When “0 yuan milk tea” rushed to the hot search, the Meituan system was squeezed out, and Taobao flash sales shouted the “Super Saturday” charge, the takeaway track officially opened the second “money burning weekend”. This article reviews the latest battle situation: JD.com’s 10 billion subsidies pave the way, Alibaba’s 50 billion follow-up, Meituan’s emergency counter-kill, and the daily order volume rushed to 200 million a day; It is even more punctuating the appearance – the giants are not fighting for takeaway profits, but for the entrance of instant retail and the minds of users.
Taobao’s “Super Saturday” charge continues.
Just this morning, Taobao’s flash sale “newcomer 0 yuan purchase” activity continued. Also open Meituan, the sharpshooter exchange coupon “0 yuan to drink drinks, 0 yuan to eat breakfast” is also a big reward.
This 0 yuan purchase activity started last weekend, an ordinary Saturday, when the takeaway platform suddenly subsidized a large amount.
This directly led to the explosion of orders in stores, and some milk tea shops even fell into a chaotic situation, and the delivery man could not get accurate meals, and “grabbed a cup was a cup” on the spot. Some users found that what the rider delivered home was not the milk tea they ordered. They didn’t complain, but spread it everywhere as an interesting story, and the “0 yuan purchase” led to a carnival holiday.
This not only refreshes consumers’ perception of low takeaway prices, but also means a new round of takeaway warfare escalation.
On July 5, Meituan announced that its instant retail daily orders exceeded 120 million, of which more than 100 million catering orders had exceeded. 100 million orders per day, this was the goal set by Wang Xing for Meituan in May 2020, and the time is 2025.
To achieve these three challenges, product managers will only continue to appreciate
Good product managers are very scarce, and product managers who understand users, business, and data are still in demand when they go out of the Internet. On the contrary, if you only do simple communication, inefficient execution, and shallow thinking, I am afraid that you will not be able to go through the torrent of the next 3-5 years.
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Two days later, on July 7, Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me jointly announced that the number of daily orders exceeded 80 million, including more than 13 million non-catering orders, and Taobao Flash Sale had more than 200 million daily active users. This achievement, Taobao seems to be a bit easy, which will inevitably inspire greater fighting determination and goals.
Of course, we must not forget JD.com, the new takeaway war was the first to be launched by JD.com. Although JD.com did not directly participate in the weekend battle, this instant retail must be a long-term battle of the Three Kingdoms.
01 Weekend confrontation of food delivery platforms
Shen Zhiting, the online person in charge of the sushi brand “Black-Eyed Bear China Sushi” from Chengdu, told Newberry Daybreak that on July 5 and 6, the brand he served ushered in a blowout of orders in many stores across the country.
Since the takeaway platform communicated with the brand in advance, they were all at work that weekend, and the back-end operation personnel were online in real time, responding to the situation from ordering, food delivery to delivery in a timely manner, avoiding chaotic situations such as card meals.
Shen Zhiting revealed that in Meituan Port, some stores exceeded 700 orders on July 5, and the order volume increased by 35%~45% compared with usual. According to his observation, some stores with orders have a commonality, that is, they have signed up to participate in Meituan’s divine coupon activities, and some stores have not participated in platform activities due to special circumstances, so there is no effect of order growth.
All this is related to the “Huaihai Campaign”.
“LatePost” reported that on June 30, Alibaba established a 100-day growth plan to launch Taobao flash sales, named “Huaihai Campaign”, and rushed orders every Saturday. In other words, July 5 is the first day of the plan, and every weekend in July and August, Taobao flash sales will “charge”.
On April 30, Taobao Flash Sale was officially launched, and the daily order volume rose from 10 million to 60 million in two months, and the official announcement will directly supplement consumers and merchants by a total of 50 billion within 12 months.
Taobao’s actions are pre-set. Therefore, the distribution of subsidies is strategic, starting from non-meal subsidies to subsidizing catering during meal times, and the order volume has soared.
The defenseless Meituan responded urgently that afternoon and surprised to join the subsidy war.
