As competition in the food delivery market intensifies, Internet giants have realized the importance of a large membership system. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the layout and strategies of Alibaba, JD.com and Meituan in the large membership system, discusses how to enhance user loyalty and platform competitiveness through the refined operation of membership rights, and reveals the key role of the membership system in the future consumer market.
How to build a unified large membership system.
When instant retail has become the most obvious focus of competition on Internet platforms, we still have to pay attention to the fact that instant retail is only a part of the business of each platform, and we should use a more global perspective to understand what Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan are doing and want to do, what is happening at the same time as instant retail, and what is related to instant retail with them.
As we are”Competing for the entrance to big consumption: Alibaba, JD.com, and Meituan are becoming more and more similar”As mentioned in the article, the three companies will gradually evolve into a similar structure: a large consumption entrance, a unified large membership system, and a comprehensive set of goods + service supply, so that each business can be better integrated with AI capabilities in the AI era.
Under this logic, instant retail can strengthen the import competition and also supplement goods and services. How to connect instant retail with existing businesses, in addition to traffic coordination, organizational coordination, and long-term business involving commodity supply and fulfillment, also requires coordination in crowd operation – to a large extent,A unified large membership system plays the role of crowd coordination.
Of course, because of the different basic capabilities of each company and the way of competing for large consumption entrances, the operation of member products will gradually become more and more differentiated in terms of equity focus and intensity after the coverage of rights and interests becomes more and more similar.
For example, all three will issue large coupons during the big promotion, and there are more and more life service rights, but 88VIP has gradually made large coupons routine, and with Taobao’s expansion to instant retail, many dynamic small subsidies have been added, and more emphasis will be placed on equity stratification in the future; JD PLUS focuses more on the expansion of high-quality products and just-needed service rights. The big difference from the first two is that Meituan members have been focusing on local life. The most prominent feature of Meituan members is that they can dynamically subsidize users very flexibly, and on July 5, they temporarily issued a number of 0 yuan milk tea and coffee coupons to consumers, which is a concrete embodiment. And, its split of other local interests, including wine and tourism, is the most meticulous.
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For the refined operation of members, it confirms another bigger change: namelyIn the past, the method of attracting consumers through artificial promotions + full discount coupons driven by platforms and merchants has been limited; Through natural nodes that meet consumer needs (such as summer promotions, winter promotions) + targeted subsidies for different categories + more supplements to consumers’ life rights and interests, it is relaying to become a new way of attracting consumers.
Therefore, membership operation will become more and more core competitiveness.
However, Frank, an industry insider who has been following member research for a long time, reminds us that“Membership operations and marketing overlap, but from a long-term perspective, more valuable membership operations are always the maintenance of a longer life cycle for users.”
At present, in order to compete for consumption entrances, superimposing more and more marketing actions for member operations, such a reminder is very necessary.
01 88VIP: Normalization of large coupons, follow-up of dynamic subsidies, and coordination of more core resources
The basic characteristics of 88VIP are: wide coverage, large coupons play a basic role, and more dynamic takeaway red envelopes are distributed with the increase in instant retail. In the future, in order to evolve to the goal of the ultimate “big consumption platform”, 88VIP will and should cooperate with more core resources in the future, such as Hema members – Hema has appeared in the first-level entrance of Taobao flash sale.
When more and more rights are included in the membership system, further requirements will be put forward for the stratification of member rights and interests.
Compared with JD.com’s emphasis on self-operation, Taobao’s supply is characterized by “full”, which is also reflected in the coverage of 88VIP. In addition to shopping rights, it also opens up takeaway, Fliggy, Taopiaopiao, 1688 and various life and entertainment rights.
Because of the wide coverage of business and membership rights, a more general set of rights and interests is needed, the simplest is a large instant reduction/full reduction, similar to the recharge points and full discount cards commonly used in shopping malls.
During the 618 period, Taobao issued multiple rounds of large coupons to 88VIP, including 5000 minus 500, 500 minus 50, 200 minus 20 coupons, as well as 90% off no threshold coupons that can be reduced by up to 750 yuan.
At the beginning of July, Taotian launched the “Super 88” activity: on the 8th/18th of each month, consumers will be subdivided into different amounts of subsidies in categories through instant discount + stacked coupons, including the “88VIP Exclusive Surprise Consumption Coupon” exclusively for member users.
For example, on July 8, 88VIP users received 4 full discount coupons (150 minus over 1500, 80 minus 80, 58 minus 58 over 580, minus 18 over 180), which can be used for a limited time before 24 o’clock on July 9.
