"Due to the large amount of feedback from enterprise users"
The company that invented the electronic business card, Shangzhixun, announced that on June 18th, it will significantly adjust the price of its main product, the electronic business card (TraCQ). After the price adjustment, the per-user price of the electronic business card will increase from the current 300 yuan/year to 500 yuan/year, a rise of nearly seventy percent. According to market laws, after the official release of a product, companies usually reduce prices to boost sales. Is Shangzhixun's move against this trend due to an eagerness for profit, or does it have another purpose?
Zhiqiang Sun, General Manager of Beijing Shangzhixun Software Co., Ltd., told reporters that the increase in the market price of electronic business cards is to curb the recent phenomenon of抢注 (squatting/registration grabbing) of electronic business cards in the market.
Founded in 2001, although Shangzhixun has a significant gap compared to well-known domestic and international enterprises in terms of scale, capital, and brand, it has its own unique approach in the creativity and promotion of new products. Shangzhixun saw the disadvantage of traditional corporate websites being unable to interact, and in August 2003, launched the electronic business card. It features unique web conversation technology, compatible with text, short messages, audio-video conversation functions, which can make static, unmanned websites "come alive." This innovation clearly allowed the company to find its own market space. According to Zhiqiang Sun, from March to May, in just two months, the number of paying customers for the company's electronic business cards increased from 5,000 to 50,000, and the number of registered users quickly rose to 200,000.
"Once the market demand was opened up, some unstandardized phenomena also began to appear," said Zhiqiang Sun. "Since TraCQ electronic business cards are based on real-name registration and organizational behavior, but within an enterprise, only one person can register the electronic business card before allocating it internally, leading to some malicious squatting actions. Enterprises whose names were squatted encountered difficulties during registration and could potentially face a series of legal issues. This was something we did not anticipate." Internet domain names, 3721 Chinese web names, Tencent's BQQ, and others have also faced similar squatting problems.
"Due to the strong feedback from corporate users, Shangzhixun decided to raise the selling price of electronic business cards in consideration of protecting the interests of a wide range of corporate users," said Zhiqiang Sun, hoping to curb malicious squatting actions through this measure.
Commentators believe that the reasons for price adjustments by innovative enterprises after gaining market approval generally include increased product functionality, accelerating the recovery of initial R&D investments, rising operating costs, etc. This price increase by Shangzhixun indicates that its carefully operated innovative product is about to welcome a spring in sales. However, whether the price increase can truly suppress squatting phenomena and what specific results it will achieve still await market validation. Related theme articles: .COM bubble is over, online marketing seeks value from services; 80% of sales come from the 4th to 11th follow-ups. Related theme articles: Participating enterprises are mainly industrial enterprises. The adoption of network services is the most important driver of service-oriented architecture, easily establishing a more solid brand consumer base confidence. Loss per share 3 cents.
