"Secret War" Of Community Group Buying

On January 19, the incomplete statistics of the 21st century economic report found that in only one week after entering Shanghai, Duoduo had opened its pick-up service in 305 stores in Pudong New Area, Jiading District and Minhang District. There are also various types of stores, including not only fruit shops, convenience stores, tobacco hotels, lottery welfare points and other department stores, but also laundry shops, mobile phone repair shops, stationery stores, etc.

Even Alibaba's rookie post station and RT mart's Feiniu life supermarket also have some stores joining in.

It is worth noting that community group buying has always been considered to focus on the sinking market, and the service object is not the first tier city users.

"The demand of consumers in first tier cities is more diversified, and buying more vegetables can play a complementary role." Zhu danpeng, an analyst of the food industry, told the 21st century economic report that the competition faced by pinduoduo is far more complicated than that of e-commerce. It is not only other Internet giants, but also traditional offline supermarkets and small shops.

The industry is still developing rapidly. According to a report released by international credit rating giant Standard & Poor's, the transaction volume of Chinese community group buying is expected to grow by 50% to 60% in 2021. However, according to a relevant person to the 21st century economic report, the growth rate of Shengsheng will reach 4 times in 2020, with a transaction volume of nearly 40 billion yuan. The growth rate of buying more vegetables and meituan should be more optimistic than expected.

It is worth noting that the superficial subsidy war between platforms seems to have ceased, and the actual secret war has not stopped. Pinduoduo's "Kuai Tuan Tuan", a community buying tool launched by pinduoduo, has long been widely used by the heads of Shanghai. Businesses can quickly put their products online and collect orders from users. The head of the team can choose to pick up by themselves, city distribution, express delivery, no logistics and other ways.

From supply chain to tools to logistics, team leader, acquaintance network and so on, the competition of community group buying has just begun.

Low price sweeping Shanghai

Shanghai has always been considered unsuitable for the growth of community group buying. Users in first tier cities have been full of fresh e-commerce for half an hour, such as HEMA Xiansheng, daily Youxian and dingdong shopping. For the daily necessities and food materials distribution with low timeliness requirements, there are also Jingdong supermarket and tmall supermarket of next day, so it is difficult for community group buying to find new space.

However, the popularity of buying more vegetables in Shanghai in the past few days seems to indicate that the industry has underestimated the demand of Shanghai residents for community group buying. According to the 21st century economic report, the top 500 g yellow heart potato in the recent seven days' hot list is only 0.99 yuan. The record shows that 42300 people in Minhang District of Shanghai have bought it.

Xiao Hai, who runs a supermarket chain, has just become the new head of the group to buy more vegetables. In an interview with the 21st century economic report, he said that in his community, there are more than one pick-up point within 200 meters. "In the first 2-3 days, there was a problem of product delay. And only intelligent customer service, the problem can not be solved in time. But the overall unit volume is increasing day by day, and there are about 400 yuan of sales per day today. "

It is worth noting that Duoduo still carries out the consistent style of subsidizing low prices. At present, the SKU (inventory) of goods provided is relatively limited, and only a small number of self-contained stores support refrigeration and freezing. Fresh products mainly include eggs, potatoes, tomatoes, Flammulina velutipes and other high-frequency products. The price of 30 eggs is only 19.99 yuan, which is even lower than that of local vegetable farms, which means breaking through the cost. However, a small number of standard categories interspersed in fresh products are mainly rice flour cereals and oils, and the prices are also lower than the market prices.

"At present, the sales volume of fresh products is still good. There is a conflict between the standard products and the goods in the supermarket. The subsidy price is too low, but the impact is still within the acceptable range. The overall quality of a lot of goods is not satisfactory, and customers are also willing to accept the low price. " Xiaohai further revealed that the customer's self collection in the store can't promote the sales of other goods in the store. Although there is a 10% commission, the Commission still needs to be forwarded to five friends to withdraw cash, which is unreasonable.

