Ten years ago, Jack Ma and Wang Jianlin made a bet on whether e-commerce could account for 50% of total retail sales in society. Today’s data shows that offline retail accounts for 75.5%, still the largest share.

Ten years ago, Jack Ma and Wang Jianlin made a bet on whether e-commerce could account for 50% of the total retail sales in society. Today’s data shows that offline retail accounts for 75.5%, still the largest share. Not only that, after ten years of development, the consumer industry, the backbone of offline retail, has greatly improved its digitalization level.

According to Zhu Hongwei’s observation, In the past ten years, the offline consumer industry has experienced an upgrade from the “tool era” to the “SaaS era” to the “content marketing era”.

Among them, the tool era refers to the improvement in consumption efficiency brought about by online payment. Zhu Hongwei believes that without the popularization of online payment, many current business models would not be established. In other words, some business models would not be able to achieve such large scale effects, such as taxi-hailing software, local life service platform, etc.

When the popularity of online payment remains at a high level, the tool gradually moves towards a service system. "The importance of SaaS services to the consumer industry is like oxygen in the air. It is indispensable." Zhu Hongwei took the cashier system as an example and said that through the efforts of Yeka and all parties in the industry, the cost of such technology upgrades for merchants has dropped from the 10,000 yuan level to the 1,000 yuan or 100 yuan level, a reduction of more than 10 times.

Now, with the changes in user habits, the era of content marketing is accelerating. On the one hand, short videos have become a mainstream social entertainment platform, and their unique content attributes have once again improved marketing efficiency. Based on the problems encountered by the traditional offline consumer industry such as high centralized traffic bidding costs and weak brand perception of merchants, it can be solved.

According to Zhu Hongwei, starting in 2020, Yeka has used its own App, WeChat official accounts and mini programs, Douyin , Kuaishou, Alibaba local life and other channels to widely reach hundreds of millions of consumers using short video store visits, live broadcasts, plot short videos and other forms of merchant packages. The single-day GMV has reached tens of millions, and it has served a large number of merchants with sales exceeding one million or even tens of millions, including well-known brands such as Dadong and Poly Business District.

On the other hand, cutting-edge marketing represented by the Metaverse is accelerating its rise. Based on user pleasure, content marketing methods have been iterated three times: "In the 1.0 point mall era, use rights and benefits to retain people; in the 2.0 service era, light interaction and exclusive services are used to retain people; in the 3.0 interactive entertainment era, more entertainment is used to retain people." Content marketing is currently moving towards the 4.0 era, the metaverse era. By then, brands will not only have an offline real space, but also an online virtual space. Each consumer will also have a real identity and an online virtual identity. When these are integrated, it will bring more marketing imagination.

Zhu Hongwei said that Yeka is working hard to enter the 4.0 era through its gaming business. "I choose games as the entrance because games have always been ranked in the top three content experience tracks regardless of whether they are born in the 2000s, 1995s or 1990s." This is also a marketing method that has been proven to be acceptable to both consumers and brands and is more effective.

The following is the transcript of Zhu Hongwei's speech, edited by Titanium Media App:

Hello everyone, I am Zhu Hongwei from Yeka Technology. Today, I am very honored to share the theme of "From Payment to Metaverse, Offline Consumption Changes in Ten Years" on behalf of Yeka. I will use Yeka's perspective to gain insight into the changes in offline consumption in the past 10 years.

First, let me introduce Yeka to you. Yeka is a payment-based technology company dedicated to building an independent and scalable commercial digital ecosystem. Yeka was listed in Hong Kong on June 1, 2020. It currently serves more than 7.9 million small and micro merchants and reaches more than 1 billion consumers.

Today’s topic is consumption. Yeka has been dealing with offline consumption since its birth. Yeka started its business in payment and is one of the 16 companies in the country that has a national acquiring license and an mobile payment license.When making payments, we reached out to many C-end consumers and served many small and micro merchants. When serving these merchants, we found that they also had many other business demands, such as digital store management and marketing services. Therefore, Yeka later derived in-store e-commerce services and merchant solutions. The merchant solutions include smart management SaaS services, marketing service platforms, and gamified interactive marketing services. This year, the Hang Seng Index Company announced the launch of the China Metaverse Index. Yeka was successfully selected as a constituent stock of , , along with , Tencent , NetEase, Kuaishou, etc.