Almost without warning, Meituan can suddenly “inflate” the divine coupon for free and many times, and can get red envelopes of various denominations such as “18 yuan minus 18 yuan” and “25 yuan minus 20 yuan”, and even get the free order rights and interests of specific milk tea. The rapid growth of orders once led to the collapse of the Meituan APP system.
On the morning of Saturday, July 12, Meituan’s sharpshooter exchange coupon continued
According to the Qilu Evening News, the Shanghai Aunt Store in Jinan Shimao Plaza, superimposed offline and Meituan, Ele.me, and JD.com’s takeaway orders, sold nearly 3,000 cups of milk tea in one day on July 5, and the data was shocking.
The weekend has passed, and the takeaway war has not stopped.
On July 9, Lin Min, a frequent takeaway customer, swiped a netizen’s post on Xiaohongshu, saying that Meituan could buy a one-year coupon package for 9.9 yuan, and she immediately placed an order with Meituan. This divine coupon package will be issued for 12 consecutive months, and 10 red envelopes of 5 yuan will be issued every month. Lin Min has been buying memberships of Ele.me and Meituan for many years, and usually the monthly membership package costs at least four or five yuan, “Suddenly, the price is unimaginably low on the takeaway platform.”
On July 9, Lin Min still received a free coupon on Meituan
On the second weekend of July, you can still receive a large coupon. The war continues.
02 Meituan’s counterattack
This agitation of the industry pattern began with JD.com. Although it did not participate in the weekend charge, on July 8, JD Takeaway announced the launch of the “Double Hundred Plan”, investing more than 10 billion yuan of real money to support more category benchmark brands with sales exceeding one million.
As of the launch of the plan, nearly 200 catering brands have sold more than one million yuan in JD.com takeaway in the past 4 months. Luckin, Cudi, Mixue Bingcheng, etc. have become the first batch of JD.com takeaway brands with sales exceeding 100 million. More than 10 brands such as Bawang Chaji, Gu Ming, Tustin, and Wallace have sold more than 10 million.
At the same time, the Taobao flash sale, which was unveiled at the end of April, quickly occupied the minds of consumers. Recently, Taobao’s opening advertisements are all Taobao flash sales.
Taobao APP’s recent open-screen advertisement
This is another reorganization of Alibaba’s domestic consumption ideas.
In June, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming issued an email to all employees, and Ele.me and Fliggy merged into Alibaba’s China e-commerce business group, opening up commodity consumption and service consumption resources, and the status of instant retail and service e-commerce was improved, while Taobao flash sales became the core entrance. Wu Yongming also mentioned that this is a strategic upgrade of “moving from an e-commerce platform to a large consumption platform”.
According to data from Black-Eyed Bear China Sushi, compared with the end of June, the data on the Taobao flash sale side fluctuated in early July.
Since the Taobao flash sale began to test in mid-to-late April, the brand has kept up, and the number of orders began to explode in May, and has continued to show a growth trend since June. According to the brand’s public battle report information, their actual revenue from Taobao flash sale/Ele.me port increased by 53.87% in June, and their average daily orders increased by 61.91%. “At present, the increase in July has fallen back to 30%~40%, of course, July has only passed a few days, and many policies and actions may still be gradually reflected, and the data will be more accurate to evaluate later.”
Shen Zhiting believes that the most direct external reason for the decline in Taobao flash sale data in July is that Meituan has joined large subsidies for the B-end and C-end, which has played a clear role in guiding users’ ordering behavior.
If JD.com is alerting Meituan, the charge of Taobao flash sales directly leads to Meituan’s counterattack.
Meituan Takeaway has been a dominant player in China’s takeaway market since its launch in 2013. Over the past ten years, Meituan has successfully completed the market and user education of food delivery, and has gained more than 50% of the market share. Now it is under double attack by Taobao and JD.com.
And when the takeaway re-forms the situation of the Three Kingdoms, the platforms begin to show subtle ups and downs.
According to the data provided by Shen Zhiting, at the end of March, the brand orders he was responsible for accounted for about 70% of Meituan, 20% of Ele.me, and about 1%~2% of JD.com’s takeaway. After Taobao flash sales joined the competition strongly, the tide of the war has changed. So far, the proportion of brand orders in Meituan has dropped to about 60%~65%, Ele.me has increased to 25%, and JD.com’s takeaway has also reached about 20%.
