Recently, the business of Meituan community group buying has changed.
A few days ago, the official preferred official stated that it will be upgraded to "Tomorrow's Supermarket" in the future and proposed a new brand slogan - "Really Save".
Good guy, you know it's not simple as soon as you come out. This is obviously complementary to the instant retail positioning of Meituan flash purchase and Meituan Maicai .
In this way, will Wang Xing’s “e-commerce dream” succeed?
From breaking out of the siege to retreating
As one of the most important sectors of Meituan’s new business, Meituan Preferred has always attracted much attention.
Wang Xing once said in the financial report meeting that Meituan Youxuan is an important opportunity that only once every 10 years and is a war that must be won.
In July 2020, Meituan established the Preferred Business Department, which is ranked alongside the grocery shopping business department. On September 3, it announced the "Thousand Cities Plan" with a high profile, planning to enter 20 provinces in the next three months and achieve "Thousand Cities" coverage within the year.
However, community group buying is a money-burning business, and rapid expansion cannot be separated from capital and ammunition. Even if you are backed by a large company, your plan cannot keep up with changes.
Since 2020, community group buying has entered a melee, with price wars, high-cost purchases and marketing expenses causing a large number of local groups to be defeated step by step. Even some group buying companies with financing support have difficulty in surviving that winter.
Among them, the "Old Three Group" Tongcheng Life, Food Enjoyment Meeting and Shihuituan 's departure is sad.
Meituan Youxuan and Duoduo Maicai, which have finally stayed, are also under great pressure.
Especially for the three years of repeated epidemics, "survival" and "cost control" have become the keywords for everyone.
data shows that the loss of Meituan’s new business, including Meituan Youxuan, has expanded from 10.9 billion yuan in 2020 to 38.4 billion yuan in 2021, an increase of 36.6% to 76.4% year-on-year.
The expected target of Meituan Youxuan GMV in 2021 is 150 billion, and Duoduo Maicai is 150 billion. However, the former only achieved 120 billion yuan, while the latter was around 80 billion yuan, neither of which met the expected target.
None of the major platforms have met expectations, which indirectly reflects that the business model of community group buying has not yet been completed and profits are still difficult.
Since the second half of last year, many community group buying platforms have ushered in shrinking, transformation and shutdown. Players such as Meituan Youxuan, Duoduo Maicai, Taocai are shrinking their front lines and personnel optimization.
Since April this year, Meituan Youxuan has withdrawn from Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia and Beijing successively, accelerating the search for ways to reduce losses and make profits.
Now, the preferred positioning has been changed to a "supermarket". It can be seen that Meituan further optimizes its retail landscape and abandoning community group buying is only the first step.
embraces the new temptation
Instant retail can be said to be a trend that was spawned by the epidemic and is extremely close to Meituan's business.
The uncertainty of the epidemic has further increased people's demand for immediateness and certainty, and the increase in real-time retail customers. The formation of this demand is irreversible with some consumption habits, which can develop more sticky customers.
For Meituan, seizing the trend of instant retail is even more attractive than community group buying.
So, in September this year, the homepage of Meituan App was redesigned, adding a top column "Food Department Store, On Call". Instant retail businesses such as supermarket convenience, quality department stores, vegetables and fruits, medicine buying and takeout were integrated to the top position on the homepage. These businesses mainly focus on offline physical supermarkets and provide half-hour delivery services.
In the second quarter financial report of this year, Meituan changed the past three major business segments of "catering takeout, in-store hotels and tourism, new businesses and other" into two major business segments - core local business and new businesses. Among them, Meituan Flash Sales was divided from the past new business segment to the core local commercial segment.
It can be seen that instant retail represented by Meituan flash sale is still the focus of Meituan's attention, and Meituan Youxuan's adjustment can make Meituan's e-commerce retail landscape more complete.
Meituan is finally e-commerce
Wang Xing has always had a "e-commerce dream": Meituan Maicai is benchmarked against Dingdong Maicai ; Meituan Preferred is benchmarked against Duoduo Maicai; Meituan Flash Sales is benchmarked against JD.com's Home ; Tuan Haoqu is benchmarked against traditional e-commerce.
Now, after adjusting Meituan flash sales and Meituan Preferred businesses, the competition between Meituan and JD Supermarket, JD Home, and Tmall Supermarket has become increasingly obvious.
For example, on September 16, iPhone 14 was released. Every day, the promotional page is placed directly at the APP level first entrance, focusing on 30-60 minutes of delivery, and directly cutting into the JD hourly shopping electronic market.
This is a microcosm of Meituan’s competition with JD in the instant retail market.
However, unlike JD.com's approach to category expansion, Meituan's e-commerce business layout is more based on time, from half an hour to next-day delivery, X-day delivery, etc., from local life service to continuously enter e-commerce, from edge to center.
It can be said that Meituan Youxuan and e-commerce are integrating, and
The supermarket-oriented Meituan Youxuan is gradually becoming an important part of Meituan's retail system. Wang Xing’s “e-commerce dream” may be realizing.