So after ten years of development, from our perspective, what changes have occurred in the offline consumer industry?

Let’s look at a “gamble” first. Ten years ago, Jack Ma made a bet with Wang Jianlin: Will the proportion of offline consumption exceed 50% in ten years? Let’s look at this year’s data: online retail accounts for 24.5%, offline retail accounts for 75.5%, and offline retail still accounts for the majority.

Comparing ten years ago and now, we will find that the offline consumer industry has not been crushed but has been digitally upgraded very rapidly: 10 years ago, many small and micro merchants collected cash, handwritten accounting, handwritten menus, and advertised on TV, which was a very traditional form; 10 years later, cash collection has become QR code collection, handwritten accounting has become a cashier system, handwritten menus have become scan-code ordering, and advertising has experienced TV advertising, Internet online advertising, and now short video precision marketing.

In the past three years since the epidemic, we have also found that the demand for digital upgrades from the small and micro merchants we serve has been accelerated. They are eager to carry out further digital upgrades and precise content marketing to improve operating efficiency.

From Yeka's perspective, the trend keywords for offline consumption in the past ten years are: from payment to SaaS to marketing, which corresponds to the upgrade from online to Internet to content.

Payment tools launch the online consumer industry

Let’s talk about payment first. The importance of payment to consumption is like the importance of air to human beings. It is important but not precious. We believe that without the popularization of mobile payment, many existing business models will not be established, or in other words, these business models cannot have such a large scale effect, including e-commerce, Didi Taxi, life service platform , etc.

From 2016 to 2025, China's mobile payment has developed rapidly, reaching a scale of more than 300 trillion in 2022, and growing at a compound growth rate of more than 10% every year. At the same time, with the ten-year digital upgrade of the offline consumer industry, the number of online payment users has reached 904 million, accounting for more than 87% of the total Internet users. B-end merchants use payment tools exceeding 100 million, and the online level has reached 67%, which is a relatively high level. What role does

Yeka play in this? Through technological accumulation, Yeka provides one-stop services. From the earliest traditional POS machine services to aggregated code and QR code payment, Yeka has become the first in China's non-bank independent QR code payment service market. The total transaction volume in 2021 is 2.12 trillion yuan, serving more than 7.9 million merchants and reaching more than 1 billion consumers.

This is one of our products Juhui Scan the "collection speaker". It not only provides QR codes, but also has a broadcast function to ensure that there will be no missed orders during the peak trading period. It helped Zhufu Tofu Store sell 30% more tofu during the morning peak period.

The onlineization of the consumer industry moves from tools to services

When online payment becomes popular enough, the onlineization of the consumer industry will gradually move from tools to services. Among them, SaaS service is the core representative of this stage. The importance of SaaS services to the consumer industry is like oxygen in the air, indispensable.

SaaS is a big concept, but when it comes to the offline consumer industry, the main product of SaaS is around a business cycle of merchants, from the initial stage, development stage to maturity stage, helping them with in-store operations, customer retention, user repurchase, and improving overall operating efficiency.

Taking Yeka as an example, the SaaS solution we currently provide covers more than 100 self-operated functions and 15 ecological partner function modules.

improves the efficiency of the consumer industry through Internet services, and greatly improves the efficiency of digital services in merchant stores. If you have such a cash register, you can save one or two clerks, save labor costs, and make the consumer experience more convenient and more secure. For example, a Shenzhen store named Zhang Jie’s Roasted Fatty Beef saw its revenue increase by more than 20% after using our cashier solution. Of course, this is just a typical microcosm of thousands of stores. Why does

change like this? Essentially, it benefits from technological progress and industry competition. If we look at the history of the development of cashier systems, the cost of building a cashier system eight or nine years ago was probably tens of thousands of yuan or more. This means that in the early days, only some well-run merchants or large platforms were able to enjoy cashier SaaS services. Today, with the investment of various companies and platforms, including technology upgrades, a system only costs more than a thousand or even less. We have achieved a cost reduction of more than 10 times.