In our opinion, a clear signal released by “Super 88” is that with the routine of big promotions, Taobao’s discount coupons are also normalized, including large coupons for members.
At the same time, by attaching a strategy of “how to use it to save more” to large coupons, it further stimulates the potential demand of members and increases the attractiveness of members themselves to consumers.
During the 618 period, the 88VIP homepage launched the “Good Things Recommendation” section, which mainly recommends brands and categories that users have searched, browsed or purchased to convert the long-tail needs that users may have considered. Led by large subsidies, the number of 618,88VIP members hit a new high this year, exceeding 50 million. This is also one of the most eye-catching results in Taobao’s 618 battle report.
Another new change in 88VIP is that with Alibaba’s emphasis on instant retail and Ele.me’s integration into the e-commerce business group, 88VIP, which has been connected to Ele.me’s red envelopes, will also indirectly enjoy more discounts and rights because Taobao issues more discount coupons to flash sales. For example, the surprise red envelopes that pop up from time to time on the Ele.me APP; and the “Taobao Money Saving Card” that gives users both takeaway red envelopes and shopping red envelopes at the entrance of Taobao flash sale.
These benefits will continue to increase member loyalty and improve the stability of Taobao flash sale users.
But at the same time, there is another concern, that is, whether the normalization and generalization of large subsidies will weaken the value of 88VIP. In this context, 88VIP is equivalent to standing at a new point of choice, whether to further strengthen the differentiated rights and interests for the core group through payment, or to continuously expand the member base with the generalization of platform subsidy coupons, and even move towards free.
At present, it is relatively certain that with the advancement of Taobao’s large consumer platform business, more and more decentralized e-commerce and trading services may be merged into Taobao, and their rights and interests will be merged into 88VIP, such as Hema members.
And with the further expansion of the membership rights pool, 88VIP needs to design more refined rights and interests for the newly merged business on the one hand, and establish a more refined membership stratification system on the other hand.
At present, 88VIP has made three layers: life card, shopping card and all-round card, and from the respective coverage of rights, you can clearly feel the differentiated role played by different membership cards in the entire membership system.
The 88VIP life card, which focuses on eating, drinking and having fun life rights (including Ele.me food card, NetEase Cloud membership, Quark Netdisk membership, etc.), mainly plays a role in draining traffic and expanding the size of members. The shopping card focuses on the daily 2 yuan red envelope of e-commerce, covering mainly high-frequency consumption e-commerce people, which may be the part of high-net-worth users that e-commerce merchants need most. The all-round card covers all the rights and interests of life cards and shopping cards, and its users are also likely to have both activity, loyalty and spending power.
02 JD.com PLUS: Continue to strengthen high-quality supply + rigid demand rights
JD.com, which is looking for increments through supply chain ideas, continues to use JD PLUS to strengthen the logic of selecting high-quality products for users, and continues to increase the rights and interests of life services with richer dimensions to enhance the activity and loyalty of members.
For example, in the current PLUS homepage, the most conspicuous is the “Life Benefits” recommendation list, which integrates the exclusive life service rights and interests of members such as catering, local life, finance, and hospitality according to the popularity and life scene of the week. For products, the “guess what you like” information flow is used to personalize recommendations according to user habits.
The previous member homepage was mainly based on various coupon collection activity entrances, and if users did not have clear shopping needs, they usually did not enter the homepage. And now the member homepage has become easier to shop, which is more likely to increase user stickiness, make good use of products and member-only discounts, and exchange for higher loyalty.
Secondly, the boundaries of the living rights and interests provided by PLUS are constantly expanding.
At the beginning of the year, the PLUS life rights package played the role of maintaining a single user experience and increasing the frequency of users through the life services that high-net-worth individuals just need, such as free laundry and shoes, housekeeping and cleaning, similar to Sam’s glasses, oral services and other supplementary services. This year’s 618, JD.com PLUS continues to use a series of limited-time life rights to attract users to open cards, including car maintenance, traffic cards, nurse homes, game cards, air tickets, Universal Studios coupons, etc.
The newly announced wine and tourism business also emphasizes the connection between the hotel brand and PLUS member rights.
The reason why we should take goods and services as the starting point is largely related to JD.com’s self-operated/supply chain/brand positioning. By broadening the rights and interests of PLUS life, it is equivalent to broadening the boundaries of the goods + service rights and interests that JD.com can provide to users, and at the same time increasing the frequency of user use, and strengthening user identity and stickiness through selected products + high-quality services.
