As competition in the instant retail market intensifies, the entry of Taobao flash sales has attracted widespread attention in the industry. This article provides an in-depth analysis of the “Milk Tea Free Order” event jointly launched by Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me, and discusses the impact of this strategy on the market and Taobao Flash Sale’s strategic layout in the field of instant retail.
Today, two cups of American wine made me “float”.
Following the eve of the May Day holiday, Taobao and Ele.me jointly entered the takeaway war, forcibly rewriting the situation of JD.com and Meituan brawl to “Three Kingdoms Killing”, Taobao flash sale has burned another fire: starting from 8 o’clock on May 6, you can get free single cards and limited edition invitation cards every day.
Source: Screenshot of Tang Chen
According to the introduction of the event, starting from 8 a.m. on May 6, consumers can open the Taobao App – flash sale channel every day, search for “milk tea free order”, and grab the milk tea “free single card”, a total of 100 million cups, coffee and tea can be used.
In addition, consumers will have the opportunity to get 1~9 random “invitation cards” while receiving the “free single card”. “Free single card” users drink by themselves, and “treat card” to share with friends, and friends can also drink milk tea for free.
Free 100 million milk tea and coffee
I participated half an hour after the start of the event, and a Manner super large cup with a thick American style with an original price of 20 yuan paid 7.8 yuan after using the free single card. At the same time, I also gave away 10 invitation cards to share with my friends.
Soon, my group and circle of friends were posted and swiped. I also learned from it that I caught up with today’s last wave of “milk tea free order”, and I didn’t grab a free single card, but just received a lot of takeaway coupons.
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.
View details >
In these posted orders, many people only need to pay 0.01 yuan to buy a cup of coffee or milk tea after using the free card.
A good news is that according to the previous Taobao flash sale, it will work with Ele.me to increase subsidies and provide consumers with the greatest welfare benefits: super rights and interests such as free red envelopes, free milk tea, and large full discount takeaway coupons. On the same day, Taobao also announced that Wu Yanni became a flash sale brand ambassador and would give away 100 million free milk tea.
These two pieces of information can also be understood as the “free milk tea” activity may be a long-term preferential subsidy.
Source: Netizens posted screenshots of the order
It is learned from relevant channels that due to the impact of this event, milk tea shops across the country are boiling. At present, the “sequelae” left by this event is that I drank two cups of American food in a row, and I was flustered for a day, and now people are still floating.
This also allows the outside world to see that milk tea and coffee have natural social sharing properties, and the extreme price of a few yuan a cup can easily trigger users to spontaneously post orders, forming a viral spread. According to data released by JD Takeaway, the 1 yuan milk tea activity directly drove 70% of new users to place orders for the first time.
Under this preferential strength, Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me relied on the combination of “10 billion subsidies + low e-commerce prices + instant delivery” to exceed 10 million daily takeaway orders in just 6 days.
This speed is faster than JD.com’s takeaway in a week, which ran the daily order volume from 5 million to 10 million. However, JD.com’s takeaway took 46 days from its launch to the daily order volume of 5 million.
10 million orders are of great significance to Taobao flash sale and JD.com (note, it is not JD.com’s takeaway, the reason is very simple: JD.com does not want to be the second Meituan). For mature e-commerce platforms, the foundation or genes of instant retail have long existed, and the volume of takeaway orders will be very fast. With the end of Taobao’s flash sale, instant retail has officially become a real strategic battlefield for leading e-commerce platforms.
Some industry insiders said that the rapid rise of JD.com takeaway and Taobao flash sales proves that the idea of diverting from takeaway to instant retail is true.
This also means that the “barriers” to food delivery performance defined by Meituan are not so strong. When traditional e-commerce platforms concentrate their superior forces into instant retail, the so-called first-mover advantage is actually not that important.
Wang Puzhong, CEO of Meituan Xiaowang, pointed out in the “war of words” that Meituan’s non-catering orders exceeded 18 million. Another media mentioned that Meituan announced a set of data at an internal communication meeting for flash sales in Q1 this year, and in 2024, Meituan’s flash sale 3C home appliance orders will be close to 40% of JD.com’s entire site, of which the number of orders for computer office products has exceeded that of JD.com, and the number of orders for mobile phone communication products has exceeded 40% of JD.com’s entire site; Beauty category orders reached 30% of JD.com’s entire site.
From the perspective of play, Taobao flash sales and JD.com’s takeaway “flat and high-rise buildings” are also different. Behind Taobao flash sale is Alibaba’s huge business ecosystem.
According to public information, Taobao flash sale starts from covering 200 core brands, fully opening up the pallets and prices of Tmall’s official flagship store and “hourly delivery”, bringing consumers the experience of “low prices of e-commerce, instant retail fast delivery”. In terms of organization, all businesses related to instant retail within Taobao will be fully responsible for Taobao Flash Sale, and Ele.me will fully coordinate.
