Taobao Tmall’s instant retail business “Hourly Delivery” was officially upgraded to “Taobao Flash Sale” on April 30 and appeared on the homepage of Taobao App in the form of a first-level traffic entrance. After this upgrade, Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me jointly launched a subsidy strategy, aiming to win back merchants and users through subsidies in the short term, strengthen meal takeaway, consolidate Ele.me’s performance and B/C-end operations, and focus on instant retail in the long term, break through offline barriers, and establish an instant retail network covering multiple categories. However, Taobao flash sales are facing fierce competition in the field of e-commerce basics and instant retail, and whether they can gain a firm foothold in the cracks depends on how they improve their “internal strength” in addition to subsidies.
On April 30, Taobao Tmall’s instant retail business “Hourly Delivery” was officially upgraded to “Taobao Flash Sale”, which was displayed as a “flash sale” first-level traffic entrance on the Taobao App homepage tab. The upgraded Taobao flash sale will join forces with Ele.me to wield the “subsidy” stick.
Subsidies have two purposes: long and short, short-term subsidies to win back merchants and users, so as to strengthen meal takeaway, and finally consolidate Ele.me’s performance and B/C operations. The long-term focus is not on meals but on instant retail, through the local warehouse and store network of brand merchants, to further break through offline barriers, and establish an instant retail network covering meals, clothing department stores, medicines, 3C digital and other categories.
According to the cooperation situation, the current linkage between Taobao and Ele.me is actually Taotian to provide main site traffic, subsidies, and mature brand merchant system resources, and the delivery performance completely depends on Ele.me’s capabilities at the operation, algorithm, and map levels.
An important measurement indicator is “single volume”, which is highly related to Jiang Fan’s core goal after taking office: to change the past GMV-focused style of play and adjust to focus on the conversion of consumer demand, and its measurement standard is also single volume.
Therefore, the evaluation of Taobao’s flash sale entry is not limited to the takeaway itself.
In fact, Taotian’s situation in recent years is not optimistic, in the basic e-commerce market, fighting for low prices, traffic, and timeliness, it can’t do Pinduoduo, Douyin e-commerce, and JD.com; In the field of instant retail, whether it is performance efficiency, algorithms or local promotion and business sharing capabilities, it is not in the same dimension as Meituan, which has been “fighting a tough battle” for a long time.
Yuan Yu (pseudonym), a relevant person, revealed to Photon Planet that Meituan’s recent flash sale has attracted many brands to do A/B testing, because Meituan’s feedback is fast enough. Secondly, since the takeaway war, Meituan’s flash sale order volume has increased instead of falling, up 40%, which reflects Meituan’s deep accumulation and rapid emergency mechanism.
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This may stem from the fact that Ali has been “lying down and making money” for too long, so he lacks the ability to “fight tough battles”. Subsidies are certainly a powerful driver of the short-term surge in order volume, but in the long run, Taobao flash sales still have a lot of way to go if they want to truly stand firm in the market. Takeaway is just a “plus”
Different from Ele.me’s “passive” attitude of responding to the battle, Taobao’s entry into instant retail is more about the ambition of offline extension, one is to regain merchants, and the other is to gain growth before 618.
Although it seems that the launch of the flash sale at this point in time is enough for Taobao’s underlying precipitation, in fact, March is Alibaba’s assessment season, and in the absence of personnel and budget, there is a situation where there is more than enough heart and not enough strength.
Compared with JD.com, Alibaba relied on the “new retail” strategy in its early years and once had a large instant retail resources. In terms of offline retail, Alibaba has held a huge format of large supermarkets + mom-and-pop stores, as well as a number of near-field retail business segments under the MMC business group.
In the early years, RT-Mart and Yintai were included in the ecology through digitalization, and they held the fulcrum of large supermarkets. In 2021, the MMC business group was established to realize the digitalization of small store retail by integrating Retail Connect and Hema Bazaar. With RT-Mart and Yintai taking action one after another, the MMC business group has calmed down, and then in March this year, Taobao grocery shopping completely shut down the next-day pickup business, and Alibaba’s offline retail part has been cut down.
