I don’t think: verticalization is the future development trend of e-commerce (here it is defined as consumer vertical e-commerce).

What is “verticalization”? My judgment is that verticalization is just the trend of future e-commerce entrepreneurship - on this entrepreneurial road, everyone will continue to move forward, but after “killing” the runners, they will find that they are still not as good as comprehensive e-commerce platforms, and they will find that selling themselves to cash out is the last and best way to realize.

Why?

Because the several significant characteristics of the Internet economy are:

First, there is a lack of regional boundaries: even for e-commerce that seems to emphasize “regionalization” such as fresh food and same-city delivery, national large capital and large platforms are establishing a dominant position.

Second, there is a lack of category: and comprehensive platforms with pan-category far exceed vertical e-commerce in terms of traffic and user scale.

Third, winner takes all: cross-border and expansion around the diversified needs of users, and constantly expand the boundaries of the types of problems that meet the needs of goods and services

Fourth, ...

Therefore, we will see Amazon, Dangdang, etc. transform from vertical e-commerce that sells books into comprehensive e-commerce that sells everything (from vertical to comprehensive, which is also a major development trend of all vertical e-commerce); we will see the so-called PPG, Vancl, etc., which will be unsustainable... We will see platforms such as JD.com, Alibaba, and even 58.com, which will break through the boundaries of operation again and again and become an all-encompassing "society"; we will see that companies that were originally clearly defined in their main business positioning are becoming more and more similar.

In addition, from the perspective of the user/consumer market, the emergence and existence of one vertical e-commerce platform after another may even violate the basic market rules. For example, for us, don’t we want to be faster, better, and cheaper? Don’t we want to solve our own problems in one stop? Do we want to install APPs for vertical e-commerce platforms on our mobile phones to buy fruits, vegetables, condiments, rice, flour, grain, oil, clothing, shoes, hats, and drinks?

In addition to these, there are other reasons and other trends of vertical e-commerce, which I will not elaborate on... Interested friends can follow Li Zhengquan's Toutiao homepage, pay attention to related columns, or join Li Zhengquan's "Business Trend Analysis Society" or "Future Business Circle" for in-depth discussions.