The fire of community group buying in 2021 comes and goes quickly. After several rounds of strict supervision by the regulatory authorities, the community group buying market has cooled down, and while the capital has gradually faded out, there are constantly players withdrawing and even bankruptcy. However, cooling is not the same as turning off the fire, but the industry has become more low-key and pragmatic.
The Central Economic Work Conference has long pointed out clearly that it is necessary to correctly understand and grasp the characteristics and laws of behavior of capital. It is necessary to set up "traffic lights" for capital, strengthen effective supervision of capital according to law, prevent the barbaric growth of capital, prevent disorderly expansion of capital, and promote high-quality economic development.
In March 2021, five community group buying companies, including Duoduo Buy, Orange Heart Preferred, and Meituan Preferred, became a typical case of being dealt with by the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the State Administration for Market Regulation imposed an administrative penalty of 1.5 million yuan on the five community group buying companies for improper price behavior such as low-price dumping. Shortly thereafter, the Shanghai Municipal Consumer Protection Commission, the Wuhan Market Supervision and Administration Bureau, the Haikou Market Supervision and Administration Bureau and other urban regulatory departments have successively interviewed community group buying platforms, including Duoduo buying vegetables, requiring them to abandon traffic thinking, clearly mark prices, operate legally, and strengthen self-discipline.
Judging from the interview objects of local regulatory departments, Duoduo buys vegetables is a veritable head player in the community group buying industry, and once showed a three-legged trend with Meituan Preferred and Orange Heart Preferred. Nowadays, due to the obstruction of Didi Orange Heart Preferred fire, and the Ten HuiTuan group is facing the pressure of falling behind, Duoduo Buy vegetables and Meituan Preferred have stood out from the war of community group buying and become the only two players in the industry. As the industry's leading player, it is reasonable to make efforts in refined operation and high-quality development, provide more cost-effective products and better services to the people, use capital in the right place, provide solid support for the benign development of the economy, and help the industry take the road of healthy and sustainable high-quality development.
However, from the recent performance, more than one to buy vegetables seems to still have the mind of taking the capital-driven route, its high-level subsidy banner to kill another battlefield, a few days ago more than buy vegetables in a number of cities released a high subsidy advertising poster, but this time the subsidy is not the user, but the outlets of the express delivery company, its advertisement impressively wrote "more to buy vegetables on behalf of the strong attack, the first batch of settlement to enjoy four major subsidies: 3000 yuan settlement subsidy, parcel subsidy of up to 500 yuan per day, free SMS and intelligent voice notification, Send A PDA+ printer upon arrival. ”
The public should be familiar with this subsidy model: the platform uses a round of crazy subsidies to harvest the market under the drive of capital, and after obtaining a dominant position in the market, it will also grasp the bargaining power, and it is not difficult to obtain profits based on this, the essence of this behavior is to "dump" to destroy the market, and it is also a model strictly managed by the regulatory authorities. Now it seems that Duoduo wants to rely on the subsidy model to compete for express delivery outlets, and to expand community group purchases in the name of subsidies.
People familiar with the express delivery industry know that the high subsidies that fall from the sky have always been a curse rather than a blessing, when the inexplicable subsidies rush to the express delivery outlets, the inner volume is only afraid that it will become more and more serious, the development script of the matter is probably: the price of express delivery will reappear at a new low, the dispatch fee will also drop again, the new round of price war in the express delivery industry may be smoke and smoke again, it seems that users, merchants and outlets have picked up the cheap, but when the industry is destroyed, it is inevitable that there will be chicken feathers, and all the participants who were briefly "benefited" will pay the price.
Last year, Jitu Express set off a price war in the express delivery industry with "eight hairs nationwide", and the end was a living case. Cruel price war eventually left a lot of scars, consumers and couriers became the last to pay the bill, the continuous price war so that express delivery companies have no intention of improving services, can only continue to reduce the outlets and courier delivery costs in order to protect themselves, resulting in express damage, lost pieces, not delivered to the door has become a common phenomenon; more serious consequences are that the price war endangers the livelihood of more than 3 million express delivery employees, a courier 2 yuan, the courier to send an average of one ticket to the hand and still earn seven or eight cents, If a courier 1 yuan in hand, how much can it be? According to the "2020 National Courier Grassroots Employment Status and Satisfaction Survey Report", more than 50% of couriers have a monthly income of less than 5,000 yuan. The total amount of express delivery is getting bigger and bigger, but the income of couriers has not increased but declined. Even if capital can be subsidized, it is only for a while, and when the capital target such as the market is reached, the market will show its true face.
Under the price war of the express delivery industry, Best Express, which once ranked among the mainstream, fell down, and in October 2021, Jitu Express invested 6.8 billion yuan to acquire the China express delivery business of Best Group. It seems that the pole rabbit won the victory, but in the express delivery industry, in the consumer, in the merchant, there is no real new value generated, a service is not good Best Express replaced by a good price war but the service can not keep up with the pole rabbit express, bad currency expelled good money, express delivery service quality improvement is still a long way to go. The price war is fought back and forth, the city head changes the king banner, and the industry stagnates or even goes to the road of degradation.
The price war caused by Jitu Express eventually led to the release of industry regulatory policies, the state issued the "Opinions on Doing a Good Job in protecting the legitimate rights and interests of courier groups", Zhejiang deliberated and passed the "Regulations on the Promotion of the Express Delivery Industry in Zhejiang Province", and Ma Junsheng, director of the State Postal Administration, stressed that "it is necessary to take a clear stand against the 'internal volume', prevent unfair competition, and oppose acts that harm the interests of the industry and harm the interests of employees."
2021 is the year of the original source of the Internet, whether it is the enforcement of interconnection or the strong landing of anti-monopoly, the intensive introduction and strong implementation of many regulatory policies, all of which show that the Internet industry is no longer what it used to be. Healthy and sustainable development, creating real value, fair and orderly competition, paying attention to the long-term interests of the market, and satisfying the people's beautiful life are the main themes of the development of the Internet. In the new era, capital to overcome the nature of excessive greed, not disorderly expansion, to orderly development, as the head of the Internet enterprise Pinduoduo under the duoduo to buy vegetables, there should be a deep awareness of this, after the release of the three quarterly reports of Pinduoduo, chairman Chen Lei once said: to invest all the profits of this quarter into the "tens of billions of agricultural research projects", in the help of agricultural goods upwards, support rural revitalization, more to buy vegetables to compete for express delivery outlets in the subsidy mode, or will set off a new round of price war in the express delivery industry, obviously contrary to the image of Pinduoduo actively fulfilling social responsibility, Therefore, can the subsidy game of buying more vegetables really go far?