The setback of new retail is also a manifestation of Alibaba’s weak offline combat effectiveness, so the entry of Taobao flash sales can also be seen as an “emergency firefighting” measure. An Alibaba person said that Alibaba has paid a “high price” in new retail, and the core reason is that “the company and people are not aware enough, that is, they don’t know how to land, but since the boss says they want to do it, they have to do something”, and the second is to ignore that “retail needs to deal with people, and technology cannot solve problems between people”.
The second system is the direct e-commerce Tmall supermarket. Originally, Tmall Supermarket had nothing to do with instant retail, but with the maturity of Cainiao’s warehouse infrastructure, Tmall Supermarket was able to launch next-day, half-day, and hourly delivery services, and encrypt the frequency of delivery, so as to move closer to takeaway infinitely in form.
However, the entry of logistics into the era of hourly delivery does not mean that encrypted logistics can replace takeaway fulfillment.
The performance of the logistics system is essentially distributed according to “supply”, and the core is to revitalize inventory turnover. The goods are either from the manufacturing end to the warehouse, or from the merchant to the warehouse, and then distributed from the warehouse to the post station step by step, and finally the “last mile” of the post station to the home. Taking Maochao as an example, the inventory and distribution time of the directly operated warehouse match the user’s order time and product content, and after delivery to the rookie station, the station also has a fixed delivery process.
The performance of the takeaway system is distributed according to “need”, especially meal takeaway, where the rider picks up the meal at the designated location and then delivers it to the home, in which there is randomness and immediacy between the store and the home.
Ali’s third instant retail system is takeaway Ele.me – this is the business sector that competes with JD.com Takeaway and Meituan Takeaway. With the group’s tilt of resources and increased subsidies, relying on Ele.me’s existing performance, membership system, and platform operation capabilities, it has achieved good results in the short term.
As mentioned at the beginning, there are two purposes of Taobao flash sale: short-term and long-term, and the subsidy has an immediate effect on meal takeaway in a short period of time.
Taobao flash sale was launched in 50 cities on the first day, and the plan originally scheduled to be promoted nationwide on May 6 has been fully launched on May 2. By the evening of May 5, Taobao Flash Sale’s single-day takeaway orders had exceeded 10 million, becoming the fastest catering takeaway platform in China to break through the threshold of “10 million orders”.
Some merchants said that after entering Taobao flash sale, their order volume soared from 50 orders on May 1 to 196 orders on May 6, an increase of nearly 300%. Up to now, the subsidy continues to increase, and on May 6, Taobao flash sale sent 100 million cups of milk tea and coffee to consumers free of charge in the form of “free single card” and “guest card”.
The reason why Meituan and JD.com entered in a high-profile manner when the war was in full swing is that, as an insider said, “it can save a lot of marketing costs and turn to large-scale subsidies to consumers”, and on the other hand, it is also a forced counterattack from Taobao’s main position under continuous pressure. Can you keep the basic market of near-field e-commerce?
Under the impact of Pinduoduo and Douyin e-commerce, Taotian’s e-commerce share continues to decline. It is estimated that Taotian’s share in 2024 will be less than 40%, which has changed significantly from the “one dominant” pattern of more than 70% ten years ago.
According to the unconfirmed data provided by Yuan Yu, domestic e-commerce achieved general growth in April this year, but Alibaba’s GMV year-on-year growth rate was at the bottom, only 6.1%, and the continuous dividends of national subsidies drove JD.com’s GMV to increase by 12.7% year-on-year, Pinduoduo and Douyin e-commerce by 25.7% and 48.6% respectively, and Kuaishou e-commerce also achieved a growth of 15.6%.
Therefore, for Ele.me, order volume may be the primary goal, but for Taobao, consolidating the brand merchant system may be the top priority – this is also the extension of the e-commerce battlefield from online to offline, for Alibaba, flash sales are “active attack” and a “passive defense”.
Although the daily order volume exceeded 10 million in just 6 days, Taobao flash sale is still far from Meituan.
