When the “0 yuan purchase” swept Meituan on July 12, behind the cheers of 150 million orders was a “seven wounds fist” style of self-consumption: milk tea machines smoked, riders crowded stores, small and medium-sized merchants were busy becoming “platform volunteers”, while real instant retail non-catering orders were quietly diluted by their own people. This article uses a battle report to debunk the “single volume myth” – Taobao’s flash sale sentence “80 million does not include self-pickup” directly pokes the water, and Meituan’s 10 billion subsidies to keep the first have become a high-hanging profit sickle.
Meituan, which was “stolen from the house”, is full of firepower this time.
Compared with the passive response on the weekend of July 5, the platform was rushed to a brief “paralysis”, and on the weekend of July 12, Meituan chose to take the initiative to attack and launch a “0 yuan purchase”.
In fact, since the middle of the week, WeChat groups, social platforms and other channels have been warming up the news that Meituan is about to expand its recruitment. For example, “On July 12, the milk tea war is about to begin.” This time it’s 0 yuan! Starting tomorrow, Meituan 0 yuan milk tea can be bought directly without coupons! “It’s best to be hungry for a day, tomorrow Saturday is said to be an unprecedented three-way takeaway war” and so on.
Meituan’s “0 yuan purchase” exploded
On July 12, when users opened the Meituan App, the system directly popped up a prompt that “0 yuan takeaway” had arrived. After clicking, there are some brands of 0 yuan milk tea, coffee and other “sought-after” coupons, similar to the previous week. This time, there are also free coupons for self-pickup, supporting brands such as Gu Ming and Shanghai Aunt to pick up in the store.
Some netizens also found that Meituan also launched activities such as “starting from 1 cent” to buy milk tea takeaway, as well as “iced explosive products starting from 1 cent”, and “big-name self-pickup starting from 1.68 yuan”.
Source: Meituan’s “0 yuan purchase” media screenshot
Wang Xing once made it clear that Meituan will win “at all costs”. Now, it is a critical moment to “do whatever it takes”. Compared with the temporary online order rush of the previous week, the purpose of Meituan’s round of “0 yuan purchase” is very clear, that is, to rush up the order volume and defend the position of the first in the industry.
As soon as this “flood” day ended, in the early morning of July 13 (Sunday), Meituan quickly released a report card: “150 million orders, delivered in 34 minutes, doubled revenue, more, faster and better!” 》
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Meituan said that at 23:36 on July 12, Meituan’s instant retail daily orders exceeded 150 million.
Source: “Meituan” public account Tang Chen screenshot
Looking at the superficial numbers alone, the momentum of “150 million orders” is very strong and eye-catching, directly raising the peak of Meituan’s daily order volume by 30 million, almost setting a record for the highest order on a single platform in China’s food delivery market.
But for Meituan, it is not difficult to rush orders on a certain day and exceed its past records. In this battle report, we can still see two problems:
First of all, is the gold content of “150 million orders” high?On the one hand, the “0 yuan purchase” subsidizes small high-frequency tea orders such as milk tea and coffee, and users will only “finish harvesting the wool” and leave, and how much retention is unknown.
If Meituan continues to rush orders in this way, its daily order number can be higher. The key is how long Meituan can continue to subsidize, how strong it is, and how much the new tea store can support, and whether consumers will continue to pay. Many netizens said that if the coupon is gone, they will not order it again.
On the other hand, Meituan’s battle report states that the number of meal orders exceeded 35 million; The number of sought-after orders exceeded 50 million. (In the previous week, sharpshooters focused on self-pickup “0 yuan purchase”, and this week is no exception.) The two add up to nearly 90 million orders.In other words, there are tens of millions of orders that users pick up at the store, which has little to do with takeaway. But this trick can help increase order volume and alleviate capacity pressure, and it is still counted in the total number of daily orders.This creates a situation: users pick up the wool subsidized by Meituan, and Meituan indirectly transmits the pressure to small and medium-sized stores such as milk tea and coffee.
Secondly, has the collaborative path between Meituan’s instant retail and takeaway really run through?Meituan took the initiative to provoke the “instant retail” war this year and launched an attack on all e-commerce platforms. But after the two-week takeaway subsidy war, Meituan’s performance in the competition for the focus – instant retail – can’t help but make the outside world have such doubts.
The week before, Meituan passively responded to the battle, rushing the order volume to 120 million, and the announced non-catering orders were 30 million. This is an improvement compared to the war of words between Xiao Wang CEO Wang Puzhong and JD.com in April, when he announced that non-catering orders exceeded 18 million, but it is not very amazing. If you compare it with the surge in the overall takeaway order volume, it doesn’t feel very good.
In the years of “obscene development”, Meituan’s flash sales orders reached a certain scale. After the takeaway war started, more high-frequency traffic did not bring about an explosive increase in flash sales orders. In this battle report, Meituan simply did not release data on non-catering orders.
Of course, JD.com and Taotian are not idle. JD.com not only issued a large amount of 10 billion subsidy coupons, but also launched the “fixed price of 16.18″ last Friday night! Please eat quality crayfish for users across the country”.
In terms of Taotian, it is reported that Taobao flash sale will focus on “Super Saturday” every Saturday for some time to come. For example, in the past two weekends, when Meituan was defending and exerting forces, Taobao Flash Sale also used subsidy means, distributing 188 yuan coupon packages, claiming that “5 meals a day are all inclusive”. Many users have received a number of large coupons of “18.8 minus 18.8” and “18.8 minus 18.8 for full 28.8”.
