Chapter 163: Resolution (3)-A Cat for Every Cat Owner(Wise as snow, cold as ice.)

As the clock ticked closer to midnight, the tension in the operations room steadily mounted.

The major promotional event was about to kick off, yet the persons-in-charge for the problematic merchants still could not be reached, nor had any concrete action plan been formulated.

"Xujia, haven't you heard back from their marketing department yet?"

The large screen in the operations room displayed real-time data, which was far more convenient than having to input data and check it one by one on individual computers. Staring at the unchanged rating in the bottom left corner of the big screen, Tang Xiao could not help but stand up and stretch her neck to ask.

"Not yet... I contacted Gu Yao first, and she said she couldn't find the person-in-charge at all."

"So we're just going to wait here?"

Before Tang Xiao could finish her sentence, she was abruptly interrupted by Cheng Li's voice:

"They're changing, those data points are changing!"

Everyone assumed that the negotiations by the marketing department had finally yielded results and hurriedly stood up to look at the big screen, only to find that the ratings of those merchants had quietly dropped once again. The one with the steepest drop was now teetering dangerously close to a mere score of 6.

"What on earth are they doing!" Chen Xujia could no longer sit still either. Before she could continue pressing the marketing department for updates, she received a directive from Wang Shi in the main operations room:

"Xujia, what is going on with those suppliers? Have you had someone look into it?"

Chen Xujia immediately briefed Wang Shi on the situation. After finishing, she paused for a moment and then continued:

"With those suppliers' ratings this low, should we still pour traffic into them? If we keep feeding them traffic, I'm afraid it will go to waste..."

"Discuss this with the traffic team first, and report back once you reach a decision."

With the instruction received, Chen Xujia wasted no time. She motioned for Tang Xiao and Su Zhenxin to follow her to the other side of the operations room to find their colleagues from the traffic team.

"Shufang! Shufang! We need to coordinate with you on something right now."

Hearing her name, Zhou Shufang turned around. Seeing that it was Chen Xujia, she quickly stood up:

"Xujia! You must be talking about the top-tier brands running short on full-reduction coupons and their ratings dropping!"

Seeing Chen Xujia nod, Zhou Shufang went on:

"We just received notice about it too, and we were actually on our way to find you. I didn't expect you to be so fast and arrive first."

As they spoke, the two of them led their teams toward a nearby small conference room. Their most urgent task right now was to figure out what to do with the traffic originally allocated to these problematic brands.

According to the traffic team's perspective, the rankings of these brands were built on solid, past sales performance. The fact that they could rank in the top twenty proved that consumers were willing to pay for them. Since consumers were buying, continuing to promote these brands shouldn't pose too big of a problem.

However, Chen Xujia and her team disagreed.

This was the peak of a major promotional event, and countless merchants had responded to the company's latest marketing strategies by slashing prices for promotions.

If these top-tier companies defied the trend by raising instead of lowering their prices while still capturing massive amounts of traffic and exposure, how could the other merchants further down the line be expected to continue playing by the rules?

"But the number of brands and products we can allocate for each tier of traffic is fixed," Zhou Shufang frowned, opening the Mars App to demonstrate to the merchant operations team.

On the homepage of the app, fourteen categories were clearly visible, arranged in two rows above the information stream recommendations. Tapping into any of the categories revealed sections such as [Featured Brands] and [Hot-Selling Products], with specific content displayed in a leaderboard format under each section.