When the traffic dividend peaked, e-commerce giants have set their sights on instant retail, trying to open up new growth channels with “takeaway + everything”. Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo have increased their weight, Meituan has counterattacked, and a battle around the “half-hour life circle” has begun in an earnest way. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the strategic logic, subsidy game, and future pattern behind this war, revealing how instant retail is reshaping the e-commerce ecosystem.
On July 5, China’s instant retail industry experienced an unprecedented “surge” movement.
On the same day, Meituan’s instant retail orders successfully exceeded 120 million orders on the same day. Two days later, Alibaba’s Taobao flash sale and Ele.me jointly announced that its order volume on July 5 exceeded 80 million, including more than 13 million non-catering orders.
Although JD.com did not participate in the order rushing plan of the day, its takeaway business is still stirring up the entire instant retail market.
It is worth mentioning that with the rush of various companies, the market capacity of the entire instant retail industry has also increased rapidly from an average of about 100 million orders per day in May to an average of 200 million orders per day today.
However, if you look at it as a whole, the “big brawl” in the instant retail field has never happened in isolation.
To some extent, it is a concentrated embodiment of the changes in China’s large e-commerce industry – whether it is Alibaba, JD.com, or Pinduoduo, these giant-level e-commerce players have been actively or passively involved in it.
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Judging from the current situation, it is clear that the direction of this battle around instant retail is more confusing than ever. But one thing is certain: the outcome of this battle will reshape the future e-commerce market pattern.
JD.com Alibaba has increased its size, and Pinduoduo has also entered the game
E-commerce giants are launching a real battle in the field of instant retail.
There is no doubt that Alibaba has poured the group’s strength into the battlefield – in late June, after its “hourly delivery” was upgraded to “Taobao flash sale”, Ele.me was also integrated into Alibaba’s China e-commerce business group, and the two sides deeply collaborated to break through resource barriers.
On the second day of organizational adjustments, Sanyan Technology reported that Jack Ma and CEO Wu Yongming visited the Ele.me office area in person and will participate in the weekly meeting of Taobao flash sales.
Instant retail has been positioned as the “core battlefield” of Alibaba’s e-commerce business, with a high strategic priority.
Earlier, JD.com also placed “JD Second Delivery” on a strategic highland.
Following JD.com’s upgrade of its instant retail business to “JD Second Delivery” in May 2024 to this year, JD.com has entered the takeaway battlefield in a high-profile manner, and Liu Qiangdong has personally delivered takeaway.
After integrating resources, Alibaba and JD.com are determined to win.
Especially in the past month, in order to seize the minds of users, each company has spent a lot of money on marketing.
Taobao flash sale not only named the current popular Su Chao Changzhou team, but also frequently advertised on Alipay; JD.com has earned enough eyeballs by relying on Liu Qiangdong’s personal delivery of food delivery, and has also continued to launch promotions such as “9.9 yuan” and “fastest 9 minutes in seconds”; Meituan Flash Sale sponsored a popular talk show launched during 618, promoting the slogan “30 minutes to get everything home”.
After JD.com launched a subsidy of 10 billion, Taobao flash sales also continued to increase, and recently burned about 8 billion yuan per month.
The 50 billion subsidy of Taobao flash sale is mainly invested in two ends: consumers make profits through red envelopes, free single cards, and fixed-price products; the merchant side provides stores, goods, delivery subsidies and commission reductions.
According to Photon Planet, since May, the average monthly subsidy expenditure for Taobao flash sales has been about 8 billion.
Just as the two powerhouses were fighting, Pinduoduo also ended the wait-and-see.
Although it will not do takeaway for the time being, it will increase instant retail through Duoduo grocery shopping. According to LatePost, Duoduo is testing self-built warehouses in Shanghai and other cities, and plans to launch instant delivery services as soon as August, which will benchmark the delivery speed of JD.com and Taobao flash sales.
With Pinduoduo joining the battle, the three giants of e-commerce have all entered the market.
JD.com, which was the first to start attacking, has recently shown its ambition to expand its boundaries – to enter the wine and tourism market. In June, there was also news that JD.com is recruiting large-scale hospitality talents from platforms such as Ctrip and Meituan with high salaries, focusing on the “transparent price + subsidy” strategy. Although wine travel itself is not instant retail, it is closely related to the high-frequency takeaway business.
JD.com’s move is ostensibly expanding horizontally, but in fact it is an attempt to “use high frequency bands and low frequencies” to relate users’ consumption behavior to its own as much as possible.
As the giants have invested heavily, no one doubts whether instant retail is a good business. The market pattern is evolving from “one super” to “multiple strong coexistence”.
According to BOCOM International data, in the instant retail market, Meituan’s flash sale market share will reach 45% in 2024, much higher than Ele.me’s 21% and JD.com’s 5% – and with the addition of new players, the situation will change dramatically in 2025.
According to data released in June, JD.com’s instant retail orders on the same day rushed to 25 million during the 618 period; Taobao flash sales reached 60 million daily orders on June 23.
However, with the increase in subsidies, more market variables continue, almost every day. However, the battle is far from over, the battle is still ongoing – but the internal logic of players participating in instant retail has long since changed.
E-commerce and instant retail will surely move towards integration
Why has instant retail become a battleground?
At the macro level, the mobile Internet dividend has faded, and traditional e-commerce is generally mired in traffic anxiety. How to tell a new story and meet the expectations of the capital market for the next decade has become a question that giants have been thinking about.
The urgent need to find new traffic on-ramps to put instant retail on the C spot.
According to estimates by the Ministry of Commerce, the market size of instant retail will jump to 1.5 trillion yuan in 2025 and is expected to reach the range of 2 trillion to 3.6 trillion yuan in 2030, with an average annual growth rate of up to 25%.