In the first quarter of 2025, Meituan’s instant retail orders increased by 23% year-on-year. In the third quarter of 2024, the average daily order volume of Meituan flash sales (non-meals) exceeded 10 million, with a peak of more than 16 million orders, and the current daily order volume of instant retail in non-catering categories has reached 18 million. In late April, JD.com’s daily takeaway order volume exceeded 10 million.
From offline to online to takeaway, it is a channel for brands to reach consumers. In the past, Taotian mainly undertook the online needs of brand owners: brands with a large number of offline stores, and the radiation radius was mainly for users in the surrounding area; With the help of Taotian’s platform effect, as well as tools such as grass planting and streaming, the brand has been able to reach users across the country.
With the entry of Meituan flash sale and JD.com’s second delivery, retail instantization has begun to become one of the mainstream trends and has gradually become an important source of incremental growth for brands. In the form of half-day delivery or even hourly delivery, the offline radiation radius of brand owners has expanded to tens of kilometers, which also makes up for the “shortcomings” of users who are within a radius of a few kilometers but whose consumption habits are more biased towards online.
Therefore, the launch of Taobao flash sale means that Taotian is “lying flat”, and it does not want to watch this part of the share completely eaten by Meituan and JD.com, and it needs to extend its online brand advantages to offline to achieve all-round strong binding with brand owners – this is why meal takeaway is only an addition, and the focus is on shoes and clothing, 3C, and daily necessities. Interestingly, Taotian has tested the waters of shoes and clothing in the takeaway war, but he didn’t see a splash until he entered the takeaway war.
Specifically, the instant retail competition is nothing more than the turnover speed, which depends on “fast delivery” and “selling more”, which corresponds to the platform’s performance efficiency and users’ consumption habits, respectively.
At present, Taobao Flash Sale has fully opened up the pallets and prices of Tmall’s official flagship store and “Hourly Delivery”, covering 200 core brands, but the competitive pattern of this new battlefield is completely different from that of e-commerce, and it also poses a greater test to Taotian.
As mentioned earlier, looking at China’s giants, once a monopoly situation is formed, it is extremely easy to make money, and this was the case with BAT back then.
In other words, if you “lie down and make money” for too long, it will be difficult for companies to lean over to earn “hard money”, and the decline in Alibaba’s e-commerce share is the best example of being surpassed by Pinduoduo in details.
In the field of instant retail, it is the out-and-out “hard money”, and if Taotian wants to gain a firm foothold and maintain the basic market of near-field e-commerce, I am afraid that it will take the determination and efforts to far exceed the e-commerce business. Short-term subsidies, long-term “internal strength”
In the field of instant retail, a “Three Kingdoms” pattern has been formed on Taobao, Meituan, and JD.com. From the perspective of capacity, Taobao flash sale relies on Ele.me’s 4 million riders, which is not much different from Meituan’s 5 million riders, and although JD.com continues to increase the speed of rider recruitment, there is still a certain gap compared to the previous two.
On the one hand, JD.com adjusted the original plan to recruit 50,000 full-time riders to 200,000, and also reduced the subsidy and changed it to a joint responsibility between merchants and platforms.
However, Meituan, which has been working for a longer time, still has varying degrees of leadership in terms of local promotion, business division, and infrastructure. In 2024, Meituan convenience store flash warehouses will add 1,866 new ones in the sinking market, and in the third quarter of the same year, the number of Meituan flash warehouses has exceeded 30,000, and it is expected that by 2027, the number of Meituan flash warehouses will exceed 100,000.
The biggest game point at the moment may be on the supply side. Judging from the genes of the three companies, JD.com may focus on the 3C digital field in the future, while Taobao may use shoes, clothing and beauty as the main battlefield.
According to public information, Meituan’s flash sale cooperative merchants have more than 5,600 large chain retailers, 410,000 local small merchants and 570 brand owners, and in terms of digital home appliances, Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, etc. have settled in; clothing categories include head brands such as Ayazhi Group, Decathlon, Heilan Home, and Semir; In the beauty maternal and infant category, giants such as Watsons, Sephora, Wyeth, Nestle, and Danone also have deep cooperative relations with Meituan Flash Sale.
