In the 1930s, Chicago gangster "Scarface" Al Capone said a very classic saying, "You can go further with a gun and a mouth than with just a mouth." Wang Xingyin, the founder of Meituan, once quoted this famous saying, and now, this sentence is coming true for Meituan.Meituan’s core business"local life services"It has become the hottest battle in the circle recently. Moreover, unlike the taxi-hailing platform that besieged Didi, all major Internet companies now want to poach Meituan.
Those who make short videos want to make takeaways, and those who make maps also let you try a whole cup of coffee in his app.
The reason why Meituan is being targeted by various companies is, to put it simply, the plate it holds is too big and too fragrant.
[Local life] is actually a coined term. Logically speaking, as long as it is related to "eating, drinking, having fun, housing and transportation", it is considered within the scope of business.But in such a large area, the only giant is Meituan.
Coupled with the pure online competition among various companies, there is no way to deal with it, so it is natural to think of expanding the business offline.
At first, I tried to clarify these things for everyone, but after a few days of research, I found that if I went through them all, I couldn’t fit them into the space of tens of thousands of words.
Therefore, this time I will only talk about companies like Meituan that specialize in comprehensive group buying business.
The contestants this time can be roughly divided into four groups. The first group is Douyin, which is blowing up the market; the second group is Alibaba, which is stable and improving; the third group is the middle-class students who are indifferent; and the last one is Meituan, which is beleaguered on all sides.
The first thing that cannot be avoided is Douyin, which is the trigger of this movement.
How powerful is Douyin?
In 2022, Douyin’s local life GMV will be approximately 77 billion. The year before last, Douyin only had 100 GMV for the whole year. In just one year, it has turned upside down.
At the beginning of last year, when rumors spread that Douyin was planning to take out food, Meituan’s share price fell by 7%.
Backed by a traffic pool of more than 700 million daily users, it is really possible to put a pole in it and it will bloom.
In fact, Douyin’s desire to live a local life has been around for a long time.
In 2018, I tried all videos with POI (geographic location) to tilt the additional traffic. Later, I also tried the commission-free Douyin group buying.
However, Douyin itself was still young at that time, and it was just a taste of it.
Until 2021, Douyin established a local life base camp in Chengdu, officially sounding the clarion call for a full-speed attack.
The actions are one after another, first providing various services and platforms to merchants, and adding a "eating, drinking and having fun" section in the local city.
It also exempts merchants from commissions. Although commissions have begun to be taken now, they are still stable at 2% to 8%, and some merchants will even be given a 50% commission rebate every month.
The method of using traffic to steal people from Meituan has also been changed one after another.
At the beginning, Douyin’s strategy was to take the route of experts visiting stores. Various activities have also been launched to increase store exposure, such as "Xindong Restaurant" and "Douyin Food, Drink and Entertainment List".
Later, after Douyin's live broadcast started, the focus turned to merchant live broadcast, and many popular stores were cultivated from the live broadcast room.
The explosive T97 coffee
Sales exceeded 100 million in the first month
However, what really makes Meituan nervous is a super big card played by Douyin——Douyin takeout.
At the end of last year, Douyin announced that it would cooperate with Dada, Shanshuang and SF Express to establish a group purchase and delivery team to provide merchants with intra-city delivery. The fulfillment service fee for delivery is much cheaper than that of Meituan.
It has now been launched in more than 30 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou.
Food delivery is Meituan’s largest business segment. If Douyin eats this piece of cake, Meituan will be really in danger.
However, Douyin, which seems to be unparalleled in the limelight, has announced that it will give up the 100 billion yuan this year.GMVDouyin takeout target.
The reason why this goal was abandoned may be related to Douyin’s reliance on third-party delivery.
Currently, merchants that support Douyin takeout are either big catering companies like Pizza Hut and KFC that already have delivery teams, or they are high-unit-price categories aimed at gatherings of many people.
Because only such high unit price categories can allow Douyin to still make money after hiring third-party delivery, and the delivery time will be more relaxed. For other low-profit categories, third-party delivery alone is not enough to absorb them.
Not only was the takeout business hampered, Douyin’s in-store business also encountered many problems.
I have specifically consulted some merchants who promote on Douyin. The other party said that the write-off rate of Douyin is very low. When Douyin goes online, more often than not,Just to open up visibility.
Because only after the user cancels the group buying coupon, the business is considered completed and the money will be credited to the merchant's account.
On Douyin, I spent extra money to hire a team to create content. It seemed like a lot of coupons were sold, but the write-off rate turned out to be so low. Who can stand this? .
If this situation continues, it will actually be very detrimental to Douyin’s further expansion.
"Will do whatever it takes to win this fight."
This is the slogan used by former Alibaba Group CEO Zhang Yong for local life in 2018.
Alibaba has been very close to this slogan in the past, but now it seems that it may be a bit difficult to implement.
Ali’s reputation as the company that was once the most suitable for local life has declined and has changed hands four times. Now, Ali has pinned all his hopes on the newly debuted "Fei Gao Lao" group.
In 2021, the organizational structures of Fliggy, AutoNavi, and Ele.me will be officially merged.
Looking at the melee among various companies this year,Ali might as well just kill the one who has only a few breaths left."word of mouth"Incorporated into Gaode.