The pressure of Taobao flash sales has been experienced by Meituan once. In 2020, Alibaba integrated its local life business, with Ant Financial CEO Hu Xiaoming (nicknamed “Sun Quan”) serving as the chairman, opening up the two super entrances of Alipay and Taobao, and integrating and upgrading resources, teams and organizations.
This aroused Wang Xing’s high vigilance, and he said of Ele.me, “In terms of combat effectiveness, Ali is very strong, but if they do a little more bottom-line in all aspects, I will respect them more.” ”
Fighting bayonets with mouths is also the norm. Later, in an exclusive interview with the media, Wang Xing once again bombarded Alibaba, saying that Jack Ma divested Alipay without the approval of the board of directors, which caused lasting damage to the global reputation of Chinese business leaders.
This is a bit of a downfall at the critical point of the complex situation faced by Ali at that time. In this regard, Wang Shuai, chairman of the market public relations committee of Alibaba Group, responded on social media that the realm pattern of corporate leaders determines the future of the enterprise, and malicious slander cannot hurt Alibaba.
Ele.me’s role
Many commentators pointed out that in this round of takeaway wars, Ele.me’s role was lost. For example, when JD.com and Meituan were fighting fiercely, Ele.me was almost silent. The general concern of the outside world is that Ele.me posted a poster of saliva shrimp, which seems to indicate the attitude of the second child in the market.
What is the business logic behind it? I found the answer in an article on Tiger Sniff on April 18. The title of this article is “Takeaway “Three Kingdoms Kill”, why is it quiet? 》
There are also four small words at the end of the article: Special planning. A discerning person can know the meaning of these four words at a glance.
Tiger Sniff or Ele.me pointed out that the takeaway war between JD.com and Meituan “is a showdown between the core interests of both sides, and it is also a head-on battle that will happen sooner or later.” ”
This core interest lies in the underlying logic of business, which is the business choice in the field of instant e-commerce, and both companies are mainly self-operated models. The key point of this model is absolute control over the scale and efficiency of the supply chain.
It can be said that this war is the frontal rigidity of the two supply chains, the fierce collision of the warehouse distribution system, and the inevitable friction between far-field e-commerce and near-field e-commerce in the integration period. And the players in this line are on Taobao Tmall, which is also Alibaba’s business ecology.
The “ecological model” earns commissions, and the “self-operated model” earns the price difference. The core value is to provide good services, attract local retailers and brand merchants to settle in, catalyze transactions, and rely on merchants’ transactions to earn “matching fees”.
In the platform-based model, Ali is the only player with core strikers far and near. In the platform-based and complementary business format model, Alibaba does not need to cut the far field, nor does it need to rush to make up for the near field, but only needs to promote the occurrence of “near and far integration” to effectively avoid the losses caused by internal friction and mutual gambling.
Tiger Sniff concluded that Ele.me is very firm in the choice of this strategic route. This is also the “neutral way” shown by Ele.me in the early stage of this round of takeaway wars.
In fact, Ele.me has a clear position in the Alibaba ecosystem, that is, it should resonate with Taobao, Alipay, AutoNavi and other terminals to do “instant retail with Ele.me’s characteristics”.
For example, in October last year, Ele.me launched its official flagship store near the field, adopting a social supply chain model to connect offline stores, such as front-end warehouses, store-warehouse integrated stores, store-in-store warehouses, etc., so that retail brands can open stores and operate in a unified manner, and in some scenarios, they connect traffic entrances such as AutoNavi and Alipay within the Alibaba ecosystem.
With the fierce takeaway war, the integration of the ecology of Ele.me and Alibaba Business will also be further accelerated and deepened.
What Alibaba needs to consider is that Taobao flash sale is not to do Ele.me again, nor to marginalize or sell Ele.me, but to break the situation of fragmentation of resources and business in the past, and truly elevate instant retail to a strategic height.
Judging from the fission effect of today’s “Milk Tea Free Order” event, the “Free Single Card” I sent out brought at least 50% of the new ones. The judgment criterion is: Do ordinary users know that Taobao flash sales have been launched?
From this point of view, it is appropriate for Ele.me to choose to speak out in a limited way and bury itself in doing its own thing. Because, the takeaway “Three Kingdoms” is essentially not competing for the daily order volume of takeaway.
JD.com’s three-board axe aims to win quickly. But the battle on the takeaway battlefield is destined to be a protracted battle. All parties involved need to answer: how to truly and efficiently open up the link of instant retail and find new incremental space through takeaway subsidies.
Resources:
Titanium Media, “Taobao Flash Sale Launches ‘Milk Tea Offensive’, Instant Retail Becomes a Nuclear Weapon for Traditional E-commerce”
Tang Chen, “Wang Puzhong guards the ring, first fights a war of words”