This means that Taotian’s brand advantage is not ahead of Meituan in the field of flash sales. For example, in addition to the aforementioned Ayazhi Group and Decathlon, MO&Co, CHARLES&KEITH, Red Bean, Seven Wolves, Wanshili, Xingmian, and Zhenweisi have also entered Taobao flash sales.
According to Latepost, two leading global apparel brands and retail companies are accelerating cooperation and grayscale testing with Taobao Flash Sale, which have not yet been launched on Meituan Flash Sale.
From the perspective of user habits, shoes and clothing have always been Taotian’s advantageous category, and with the intensification of competition, brand merchants may not have the possibility of tilting resources towards Taobao flash sales. In January this year, after the three major brands of Aya Group, JACK&JONES, VERO MODA and ONLY, entered Taobao Hourly Delivery, they quickly ushered in a sales explosion during the 38 promotion, with ONLY transactions increasing by nearly 300%, and the turnover of JACK&JONES and VERO MODA also increasing by more than 200%.
In a comprehensive comparison, Meituan is strong in solid basic skills and user habits, and the delivery and route algorithms are moats, and it takes a long time for opponents to catch up with data precipitation; JD.com occupies the high ground of public opinion, while Taobao flash sale lies in the complementary advantages of the group’s combat and rich brand merchant resources.
However, it should be noted that when the subsidy is reduced, how much is left in the single volume? Taking Douyin takeaway in 2023 as an example, in late April and May of that year, affected by the habits of consumers on pre-sale coupons on the eve of the May Day holiday and the platform subsidy policy, the daily order volume once exceeded 100,000, and then the subsidy decreased, and the order volume once fell back to about 20,000 or 30,000 orders.
Yuan Yu estimates that JD.com’s takeaway order volume may reach 20 million orders per day at 618 hours, and the first round of subsidies can theoretically cover the expenditure from July to October when the order volume growth remains unchanged, and it is expected that the subsidy will continue to increase by the end of the year.
Although the demand of users may increase in the short term under the stimulation of large subsidies, the huge basic market needs to be eventually converted into retention. In addition to leading the order volume, JD.com and Taobao also need a number of businesses that increase the frequency of opening in the short term in order to compete with Meituan, which fully covers food, housing and transportation – the latter daily opening frequency includes almost all clothing, food, housing and transportation.
For Taotian, this is an arduous long-term battle, in addition to the strategic choice, the combat effectiveness of front-line employees is also the key to success or failure – employees who have been “lying flat” for a long time first need to “stand up” and “run” in order to achieve a head-on wrestling with Meituan.
The optimistic aspect is that the market share is large enough, and even if only a small piece of cake is divided, it is still a big gain for Taobao and JD.com. According to the “Instant Retail Industry Development Report” (2024), in 2023, the number of active users of instant retail in China will be about 580 million, a year-on-year increase of 34.88%, accounting for 53.11% of the number of netizens; From the perspective of scale, our country’s instant retail scale will reach 650 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 28.89%, and is expected to exceed 2 trillion yuan in 2030.
In general, the focus of Taobao flash sale takeaway is to revitalize the performance, and the core purpose is to undertake the brand offline, and in the long run, whoever can win more brands will be able to take the lead in the instant retail market. In addition to the speed of delivery, the most important thing for brand owners is which platform can bring greater shipments, and who can really play the role of a “third channel” outside of online and offline.
This is a long-lost “tough battle” on Taobao, the successful path of simple reuse of e-commerce is likely to bring only a “flash in the pan”, if you want to achieve long-term results on the new battlefield, one is to need greater determination and resource support, and the other is to be able to calm down and do “dirty work”, after all, in terms of front-line “hand-to-hand combat”, Meituan has not been afraid of anyone, JD.com has also been doing dirty work all the way for so many years, when the bayonet is red, the combat effectiveness of front-line personnel is fundamental. And this is precisely the class that Taobao needs to make up for the most.
