As competition in the instant retail market intensifies, major e-commerce platforms have increased subsidies in an attempt to gain an advantage in this rapidly growing field. This article focuses on the “Milk Tea Free Order” activity jointly launched by Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me, as well as the subsidy war of JD.com, Meituan and other platforms, and analyzes the direct impact of these activities on consumers and the market.
The battlefield of instant retail has evolved into an arms war between large manufacturers.
Starting today, Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me’s “Milk Tea Free Order” activity was launched.
According to the introduction, users search for “milk tea free order” on Taobao every day, and have the opportunity to grab the milk tea “free single card”, and at the same time as getting the “free single card”, there is also a chance to randomly get a certain number of “invitation cards”, which can be shared with friends and invited friends to drink milk tea for free.
We also experienced a NOWWA latte takeaway with an original price of 24 yuan, a packaging fee of 1 yuan, and a delivery fee of 2.9 yuan, a total of 27.9 yuan, and only paid 0.01 yuan after using the free single card.
According to Taobao’s flash sale, this “milk tea free order” activity is a long-term discount, which is expected to cooperate with Ele.me to give away 100 million cups of milk tea, coffee and other tea drinks to consumers for free. If the average cost is calculated at 10 yuan, the two sides are expected to invest 1 billion yuan in this activity.
Of course, the subsidies are much more than that.
Compared with the “milk tea free order”, which requires consumers to actively participate in the competition at a specific time, Taobao flash sale is suitable for more general, wider and more normalized consumption scenarios, and the “more than 10 billion subsidy” plan is also being intensively thrown bullets. And under this continuous preferential output, it took only 6 days for the daily order volume of Taobao flash sales to exceed 10 million orders.
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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An increasingly clear trend is that from the entry of JD.com three months ago, to the Taobao Ele.me relay, takeaway and even instant retail markets, it has completely entered the “Three Kingdoms”.
01 Subsidy war
In the past few days, I have heard that many young people have drunk and supported.
First of all, under the tens of billions of subsidies from JD.com’s takeaway, Cudi’s 3.9 yuan cup of raw coconut latte, Gu Ming’s 4.8 yuan cup of passion duo, Shuyi burned grass jelly 3.8 yuan a cup of jasmine milk green, etc., directly exploded the orders of many chain drink brands.
According to JD.com’s second delivery data, as of April 30, the sales volume of Shanghai Auntie exceeded 3 million orders, and the sales volume of Tea Baidao exceeded 6 million orders; Cudi Coffee’s sales exceeded 30 million orders, and the average daily order volume soared to 900,000 orders.
Then there is the Taobao flash sale that ended this time.
According to the latest data previously released by Ele.me, in just 6 days, the daily order volume of Taobao flash sales has exceeded 10 million, and more than 1,000 brands have refreshed the historical peak of Ele.me’s business.
Even before the release of the “Milk Tea Free Order” campaign, Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me also issued reminders, advising consumers to “pay attention to blood sugar management”.
Behind this, it is JD.com, Meituan, and Alibaba that are setting off rounds of subsidy wars around takeaway and instant retail to compete for the market.
Taking a single meal of chili fried pork from “Yixiang (Tianhe City Store)” as an example, before this round of takeaway “Three Kingdoms Killing”, AI Blue Media Hui often used Ele.me to place orders, plus packaging, delivery fees, and discounts, the average daily price of the package was about 25 yuan.
In this round of subsidy war, Meituan issued inflated coupons, with an average price of 19.9 yuan, Taobao flash sale “hunger subsidy of more than 10 billion”, the average price of 18.9 yuan, and JD.com’s “10 billion subsidy” of 22.9 yuan. Compared with before, the price of takeaway items has decreased to a greater extent.
At the same time, in terms of delivery time:
- Meituan placed an order at 11:10 and delivered at 11:45.
- Taobao flash sales are placed at 11:08 and delivered at 11:46.
- In terms of JD.com’s takeaway, due to the current insufficient number of riders, the order was placed at 11:09 and delivered at 12:30, and based on JD.com’s previous commitment to free orders for 20 minutes, after getting the order from the takeaway brother, at about 12:48, JD.com’s system took the initiative to initiate a refund and free order.
Obviously, these three companies are trying their best to show their sincerity to users, and they have really come up with real money in terms of discounts, service experience, and handling problems.
After all, no one can take the war of instant retail lightly.
02 Taobao ended
It was originally a fight between JD.com and Meituan, but Alibaba’s entry this time has raised the entire war to another dimension.
On April 30, Taobao Tmall’s instant retail business “Hourly Delivery” was officially upgraded to “Taobao Flash Sale”, and displayed as a “flash sale” first-level traffic entrance on the Taobao app homepage Tab, which was launched in 50 cities on the first day, and then promoted to the whole country on May 6.
This not only directly means that in the instant retail competition, Alibaba must take action, and directly revitalize Ele.me’s existing resources and make the competition of “Three Kingdoms” more fierce.
In fact, as early as 2020, Alibaba tried to connect the far field with the near field. After the Tmall supermarket business group was upgraded to the intra-city retail business group, new retail businesses such as Taoxianda, Tmall Supermarket and Ele.me took on the role of medium and near-field e-commerce.
In this upgrade, Alibaba’s performance is quite aggressive.
The most typical performance is not only Taobao’s personal end this time, but also in the way of directly putting it in with Ele.me.
In Taobao Flash Sale, in addition to the full import of Ele.me merchant supply, delivery and delivery, user order preferences and other data on Ele.me are also directly imported into Taobao Flash Sale.
At the same time, Taobao flash sale also provides user discounts exclusive to its own entrance, such as “takeaway price”. With a “grandpa doesn’t make tea” first love rose green tea, buy it with Taobao’s flash sale “takeaway price”, the price is only 7.3 yuan, while Ele.me is 17 yuan after the discount.
These have helped Taobao flash sales rise rapidly, and also highlight Taotian’s determination to compete for instant retail.
A market consensus is that instant retail, as a business model that meets consumers’ “immediate needs”, is gradually affecting and changing the existing consumption habits of e-commerce consumers. For e-commerce companies such as JD and Alibaba, the layout of instant retail is not only defensive on the one hand, but also to supplement its own near-field retail territory on the other hand.
You know, the current instant retail market size is growing rapidly.
Taking Meituan as an example, the current daily order volume of Meituan’s flash sale of non-catering categories has exceeded 18 million. At the same time, in terms of the entire market, data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that China’s instant retail scale will reach 650 billion yuan in 2023, with an annual growth rate of 28.89%, far exceeding traditional e-commerce. The market is expected to triple by 2030.
At a time when traditional e-commerce has bid farewell to high growth, for JD Alibaba, instant retail is bringing new growth space.
JD.com uses takeaway as a leverage point to promote the overall improvement of its own instant retail business by exempting merchants from commissions, paying riders five insurances and one housing fund, and subsidizing tens of billions of yuan on the consumer side. Up to now, the results are very considerable, and the data shows that as of April 22, 2025, the number of orders for JD.com’s takeaway on the same day has exceeded 10 million.
Alibaba dispatched Taobao, relying on Ele.me’s existing local infrastructure such as socialized warehousing and rider capacity, to add large subsidies and quickly seize the instant retail market, which also crossed the threshold of 10 million daily orders.
In addition, Meituan has strong resources, strength, and combat effectiveness from each other, which also means that this instant retail war is destined to be a protracted war.