New trends in offline consumption: The era of content marketing is accelerating.

If the shift from payment to SaaS is an offline industry change that has already occurred, then the era of content marketing is accelerating, which is a brand new trend. This is because the importance of new digital technology and content capabilities to consumer industries is like the oxygen content in the air, and is more oxygen-rich and is healthier. How does

understand content marketing? Let’s look at the comparison. Whether it was the earliest traditional advertising marketing or the later TV ads, bus station or billboard ads, they all reached relatively limited areas. Until online advertising, many people benefited from the wave of dividends from the PC Internet, , mobile Internet, and . But now, the traffic dividend of has passed. If you went to an app to advertise in an app eight or nine years ago, the customer acquisition cost might be only single digits. If you invest now, the customer acquisition cost would be double digits or even triple digits.

In contrast, precision content marketing is showing higher marketing efficiency. Precision content marketing can provide consumers with more authentic and interesting content, reduce marketing costs, and make the consumer experience more friendly.

This view is not ours. For example, a recent survey by iResearch showed that advertisers most recognize the long-term value of content marketing; at the same time, Elon Musk, who recently acquired Twitter, also proposed that low-relevance ads are harassment information, but highly relevant ads are real content. This shows that content marketing has gained widespread recognition from merchants to platforms.

Based on user habits and driven by new technologies, we judge that precise content marketing has two development directions. One is short video global marketing that everyone is investing in now, and the other is the metaverse that everyone is talking about. corresponds to cutting-edge marketing.

• How can short videos empower offline consumer industries?

We have surveyed hundreds of businesses this year, including business leaders and bosses in catering, wine and travel industries. We learned that they have three main pain points in marketing: the first is that the traffic dividend of has been exceeded, and the cost of centralized traffic bidding is high; the second is that merchants have weak brand perception and poor conversion efficiency; third, for consumers, many advertisements are in the form of graphics and texts, which are inconsistent with the actual experience and have low cost performance.

These are all problems caused by traditional channels, but as users become more accustomed to short videos, we have found that short videos can carry content marketing and better solve the pain points of merchants and consumers.

Based on this, Yeka has made layout in the local life field since 2020. We have deployed self-operated APPs, WeChat official accounts, WeChat mini programs, Douyin mini programs, Kuaishou mini programs, and a dedicated expert with hundreds of thousands of fans. uses a local promotion team of thousands of people to help merchants put hot-selling packages and high-quality packages online on our platform, and then use experts to use short video live broadcasts, plot short videos, etc. to reach first-level consumers on short video platforms, self-operated APPs, and mini programs. At present, the average daily GMV of this business has reached tens of millions.

also shows you a few cases.One is a restaurant in Shenzhen. Two days after it went online, the video was played 1.6 million times, ranking top 1 on Douyin’s daily sales list and praise list, with sales of about 1.48 million yuan. The other is the Poly Business District in Jiangxi. Through the placement in Qianqianhui (a local lifestyle business brand under Yeka), the daily sales volume of the package reached 1,000, with sales of about 400,000 yuan, far exceeding the ordinary daily marketing.

Why is this model so popular among merchants? In fact, short video content is giving full play to its advantages. This kind of short video and live broadcast marketing are more real. Even if you have never been there, you will recognize the store's evaluation and reputation more. In addition, the recommendation mechanism based on interest algorithms also allows content to exert greater value and gain the favor of more consumers.

• How does metaverse cutting-edge marketing empower offline consumer industries?

