得到如何用超级用户思维和知识生态系统应对热情褪去后的发展天花板

Founder of Dedao App

China, a country used to be infamously accused of piracy soon after the first emergence of dotcom mania, celebrated with its netizens the unexpected success in popularization of the notion “paying for wisdom” in 2016 which was considered with consensus to be the first year of the paid knowledge era. Amongst all other outstanding providers of paid content such as Chinese Quora-like question-and-answer app Fenda and audio sharing platform Himalaya FM, Dedao APP which translates directly into “I get (knowledge)” made its grand entrance to astonish the world. With its emphasis on customer relationship and well-selected educational resources for all age groups, Dedao became a burgeoning phenomenon as the users surpassed 30 million on the occasion of its third anniversary on 26 May,2019. Indeed, Dedao undoubtedly relied on its extremely sticky and loyal superusers and sensitive capture of the trend of consumer behaviour moulded by the general external factors to assure its competitiveness. Nonetheless, Du (2019) perceived the sluggishness in the pay-for-knowledge industry after 3 years of rapid growth due to diminishing enthusiasm and increasing rationality. Under this circumstance, I argue that Dedao would carry on with its miraculous success and survive the trough if it followed its current path in forming a trustworthy and reliable community-like ecosystem. In this essay, I would like to discuss how Dedao applies the theories of relationship marketing in practice to attain lifelong loyalty from its users. Subsequently, I will further my argument in field of consumer behaviour to explore how the fexibility concealed in the company’s self-positioning is going to facilitate its adjustment to customer needs.

Given the current rate of expansion in the paid content industry, the total market was expected to grow more than 4 times within 4 years to reach RMB 23.5 billion by 2020 thanks to the boost of mobile Internet (Chen, 2018). However, that is only one side of the picture. As the downward pressure accumulates as a result of confrontational questioning and lack of perseverance, it is harder than ever to maintain an ideal amount of daily active users, which partially reflects the present popularity of the struggling online educational platforms. Dedao is no exception, the company is doomed to reach its first ceiling in the wake of exhausted bonus. While Dedao greeted its 30,000,000th official user, a follow-up report generated by Questmobile was buried under ecstasy, which revealed the fact that Dedao’s daily active users only a week later had reduced to merely 970 thousand (Yujing, 2019). Dedao team, however, had no manifestation of any concern or timidity. On the contrary, they became more certain than ever that the “precipitated superusers” are who they trully serve for. Not only did they launch a series of successful rewarding renewal activities to its loyal Audiobook listeners (a function of Dedao), the new semester of Dedao University immediately ran out of positions as well. All of these impressively honourable achievements derived from Dedao’s belief in customer lifetime value and its consistent efforts to maintain good relationship. Before establishment of Dedao, one of the major founder, Luo Zhenyu, had already proven his customer philosophy in his personal educational program Luojisiwei or Luogic show. The concepts of relationship marketing soon transplanted perfectly to Dedao. The initial takeoff benefited greatly from IP effect (or celebrity effect) that brought together loyal followers of various famous columnists to the same platform, that is the first version of Dedao APP (Lu, 2017). As a great contributor of the user inflow himself, Luo reformed his old video channel and made Dedao his exclusive spot to listen to his previous shows which would have audio access only from then on. In response to the massive complaints, Luo affirmed the necesity of “de-luoation” which means to gradually detach Luo from Dedao. Zhu (2017) and He (2019) agree with Luo and believe that Dedao should provide time-saving content of the best quality and make saving time itself worth the price in order to realize the vision of a closed-loop ecosystem. To examine the progress at present, I am glad to find out that Dedao is still concentrating wholeheartedly on its goal to be the best knowledge service provider in spite of some minor setback in the meantime. The successful avoidance of marketing myopia grants Dedao the potential to grow and adjust accordingly without being limited by a narrow self-definition.

得到如何用超级用户思维和知识生态系统应对热情褪去后的发展天花板

In addition, for Dedao to be nearing completion of the ecosystem, it has to be extraordinarily sensitive to the changing behaviour of self-learners. In fact, Dedao’s first entrance into the market was a proof of its ability to quicky capture customer behaviour (Quan & Xie, 2017). In the age of modernization and globalization, professional workers along with students are getting increasingly anxious about what lies ahead. Moreover, learners from all age groups who believe in Dedao’s specially made slogan “Fragmented time, lifelong learning” are thankful for such compatibility and insight Dedao had provided them with. Dedao never failed to satisfy the central users in the ecosystem by automating the whole online community and building of the shelter from anxiety with its users all together.

To conclude, Dedao took advantage of the fear of missing out (the rising FOMO industry) and succeeded in monetizing the carefully chosen and systematically produced content. From this, it demonstrates the likelihood of forming a community-like ecosystem through Dedao’s courageous attempt. By emphasizing the improving loyalty program, Dedao would stand against any temporary adversities and reinforce the resilience of the enclosed ecosystem. As the system becomes more and more mature, it can connect with the external world and create an even brighter future for the generation as a whole. Anyhow, an ecosystem that caters for the need to learn and understand the changing behavioural patterns is the perfect example of overcoming any unborn depressions. It is perhaps a podcasting platform for now, but no one would question its capability to transform into something new that ultimately serves for revolutions of knowledge presentation and acquisition.

得到如何用超级用户思维和知识生态系统应对热情褪去后的发展天花板

References:

Chen, T. (2018, Jul 1). Ximalaya, Dedao and more: the boom of Chinese paid audio content. Walkthechat. Retrieved from https://walkthechat.com/

Du, Q. (2019, Jan 17). Fee-based learning platforms in China combat challenges by offering free content. Global Times, Metro Shanghai. Retrieved from http://www.globaltimes.cn/

He, S. (2019, July). Research into the" Dedao" Paid Content Ecosystem. In4th International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (ICCESSH 2019). Atlantis Press.

Lu, W. "Logisiwei" WeChat book selling model research [D]. Anhui university master's thesis. 2017.31~38

Quan, Z Xie, Q. (2017). 知识付费产品用户使用行为实证研究：以得到APP为例.广告大观：理论版 / Advertisinc Panorama, (4), 71-79.

Yujing (2019, Jun 14). “得到”遭遇第一层天花板. Ciweigongshe. Retrieved from https://36kr.com/