The Queen They Buried

Chapter 289

“Exactly. It’s basically a referral–based price–slashing model. If one invites enough people to help, one could even score the item for free. And new users get even bigger discounts.”

“But isn’t this approach too risky?” Birgitte voiced her concern. She thought, ‘An e–commerce platform thrives on building a mutually beneficial relationship between merchants and customers. To put it simply, we’re an intermediary platform. Our job is to balance both parties‘ interests and incentivize both sides to participate.

‘If merchants can’t make a profit, why would they ever join us? But if the platform has to burn through cash on subsidies, when we’re already positioning ourselves as high–quality yet affordable, where’s the profit margin in that?‘

Even Birgitte thought Aubree was being a bit naive. “Sure, this model might attract a wave of users,” she mused, “but what then?”

Birgitte didn’t hold back, voicing all her concerns.

Aubree smiled at her. “Of course, but don’t we control how much gets slashed and what discounts are given?”

“Go ahead, you explain,” Aubree said, turning her gaze to a programmer she’d brought from Bree Technology.

Aubree had brought over from Bree

bargaining, our platform keeps costs low. Getting an item for free or at a

referrals.”

of new users. Even if we give it away for

a million people each invite a hundred others to slash the price of a product of 30 dollars, that’s a hundred million users. Even if I give

up as she finally

about a shortage of merchants or suffering losses. As long as we have customers, even if we don’t actively help merchants make

her head in admiration and exclaimed

was convenient, but it had an obvious drawback. While platforms and merchants might offer coupons and discounts, one couldn’t haggle over prices like one could in

buying models ingeniously address the gap left by the inability to haggle online. Even better, this approach creates a win–win–win scenario:

joy. Let’s make National Day holidays a real

made the call. “Pour every last cent of

Once the project took off, it would

shopping market with lightning speed, sinking its teeth into the competition