:
1. Business orientation, clear objectives
Understanding the MCN model deeply, the shopping center can see the incremental cake in the live broadcast scene, but it needs to return to the real business scene to realize it. In the existing cases, different live broadcast business directions have their own ways of playing. For example, the brand special live broadcast usually has a clear direction of "people" and "goods", and shopping centers can cooperate with a single brand in depth, but it also makes it difficult to differentiate the attractiveness of traffic. Another example is the cloud shopping model, which relaxes the target customers to potential consumers of all categories in the whole region, while the whole process planning, content scripts, product links, etc. of live broadcast have high complexity. In addition, large-scale merchant self-broadcasting and online activities also involve different operational styles and business models.
More importantly, the difference of operators’ target positioning determines the nonstandard landing of live broadcast mode to business. Top-level positioning, brand structure, project cycle, customer group characteristics, etc. are all factors that need to be considered to determine the specific form of live broadcast business. The only certainty is that the live broadcast after the epidemic will no longer be a short-term destocking measure; In the air outlet of the live broadcast industry, the live broadcast of shopping centers guided by business will gradually find a mature model.
2. Organizational adaptation and efficiency optimization
Just like the deconstruction of MCN industrial chain, MCN’s gradually mature organizational model has a strong reference significance for optimizing the live broadcast efficiency of physical commerce. Shopping centers also need to be compatible with the organizational structure of independent product teams, and even evolve into a product-oriented rather than process-oriented overall organization. At present, there is still a big gap between the live broadcast team of shopping centers and MCN organizations in the professionalism of "content realization". Some enterprises form live broadcast teams by transferring members from various departments. Under the process-oriented organizational structure, shopping centers can efficiently output targeted solutions in terms of brands, goods and consumers, but it is difficult to make efficient resource matching, achievement evaluation and content adjustment for live broadcast products like MCN. The existing competitive disadvantage of MCN actually makes it make a good efficiency optimization in the organizational structure to adapt to the digital path of content realization to the greatest extent, and shopping centers can also refer to its model.
3. Off-site perspective, inward empowerment
In the live broadcast scenario, the digital adaptation of the transaction link is a necessary prerequisite. The demand for trading links first occurs off-site, and its actual construction needs to be synchronized on and off-site. Whether it’s online shopping malls, small programs, or WeChat official account and WeChat groups, all possible trading scenarios should now provide consumers with convenient and fast trading channels. Therefore, shopping centers need to turn to "goods" as the starting point, from real estate developers to real operators, and empower brands to match people and goods.
Mature live broadcast operation system can eventually lead to external data and bring important off-site reference to shopping malls. Taking consumer data as an example, the "sticky service mode" of on-site consumption and off-site live broadcast provides the possibility of opening up user life cycle data. In the past, "on-site digitalization" only analyzed the small and incomplete on-site behavior of consumers, and could not capture consumers in all directions. The stable live broadcast service has the ability to interact with consumers at high frequency, which makes it easier for shopping centers to see the overall performance of consumption trends. For example, some offline live broadcast data have already reflected the advantages of all-platform categories of beauty, fashion brand and sports. The operation of shopping malls in the Internet era is entering an off-site era, and the live broadcast service of shopping centers may be an important opportunity.
summarize
The live broadcast attempt of the physical business platform has not yet completed the 1.0 construction. After the trial of live broadcast in the last stage, it seems that the operators can’t make clear the operation direction of live broadcast business because of superficial ineffectiveness.
As a conclusion, we provide the following thinking paths for practitioners who are also examining the live broadcast boom:
1. Is the existing live broadcast attempt inefficient or ineffective?
-Non-professional resource input will lead to inefficient output, but it does not mean that it is ineffective.
2. Becoming an MCN independent of KOL may be the next stage of the live broadcast of shopping centers.
-Multiplying the MCN model into the private scene, the shopping center has the ability to obtain the bargaining power that the e-commerce MCN can’t match.
3. Business-oriented, off-site first, and live broadcast may be the best entry point for shopping centers to promote digitalization at present.
-In the future, digital shopping centers will certainly be able to make profitable live broadcasts.
In the post-epidemic stage, it is believed that more and more operators will quickly precipitate the business model of live broadcast with goods, and accelerate the innovative operation mechanism in the aspects of live broadcast business scenarios, organizational structure optimization, and digital integration inside and outside the field. Ruiyide will also think and grow together with the industry.