article｜Yang Niwa
edit｜Sen asked
today (April 20), was called "MMC Buying Business by Ali" The group has new news.
According to local media reports in Hubei, as the only production area in the country that produces citrus in all seasons, Hubei Zigui is now selling oranges on the "Hema Bazaar". The latter is the near-field community e-commerce platform under the Ali MMC business group. It seems to announce that Ali is going to play a differentiating card from the merchandise side in the lively fighting track of grocery shopping. Under the trend of "heavy subsidies" and "buying at low prices," this seems a bit different.
On April 1 this year, Alibaba’s MMC business was exposed for the first time. Alibaba Group partner Dai Shan released an open letter to all employees on the company’s intranet-"MMC, blow the assembly call!" ". She said in the open letter, “Creating a new business form and lifestyle is hard work. It will be daily life to wear the stars and the moon. Shaxian snacks may be the supper that accompanies us the most. But youth is hot, everyone is not eager to be able to go all out. Once?"
As mentioned in the article, "new business forms and lifestyles" are pointing to what MMC calls "near-field e-commerce."
If you explain the difference between this model and community group buying, the core is the difference in the distribution logic between people and goods. The leader’s fission model adopted by community group buying represents people looking for goods, while MMC’s positioning is to digitally transform the existing husband-and-wife shops, perceive community consumption needs through small shops, and then make deterministic purchases, hoping that the goods can be distributed people.
Behind the oranges are fixed production
The first report card of the near field e-commerce,Reflected in Zigui's oranges.
"Now, when growing oranges and selling oranges, the certainty of income has become stronger." Wang Jiang, the person in charge of an agricultural cooperative, told reporters that there are hundreds of farmers in their cooperative, and every household has a number of citrus orchards. Ten thousand catties of oranges, "A lot of oranges have already been ordered. How many to pick and how much to ship are all in the plan."
When Wang Jiang said "all are in the plan", he refers to the Hema Bazaar's Sales are scheduled for production".
MMC’s near-field e-commerce is equivalent to a digital upgrade for couples’ and wives’ stores with one hand, and the other hand is to feed back the industrial belt factories and agricultural products bases, and purchase according to user needs based on statistics from small shops. And production, directly realize the optimization of supply and the optimization of upstream production loss.
The advantages of centralized procurement and the improvement of deterministic logistics efficiency will become the main factors that make the purchase price drop. Cui Xinlei, who returned to Zigui to sell navel oranges after retiring from the army, told reporters that platform-side competition often starts with lowering the purchase price. Zigui oranges were once pressed down to 60 cents per jin. Under this model, the interests of farmers are not guaranteed and the first impact is It is the product quality.
In order to "determine production based on sales" in the long run, we must achieve continuous "production based on sales".
Domei Orange Chairman Wei Yongxin introduced that in their cooperation with Ali, they first formulated the quality control standards for oranges, and then formed the stock data of raw fruits and growers. The sorting workshop is also a chain, from consumer feedback to farmers, from product feedback to planting. When an effective information chain is formed, "selling better production" can be realized. This way of using digital resources to achieve a balance between supply and demand is very similar to Ali's digital agriculture business logic.
in the third quarter earnings call of 2021 fiscal year,Zhang Yong, chairman of Alibaba's board of directors, mentioned that Taobao grocery shopping is different from the model seen in the market that does not stop burning money and uses subsidies to drive sales. He believes that subsidies are an unsustainable business model. Taobao Shopping will make good use of various resources at this stage, including new retail and supply chain channels.
Hema Bazaar gradually reveals its true appearance
From a suspected Ali content sharing picture circulated on Maimai APP, it may also be possible to see the difference in the business model of MMC Place.
On the supply side, it includes local suppliers, Hema Darunfa, 1688 and Taobao special edition, fresh source platform suppliers, etc. Both Heribai channels can be used by MMC, and at the same time, it pays great attention to the control of the "source".