It is worth noting that instant retail and traditional e-commerce are not two separate tracks, but form a natural complementary relationship.
For e-commerce giants, its core value lies in the use of high-frequency instant consumption to drive low-frequency traditional shelf e-commerce business and inject new vitality into the slightly tired e-commerce model.
JD.com and Alibaba have both chosen to embed takeaway entrances into their respective e-commerce main website apps rather than independently develop new applications, and their intention is obvious – to retain users.
In the era of stock competition, users’ attention has become the most scarce resource. Just as Taobao has introduced content forms such as live broadcasts, short videos, and mini games, Meituan’s online novels, short dramas and other services have become an industry consensus to create a “super APP”.
After JD.com and Taobao open up takeaway, users need to open the main APP to order food and enter the flash sale/second delivery page, and the takeaway coupon is also in the same card package as the e-commerce coupon.
This not only increases the user’s stay time, but also produces a strong cross-purchase effect, which invisibly deepens the platform’s “e-commerce mentality”.
Liu Qiangdong clearly mentioned in a public sharing on June 17 that 40% of consumers who come to JD.com to buy catering takeaway will cross over to buy JD.com’s e-commerce products, and he believes that although JD.com has invested a lot of money in making takeaway, it is more cost-effective than going to Douyin and Tencent to buy traffic.
In addition, the new business itself can generate revenue. Judging from the current financial report, the instant retail business has begun to bring tangible benefits to the giants.
According to Alibaba’s financial report for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025, in the quarter ended March 31, 2025, driven by the rapid growth of orders from Ele.me and AutoNavi, the revenue of Local Life Group was 16.134 billion yuan, an increase of 10% from 14.628 billion yuan in the same period last year, an increase of double digits.
Jiang Fan, CEO of Alibaba’s e-commerce business group, made it clear at the earnings conference that in the future, Alibaba e-commerce will convert more Taobao users into instant retail users. He expects the potential user size of this market to grow from the current 5-600 million to 1 billion.
JD.com also tasted the sweetness.
In the first quarter of 2025, JD.com’s new business, including food delivery business, recorded revenue of 5.753 billion yuan, an increase of 18.1% year-on-year, exceeding the group’s overall revenue growth rate.
Instant retail is becoming a strategic location for giants to resist slowing growth and unlock future value.
After the burning of money is over, who can retain consumers?
The popularity of instant retail also reveals a fact that cannot be ignored: the boundary between instant retail and traditional e-commerce is becoming more and more blurred, and players have already made a lot of preparations in such industry changes.
In fact, whether it is traditional e-commerce or in the field of instant retail, “goods” and “delivery” are two key elements.
On the basis of the original, major platforms are building their own new competitive advantages around this.
For example, at present, the main battlefield of instant retail is still concentrated in high-frequency rigid demand categories such as fresh food, wine, and medicine, although the platform is trying to expand high-customer unit price products such as 3C, but in addition to small items such as data cables, the instant consumption habits of large goods such as mobile phones have not yet been truly developed.
For shelf e-commerce giants, the current core category of instant retail is precisely the basic plate of its traditional advantages.
However, in terms of commodity supply, giants such as Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo still have huge advantages – many non-standardized, customized, non-time-sensitive, and low-frequency purchases by users still need to be realized on e-commerce platforms.
Of course, with the help of instant retail, delivery timeliness and service experience have increasingly become the primary considerations of current users.
For instant retail, its advantages need to be able to “respond to emergencies”, such as sudden illnesses urgently need medicines, etc., and meet the “normal” needs, and fresh ingredients are delivered synchronously when they get off work, which requires enterprises to achieve deep “localization” and densely deploy warehousing and distribution networks in the city.
In terms of warehousing layout strategy, players have differentiated into two completely different development paths: asset-light operation and asset-heavy investment.
Meituan adopts an asset-light “flash warehouse” strategy, cooperating with chain retailers, local merchants and brands, renting warehouses by third parties, and Meituan provides 30-minute delivery services, supplemented by some self-built warehouses. This model is known for its speed and scale, and can achieve grid coverage at a lower marginal cost.
Based on its inherent business model, JD.com has always chosen the asset-heavy “shared warehouse” model, which can reduce the cost of merchants’ self-construction of warehouses and strengthen the platform’s control over warehousing to ensure the delivery experience of high-order products. However, it is very worth noting that recently, JD.com has launched the “second warehouse” warehousing and distribution integrated service, trying to lay out the goods to the closest place to consumers in advance.
Of course, Alibaba has already had a corresponding layout in the system, but its fulfillment system still has huge room for growth with the increase in its order volume.
Pinduoduo has the least experience in the field of instant retail, but it also emphasizes the exploration of heavy models, and benchmarks the instant delivery service of JD.com second delivery and Taobao flash sale speed by building its own warehouses.
Of course, there is another link, that is, faster delivery. This is another complex topic, but there is no doubt that in order to effectively synergize between instant retail and e-commerce businesses, each company must be involved.
Looking back, for consumers, whether it is instant retail or traditional e-commerce, it doesn’t matter to them.
After all, from the perspective of the demand side, the fundamental needs of consumers are actually the same – that is, how to buy the goods they want at a better price and faster on the platform. Essentially, they don’t care which platform they place their orders from or which platform their products come from.
In the long run, how to activate the vitality and consumption potential of the entire e-commerce platform through high-frequency consumption in instant retail is a problem that all players must consider.
Of course, for any field, whenever giants pour into new markets, tens of billions of subsidy wars have almost become standard, and whether it is local e-commerce or instant retail, it is actually a game between giants, and it has nothing to do with entrepreneurs – but the drama of burning money for the market will eventually come to an end.
The real test is: after this round of subsidies recedes, who can really retain users.