Although the arrival of word of mouth may not add much buff to Goude. However, it can be regarded as indicating that Gaode will carry the banner of local life in Ali. Alibaba wants to make good use of AutoNavi, a traffic pool with 150 million daily active users.
This year AutoNavi has also made some new attempts, and jointly launched "Take it along the street"Service. If you place an order at Amap, you can pick it up at the Starbucks down the street. The coffee will be made 10 minutes before you arrive and will be delivered at the curb.
It is worth mentioning that in the initial composition of Ali's local life, Gaode had no place at all.
In 2010, Amap engaged in O2O businesses such as food delivery and door-to-door cleaning, but all of them were axed after the Hundred Regiments War. .
But fortunately, Ali's high-flying combination is now playing steadily.
In the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, the revenue of local life (including the home-delivery business Ele.me and the destination business AutoNavi) was 14.45 billion, an increase of 30% over the same period last year, and the loss was also reduced by nearly 861 million compared with the same period last year.
Except for Douyin and Alibaba, the rest can only be regarded as average, without making too much splash.
For example, Baidu launched a local life-related section in 2020.But if you don’t tell the bad review, you might not even know it exists.
The remaining major manufacturers almost only started to take it seriously after Douyin tried to develop local life.
For example, Kuaishou started trying in 2020, but it only cooperated with various companies, such as Qunar, Tongcheng Elong, etc., and even showed packages and vouchers to Meituan.
It will not be until 2022 that the local life business will become an independent business unit.
Quickly and slowly, we launched a group buying mini-program to provide special discounts.
The low-price strategy has indeed brought about certain effects. Compared with January, the number of consumer users in June increased by 498%, and the payment GMV increased by 848%.
This year, we are calling on friends and accelerating cooperation with various platforms. Also did a "Flying Bird Project”, creators who use subsidies and incentives to promote local life.
Cooperate with Tongcheng Travel
Provide attractions tickets and other services
The only hope of the Tencent system at present - the video account, has recently entered the market without any hurry.
The "local life component" has been launched on a small scale and is targeted at local life categories such as beauties, moving, and housekeeping. Now, when you click on Burger King's homepage, you already have self-service ordering and home delivery services.
There are people who are more Buddhist than video accounts. For example, Xiaohongshu only launched two incentive plans this year to provide merchants with commission-free and traffic incentive support.
In fact, a rough analysis shows that although there are many big manufacturers that have failed, the methods are basically the same.
Either it’s a special group buying coupon, or if it’s a content-driven platform, there’s a creative incentive. Everyone is still going around in the same routine that Meituan has played, and many people are even confused and confused about the situation.
So what does Meituan think about the crazy entry of various companies?
People familiar with Meituan and reviewers said that Meituan’s biggest barrier is food delivery.
Meituan, which emerged from the food delivery war, has been researching instant delivery for 10 years and has mature algorithms and 6 million riders.
This algorithm not only refers to the optimal solution for the rider's route, but also the most timely update of road information.
Even in Chongqing, which has many complicated mountain roads, even if there is a temporary event and the road is blocked, Meituan can quickly calculate a detour plan.
However, there are no permanent barriers to the current Internet.
Once Douyin is determined to continue investing in food delivery and builds its own logistics regardless of cost, and invests two or three years, Meituan's barriers to food delivery will become thinner and thinner.
Douyin tried its hand at live streaming e-commerce before and directly achieved several trillion GMV.Just tilting a little bit of traffic and capital will basically drown the ants with just a drop of saliva.
The user overlap rate of Douyin and Meituan is almost 81%
Therefore, Meituan is of course panicked and even fights against these regardless of profit.
Meituan's confrontation came very quickly, and the principle was very clear: you have what Douyin has, and Meituan will arrange it all.
As Douyin relies on commission-free services to win over businesses, Meituan immediately lowered its commission points from 8% to half to 4%. They even signed a three-month exclusivity agreement with merchants: merchants’ package prices on Douyin cannot be lower than Meituan’s, or they may simply go offline on Douyin.
At the same time, they launched the "Special Group Buying" and placed it in the most eye-catching C position. Meituan Quanquan mini program has also been restarted, so customers can get more favorable low prices.
Didn’t Douyin cooperate with third-party delivery? Meituan also cooperated with UU Errand, SF Express and Flash Delivery to further establish instant delivery.
Even live broadcasts, which Douyin is best at, are also arranged by Meituan. It was tested on a small scale last year, and this year it went all-in, and even launched a "Meituan Live" APP.
Meituan’s attitude is very clear. These follow-up strategies may not be successful, but if you stand still and surrender directly, you will definitely die.
This is the survival model of China’s Internet. A bit like the Roman Empire in the past, the borders of the Roman Empire did not depend on its own strategic deployment, but on the strength of its opponents.
There is only my territory and unbeatable opponents.
Screw you being small and beautiful, I have to be big and strong, and I want one APP to cover the entire industry. I beat the whole crowd by myself.
Wang Xing, who loves to quote famous quotes, has said before: Most people’s understanding of war is wrong. War is not made up of hard work and sacrifice, but made up of endurance and suffering.
Meituan.com was established in 2011. As soon as it was born, it was involved in the most intense "Hundred Regiments War" and surprisingly survived to the end.
Now, 13 years later, Meituan is once again suffering from a protracted war.
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