At the store side, in addition to the equipment upgrades of the small stores, Ali's retail sales service for the wholesale supply of couples and wives shops has also become an important component. The local promoters of retail service stores-City Partner will help store owners obtain traffic through Taobao, Alipay, WeChat applets, and WeChat groups, and divert them to store business. Through the distribution of goods throughout the process, consumers' fresh food, agricultural and sideline products, and daily necessities have all become definite demands.
The carrier for consumers to use the service is the Hema Bazaar. "The price is similar and the quality is much better." The relevant person in charge of Ali described the user value of the business.
After experiencing the "e-commerce online" experience, I found that the Hema Bazaar currently does not have a separate APP.However, users who have already logged in to WeChat and Alipay applets can quickly use the products in the cities where the business has been launched. Commodities are mainly daily necessities and fresh food. After placing an order, consumers can choose to place an order by picking up the order. The content is similar to that of several other platforms. The homepage has a link to share new red envelopes, a limited-time purchase of the day, and a list of some discount-restricted products. But the time to fulfill the contract is faster, place an order before 22 o'clock in the evening, and you can receive it at noon the next day.
The Hema Bazaar originated from the practice of fixed-point material distribution in the community during the epidemic, and it was officially renamed Hema Bazaar in December 2020. The entrance of "Taobao Shopping" on the homepage of Shoutao.
Parallel to the Hema Bazaar, there is also the "Yifago" jointly launched by Cainiao Station and Gaoxin Retail, and Ele.me is also entering the field of near-field e-commerce through supply chain resources such as Hema and RT-Mart. The Hema Bazaar, which belongs to the MMC business, has a wealth of small store resources and transformation capabilities, while occupying the advantage of source centralized procurement.
This stems from the organizational structure adjustment at the end of 2019. Dai Shan, the president of Alibaba Group’s B2B business group, has already been in charge of Alibaba International Station, 1688, Digital Agriculture, Retail Link, AliExpress and other businesses. In charge of the Hema business group on behalf of the group. Hema President Hou Yi (Lao Cai), who originally reported directly to Xiaoyaozi, had already switched to reporting to Dai Shan at that time.
Therefore, the Hema Bazaar has become the best outlet for the whole set of combo boxing.
Near field e-commerce is a corner overtaking
"Buying food" fights fiercely, where are the opportunities for the Hema Bazaar?
introduced by Tianhao, the person in charge of Hubei district of Alibaba MMC business group,Hema Bazaar hopes to deliver good quality goods to ordinary people’s tables. Many community group buying platforms on the market are essentially dumping and blind box models. Those who enter the market spend money to fill traffic to grab orders and use low-cost channels to buy low-quality products. Into the market, "this approach is not beneficial to the long-term development of agriculture, farmers, and e-commerce."
Now it seems that the key to the food shopping battle is to see who can truly achieve refined operations and supply-side reforms. . Deepen the supply upwards and connect users offline.
In the community group buying solution for grocery shopping, giants such as Meituan, Pinduoduo, Didi and other giants all take the large group leader as the core of the single-volume goal when they enter the market. In some areas, there is even a situation where one person concurrently serves as a group leader, and the group members are not enough. Later, several platforms discovered that group leaders with good sales tended to rely on physical stores compared to treasure moms, mobile stalls, and properties. The Ali Retail, which is integrated into the MMC business group, is considered to be the first e-commerce business in the industry to operate small shopkeepers. This seems to give Ali more confidence to do "grocery shopping" business with the difference of near-field methods.
The industry believes that transforming individual people into individual stores can penetrate into the commercial units of the capillaries of the community in a scene-based manner, and is a fine entry point for offline traffic. Secondly, small shops are a fixed business scenario and can provide deterministic performance services. In addition, the husband-and-wife shop has strong personality characteristics, and the owner's personal expression can be incorporated into it. Therefore, the small shop can also establish sufficient emotional links with consumers, which is a natural trust relationship.
One end grabs the source of supply, and the other end mobilizes millions of shops. Ali, the latecomer, seems to be exploring opportunities for smooth cornering and overtaking in corners.
.
