Behind Pinduoduo’s ¥10 billion merchant subsidies | Impulso E102

On 21 November, two stories rocked China’s ecommerce scene, with global implications. (In the previous episode, we discussed the first story: Alibaba’s merger of its domestic Chinese and international ecommerce businesses.) In this episode, we dive into the second story—PDD Group’s Q3 earnings miss. But was the ‘miss’ engineered deliberately because all the merchant support costs were planned, or was it a lapse in execution? Tune in as we explore: – Pinduoduo’s Â¥10 billion merchant subsidies; – Why PDD or Temu seems to choose to directly engage rather than hire lobbyists; – Temu’s opening of a full marketplace mode in the United States; Pinduoduo’s focused operations, and its similarity to global retail giants like Walmart The ecommerce competition in China a