The second trend we think is the metaverse. Before we start, let us first introduce you to the layout of Yeka: We have established our own game business. Through consumer insights, Yeka has laid out diversified services such as interactive mini-games, marketing plug-ins, data tags, AR and VR, and the Metaverse virtual space digital world. What pain points does

solve for brands and merchants? The first problem of is the homogenization of activities. Many brands do many kinds of activities. How to make users feel interesting is a difficult problem. The second problem is the problem of user inactivity. Many brands have millions or even tens of millions of users. How to keep users logging in to the brand private domain and generate conversions and repurchases? In addition, the cost of attracting new users mentioned before is very high.

What effect does such a gamified interactive marketing bring to the brand? Our statistical data shows that game interactive marketing can help a brand's click-through rate increase by 22 times, and consumers are more recognized by the brand's games or AI games. Online time increases by 15 times, increasing consumer contact time, bringing more write-off conversions, and consumers' touch with the brand will be stronger. You can also see below

that in terms of click rate, online time, retention rate, sharing rate and coupon collection rate, whether comparing advertising promotion or lottery activities, the data of interactive marketing are better.

Why choose games? It’s because games have always been ranked among the top three in terms of content experience, regardless of whether they were born in the 00s, 95s or 90s. If games are used as the marketing entrance to the Metaverse, it will be a more recognized method by everyone. At present, young customers have become an important source of business growth, and all brands are competing for young customer groups. If you still use traditional methods for interactive marketing, it will be difficult to make young customers understand the brand. For example, pushing some early-stage food-stealing games to post-00s generation will not be effective because they are more eager for innovative games, including AR and VR games. The changes behind

are actually driven by technology. From a technical perspective, content marketing has gone through three stages of development: the 1.0 points mall era, which uses rights and benefits to retain people; the 2.0 service era, which uses light interaction and exclusive services to retain people; and the 3.0 interactive entertainment era, which focuses more on entertainment to retain people. Yeka Games is currently laying out its layout in the 3.0 era. It hopes to start from the user's pleasure and through gamification marketing, let the brand build an intimate relationship with users.

Taking Yeka Games and Baiguoyuan 20th Anniversary Interactive Game as examples, we designed a tree planting and cultivation activity, which resulted in a total GMV of tens of millions, approximately 200,000 event participants, a game sharing rate of 16%, a payment conversion rate of new registered users of 31%, an increase in order frequency per member, and an 85% increase in member activity. Not only that, in the small game we cooperated with, the real scene of growing Musang King durian was simulated, so that consumers can understand the process of how Musang King durian is planted, harvested, and then transported to the store for sale. This made consumers have a higher perception and recognition of the Pagoda brand and Musang King durian.

In the future, when it comes to exploring content marketing, we will enter the 4.0 era, which is the era of the metaverse. At that time, brands not only had an offline real space, but also had an online virtual space. At the same time, each consumer also had a real identity and an online virtual identity. When these are integrated, it will bring more marketing imagination.

In fact, based on the Laya metaverse engine, Yeka can already help brands build a brand space that links online and offline. It can use virtual engines, digital people, and AR/VR technology to form multi-dimensional identities, highlight a more personalized brand language, and bring marketing empowerment.

For example, we created an online virtual space "Egg Yolk Paradise" for Bank of Ningbo . Users of Bank of Ningbo have virtual identities and can play in Bank of Ningbo's virtual space and experience Bank of Ningbo's various services, games, credit card rights and interests, including wealth rights, which further impresses its young consumer base.

Regarding Metaverse 4.0, everyone is still exploring. We are creating a virtual space in the form of games to help brands connect with consumption. This is also a method that has been verified so far. It is relatively accepted by consumers and brands, and the marketing effect is better than traditional marketing. In the future, we will unswervingly explore in the direction of the 4.0 universe and continuously upgrade our solutions.

In general, the offline consumer industry has experienced an upgrade path from the "tool era" to the "SaaS era" to the "content marketing era" in the past ten years. In the tool era, consumption efficiency is improved based on online payment; in the SaaS era, Internet-based service upgrades bring consumption experience; in the content marketing era, digital reshaping and integration based on new technologies bring new consumption experiences. This is Yeka’s insight into offline consumption in the past ten years, and it is also an industry change verified by our continuous growth. That’s all my sharing, thank you all!