Gao Chengyuan, a well-known financial writer and chairman and CEO of Tiaoyuan Consulting, told Newberry Daybreak, “Meituan’s recent adjustments in subsidies, merchant support and user experience are defensive strategies that can effectively stabilize market share in the short term. However, in the face of the traffic advantage of Alibaba Ecology, it is difficult to compete with subsidies alone for a long time. Meituan’s core barrier lies in the deep integration of contract performance capabilities and local life services, and if it can continue to optimize distribution efficiency and expand service scenarios, it still has strong impact resistance.”
03 Is the battle for takeaway a curve to save the country?
Why will Taobao and JD.com’s two major e-commerce platforms focus on takeaway in 2025? Is the takeaway a spear or a shield for the campaign?
Some details may reveal the truth.
On July 5, in addition to the existing catering orders brought by Ele.me, Taobao flash sales had more than 13 million non-catering orders, six times that of a year ago.
A more detailed description is that Taobao flash sales orders for grain, oil, rice and noodles increased by 489%, snack food increased by 388%, trendy toys increased by 236%, sportswear increased by 144%, beauty and personal care increased by 114%, and categories such as nourishment and health care, books, audio and video, and car supplies also increased by more than 100%. Compared with the beginning of Taobao’s flash sale, the number of orders for 3,724 non-catering brands increased by more than 100%.
36kr quoted Meituan insiders as saying that on July 5, if the increase in orders for Taobao flash sales came from catering, it was not worth being too nervous, but the sudden surge in non-meal orders such as rice, noodles, grains and oils was “still quite scary.”
Taobao flash sale hopes to use takeaway traffic to bring non-meal orders and even e-commerce GMV growth. 36kr quoted Taobao employees as saying, “With an investment of 50 billion, the company certainly hopes that not only catering orders are rising, but retail orders also need to be fast.”
However, Meituan’s previous judgment has always been that Taobao’s takeaway has not been obviously driven by retail business. In other words, the results are different from Meituan’s previous judgment.
The fact is that the three giants of e-commerce are coveting the market growth rate and user minds of instant retail. More and more people are beginning to pay attention to takeaway, flash sales, fresh food and other services.
Jiang Fan, CEO of Alibaba China E-commerce Business Group, said on the earnings call in the first quarter of this year, “Taobao’s flash sale attempt, both in terms of scale growth and efficiency, exceeded expectations, and instant retail is a very high-frequency scenario, which will increase Taobao’s user activity in the long run.”
JD.com also has the same understanding of this. At the JD.com sharing meeting on June 17, Liu Qiangdong, the founder of JD.com, said that it is cost-effective to invest a lot of money to make JD.com takeaway. He mentioned that 40% of consumers who come to JD.com to buy catering takeaway will cross over to buy JD.com’s e-commerce products, “The money we lose from takeaway is more cost-effective than going to Douyin and Tencent to buy traffic.”
Even Pinduoduo is plotting to enter the instant retail track, “LatePost” reported in June that Duoduo is testing self-built commodity warehouses in first-tier cities such as Shanghai, and will launch instant delivery services as soon as August, delivering goods to the door at a speed similar to JD.com’s second delivery and Taobao flash sales.
Gao Chengyuan analyzed, “The escalation of competition on food delivery platforms is a subsidy war in the short term and an ecological war in the long term. As the local lifestyle service with the highest daily active activity, takeaway is the key to leveraging user stickiness.”
After all, the profits of the food delivery business are too meager, and Meituan’s goal in 2020 is to make a single profit of 1 yuan. For a one-day charge on weekends, the platform has to subsidize more than 1 billion yuan.
He continued, “E-commerce giants have increased their instant retail, which is an active adaptation to changes in users’ consumption habits. The growth of traditional e-commerce has peaked, and it is an inevitable trend to turn to high-frequency and instant services. Instant retail is not an option, but a compulsory course.”
The total number of instant retail orders within one day stood at the water level of 200 million, which confirmed Gao Chengyuan’s judgment and the inevitability of this battle.
The war has begun, and the future voice of e-commerce giants may be re-ranked on the track of instant retail.