Under the supervision, carrying a heavy load

Previously, the community group buying because of the low subsidy problem by public opinion, regulatory attention. "People's Daily" took the lead in commenting, "don't just think about the flow of a few bundles of cabbage and a few catties of fruit. The stars of scientific and technological innovation and the unlimited possibilities of the future are actually more exciting."

The regulatory authorities followed up quickly. The General Administration of market supervision and the Ministry of Commerce organized an administrative guidance meeting on standardizing the order of group buying in communities. Six Internet platform enterprises, including Alibaba, Tencent, Jingdong, meituan, pinduoduo and Didi, attended the meeting. At the meeting, it was proposed that Internet platform enterprises should strictly abide by the "nine no's" new regulations, and should not abuse their independent pricing power by means of low-cost dumping, price collusion, price promotion, price fraud, etc.; they should not illegally reach or implement any form of monopoly agreements, such as fixing prices, restricting the production or sales of commodities, and dividing the market; and they should not "kill the ripe" by taking advantage of data advantages to damage consumption It is not allowed to illegally collect and use personal information of consumers, which may bring potential safety hazards to consumers.

However, in the context of tightening regulatory policies, pinduoduo is still promoting the business of buying more vegetables. On the one hand, in the main business, pinduoduo encountered the flow ceiling. "Pinduoduo has reached 730 million users, and it is inevitable that the growth will slow down gradually." David Liu, vice president of strategy, explained, "now we are most concerned about our ranking in the minds of users, which is also the reason why we started the business of buying vegetables. We want to keep up with the changes of users' behaviors and expand our proportion in users' minds."

On the other hand, the average annual consumption of pinduoduo users is still low, at present, it is only 1993 yuan, which is far from being comparable with Alibaba and Jingdong users. In addition, pinduoduo's revenue in the third quarter was 14.2 billion yuan, while that of Alibaba and Jingdong had already exceeded 100 billion yuan.

And buy more vegetables will undoubtedly become the next growth story of pinduoduo.

The market is expected to grow by 50% this year

Similarly, Ali, meituan, Didi, Jingdong and other giants also came to an end. According to incomplete statistics, there are more than 200 community group buying enterprises in China. From January 2019 to November 26, 2020, a total of 26 investment and financing events occurred in the domestic community group purchase e-commerce field, with a total financing of more than 11.7 billion yuan. Some organizations predict that the market size will exceed 100 billion yuan by 2022.

It is worth noting that pinduoduo is the only Internet giant that has opened community group buying into first tier cities. The community group buying business of other platforms starts from low-level cities first. Ali, meituan, didi and other community group buying formats still linger in low-level cities, but at the same time they cover the first-line market with other formats, such as Alibaba's HEMA. Undoubtedly, the first tier cities are also the battleground for the giants.

In the report, S & P said that community group buying is a new opportunity for major e-commerce giants to enter China's $770 billion fresh food market. However, while this opportunity is expected to bring strong income growth, it also requires e-commerce enterprises to invest a lot of money and lower their profit margins. In December of last year, Jingdong government promoted investment, with an investment amount of US $700 million. After that, Tencent also continued to invest 100 million US dollars in Xingsheng in January. According to iResearch's Research Report on China's fresh food e-commerce industry in 2020, the market size of domestic fresh e-commerce industry will increase from 49.7 billion yuan to 279.6 billion yuan from 2015 to 2019, and it is expected to increase to 404.7 billion yuan in 2020.

From the perspective of industry status, Xingsheng is the first in terms of total turnover. During the "double 11" period, the daily order volume exceeded 12 million, and the Gmv is expected to reach 40 billion yuan in 2020, with an estimated value of more than 4 billion US dollars.

For a long time, the Survival Logic of China's Internet companies is: relying on subsidies to compete for sales and market share, those who win the leading position will be able to obtain venture capital and continue to work hard until the day when the winner is king. In Zhu danpeng's view, buy more vegetables now through low prices in exchange for user stickiness, seize market share, there is no blame. But business is not charity, and burning money is not a long-term solution. Pinduoduo still needs to find the way of differentiated operation to meet the multi-dimensional needs of customers in order to survive for a long time.