Taobao flash sale and start issuing cards
Many people also noticed that when Meituan released the battle report overwhelmingly over the weekend, the Taobao flash sale was very calm and did not seem to be taken away by Meituan. A friend told me that Taobao flash sales are preparing for the game under normal circumstances, and other personnel are spending the weekend.
On Monday morning, the weekend battle report of “Taobao Flash Sale x Hungry” was belated. The “Taobao” official account released data, and Taobao Flash Sale and Ele.me announced that the daily order volume once again exceeded a new high of 80 million, and the order punctuality rate stabilized at 96%.
In addition to explaining that “the order structure has expanded deeply to all categories”, Taobao Flash Sale also deliberately added parentheses and bold emphasis:
(80 million daily orders)Excluding self-mentioned 0 yuan purchase.
Source: “Taobao” public account Tang Chen screenshot
This is not a simple arithmetic problem, butThis battle report is the most lethal information for Meituan.In my opinion, there are two layers of meaning:
The first layer is that Meituan hurts others first and hurts itself, 150 million is “about equal” to 80 million.Combined with the fact that “the number of daily active users of Taobao flash sale exceeded 200 million, and this week there was a net increase of 15% month-on-month”, Taobao flash sale was not affected by unconventional means such as Meituan’s “0 yuan purchase” and free pick-up orders, stabilizing the daily order volume at 80 million.
Taobao flash sale also disclosed non-catering order data in detail: in terms of non-meals, the number of orders in 1,205 categories grew by more than 100% month-on-month; The order volume of 3,074 merchants and more than 260,000 stores increased by more than 100% month-on-month.
In this way, in just two months,According to the previous data dismantling, the gold content of Meituan’s “150 million orders” is not greater than the “80 million orders” dehydrated by Taobao’s flash sale.“Taobao Flash Sale x Ele.me” has approached in terms of effective orders, and even achieved the same scale as Meituan.
Meituan “at all costs” rushed out of 150 million daily orders, that is, in order to maintain the name of “first” and maintain the so-called lead.
The real situation of Meituan’s “150 million orders” is equivalent to hitting a “seven wounds punch”. This is the martial arts passed down from the Kongtong sect in Jin Yong’s novels, and there is a prerequisite for cultivating this martial art, that is, the realm of internal strength must be very high. Otherwise, the Seven Injuries Fist is to hurt the enemy first to hurt yourself.
Because Meituan is temporarily ahead and has more orders, hedging order subsidies will be more cautious. Once the account is not clear, the cost of participating in the subsidy is higher. According to a second-level person who has been paying attention to Meituan for a long time, Meituan is estimated to add at least 15 billion to 20 billion yuan in subsidies this year. Goldman Sachs warned that Meituan’s EBIT profit will fall by 25 billion yuan in the next 12 months under the benchmark scenario.
Second, Meituan’s “0 yuan purchase” order rushing gameplay is not a good thing for the entire industry.Although Meituan self-evaluates that in the face of a record-breaking order peak, it can still provide the best experience for all users. But what it didn’t say was that the impact of instantaneous traffic in this gameplay not only collapsed not only the Meituan App, but also many small and medium-sized tea shops and clerks were tired and collapsed.
Most of the large chain brands only received the notice in the afternoon of the same day, and some merchants even said that they did not receive the notice and found that the platform began to subsidize themselves.
In milk tea shops across the country, single machines kept spitting out orders, piling up several meters long, some directly collapsed the system, the clerk had to write the order by hand, and the store and outside the door were crowded with riders queuing up to pick up orders, and many stores had to close the takeaway business.
Source: Media screenshot
Some media mentioned that the clerk wanted to cry without tears at the mountain of cups: “I have never seen so many orders in my life!” Many small and medium-sized merchants are worried about the surge in orders: they are so busy that they don’t make much money, which is purely “working for the platform”. Some consumers also ridiculed, “Don’t knock on milk tea!” The post-00s insulin can’t bear it! ”
Taobao Flash Sale tilts subsidies to non-catering retail businesses, and the free coupons it gives to users are suitable for convenience store delivery scenarios.For example, on July 5, Taobao flash sales of grain, oil, rice and noodles, frozen food, home cleaning, mother and baby, and personal care categories grew the fastest, with an increase of more than 100% compared with the beginning of the flash sale.
This means that Taobao flash sales have changed from following cards to playing cards. The former needs to blindly follow the opponent, look at the cards and then play the cards; The latter can already fight according to their own strategy and rhythm.
Taobao flash sale said in the battle report that it will make every effort to promote consumption and new growth of merchants, “The flow of water does not strive to be the first, but the competition is endless.” This sentence is not only said to small and medium-sized businesses, but also to Meituan.
At present, the parties participating in the war are becoming more and more similar in terms of playing style, but the biggest difference between Meituan and Taobao flash sale, JD.com and other opponents is that it is a defender in the field of takeaway, and the local life business is Meituan’s core position. JD.com and Taobao do not rely on the takeaway business to make money.
In this round of takeaway wars, the side that wins the war at all costs may pay a greater price. Meituan will probably calculate this account again and sort out the playing style.
Resources:
AI Blue Media Gathering, “Stop a certain group, I can’t drink a little more”
People’s Financial Review, “People’s Financial Review: There are more takeaway orders, and the business of small shops is hot”
Latepost, “Takeaway Melee Escalation: Taobao Invests Resources on Double 11, Meituan’s First All-Out Counterattack”