From this point of view, JD PLUS is also becoming more and more like Sam’s Club that emphasizes quality and service.
Such members will greatly enhance consumers’ recognition of the channel’s own products and services, and in turn, members will become an auxiliary force for the channel when it wants to expand a new business.
As countless business case studies say, “Long-term consumer loyalty not only maintains market share of a company’s existing products, but also drives new product launches.”
For example, JD.com’s 10 billion subsidy for takeaway has attracted more than 400,000 users to sign up for PLUS within 4 months by giving PLUS members a greater subsidy than ordinary users. Then as the takeaway war moves from a large range of traffic to the stage of user retention and conversion, JD Takeaway can also provide additional rights and interests to PLUS members to keep some early adopter takeaway users.
It is worth noting that PLUS’s expanded life service rights and interests, such as wine travel, takeaway, housekeeping and other services, can also help JD PLUS supplement some female consumers, and achieve consumption growth in new categories driven by new groups of people through the optimization of PLUS membership structure. JD.com emphasized in the 618 battle report released this time that women-oriented categories such as clothing and beauty and daily necessities are becoming JD.com’s new growth pole.
03 Meituan members: Comprehensive and flexible local dynamic subsidies are the main focus, while enhancing brand awareness
Meituan members already have a variety of money-saving coupons, and after upgrading a few months ago, they are still mainly coupons, but they have opened up more service rights and interests in life scenarios, such as free room upgrades, free charging, etc., and at the same time have done a more detailed membership growth system sorting, similar to a “universal money-saving card”. In addition to supplementing high-star hotel rights through partnerships with hotels like Marriott, the latest changes further enhance flexibility and dynamics.
For all platforms that want to do local life business: the flexibility and dynamics of membership rights are very important.
Because local consumption itself is massive, high-frequency, and fragmented – this is why Meituan is the only member among the three that does not have a payment threshold, but will take the form of monthly cards and expansion coupons. In particular, local catering takeaways and catering group buying also have low unit prices, so consumers need high-frequency small subsidies rather than large full reductions.
Therefore, we can also see that as JD.com and Taobao switch from takeaway to instant retail, more and more dynamic subsidies will be added.
The sense of dynamism not only refers to the randomness of the subsidy action itself, but also includes the randomness and intelligence of the subsidy amount when facing different consumers. For different consumption, the expansion coefficient of Meituan membership inflated red envelopes is different. Therefore, some industry insiders even compared Meituan members’ inflated red envelopes with Pinduoduo’s smart coupons.
In order to enable consumers, merchants, and platforms to obtain the required dynamics and intelligence, it must be related to the platform’s merchant accumulation, consumer accumulation, consumption understanding and current strategy.
Since the takeaway war, Meituan has been responding to the war with personalized subsidies.
Before Meituan fought back on July 5, some consumers told us that in the early stage of subsidies, they were indeed attracted by large coupons from JD Taobao, but they began to use Meituan more in the later stage.
Because Meituan began to frequently issue large coupons for members above the platinum level, such as during the “Shanghai Hi Eating Festival”, large coupons of 39 minus 18 yuan were issued almost every day. At the same time, the expansion amount of member coupons is also larger than before, and the coupons of high-level members can basically expand to more than 10 yuan.
Secondly, Meituan’s subsidies before July 5 will focus on the supply of meals and simple meals provided by the gods and the gods.
As we have analyzed before, tea coffee is highly standardized, chained, digitalized, and easy to rush orders. However, for the platform, in addition to coffee and milk tea, there must still be higher unit price, more rigid meals, and retail with higher gross profit to undertake daily consumption after subsidies, so as to develop a more stable consumption mentality.
Of course, in the era of striving for large consumption entrances, Meituan should also learn more from e-commerce platforms to launch services such as large full discounts and membership rights and interests with consumer brands in addition to the dynamic provision of local rights and interests, supplementing high-star hotels and other rights, and cooperating with the business progress of flash sales at the retail level.
In this year’s Q1 conference call, Meituan said that it will expand more service privileges to certain levels of members, “and is expected to become the “preferred platform for users to discover local stores and preferential deals by providing benefits covering all categories and scenarios”.
During this year’s 618 period, Meituan issued large coupons to member users of different levels, and sorted out a series of brand products on the member homepage to recommend to users.
On the one hand, this allows Meituan’s brand and quality supply to reach members, and on the other hand, it also stimulates high-level members to consume more. It is understood that during the 618 period, the per capita consumption of Meituan Black Diamond members was 3 times that of ordinary members.
