Text/JING Audit/Zi Yang Correction/Zhi Qiu
In 2016, the community group buying business turned out to be a new semi-acquaintance social concept, which quickly received capital attention. In just two or three years, several platforms have received huge financing.
By 2020, affected by the epidemic, buying vegetables in the community has become an extraordinary move in an extraordinary period. As a result, community group buying has gained rapid development opportunities, and more and more users have begun to develop the consumption habit of placing orders on mobile phones and picking up by themselves the next day.
Burn out hundreds of billions of dollars for the air outlet
In this context, giants such as Didi, Ali, Meituan, and Pinduoduo have successively advanced into the community group buying track. All kinds of subsidies came and went, and for a time, the wool of the Xueda factory became a trend.
In fact, in the past five or six years, the community group buying market has maintained a "lively" scene. Because in the eyes of giant companies, community group buying is regarded as the next "online car" or "takeaway" business. Therefore, even if the burning money can not see the end, but for the sake of market share and new users, there are still many giants willing to stick to it.
In fact, the money burning war has begun as early as 2018, QuestMobile data shows that in the second half of 2018, there was a blowout financing for community group buying, with a financing amount of more than 4 billion, and many platform mini program users exceeded the 2 million mark. With this as a starting point, the total amount of financing in the whole industry of community group buying has repeatedly reached a new high. Some insiders said in an interview with First Finance that the community group purchase track will burn at least 100 billion yuan in 2021.
However, it is worth mentioning that although the community group buying business is burning more and more money, the entire industry is going downhill.
Investors leave the market, the platform declines
Since the middle of 2021, a number of community group buying giants have ushered in great changes, the second-tier Tongcheng life has filed for bankruptcy, and the old player Food Sharing will announce the transformation to other tracks, even if the orange heart preferred with the support of Didi behind it is also constantly closing the city and shrinking its power.
Not only that, Ali, Meituan and other enterprises that were originally keen to invest in community group buying companies have also changed their mouths and taken the initiative to clear up their relationship with community group buying companies.
Although the current community group buying companies still have a lot of subsidies for new users, from the perspective of the general environment, the tide of community group buying has faded, and it does not have the potential to become the next takeaway industry or online ride-hailing industry.
With investors leaving one after another, it is only a matter of time before community group buying declines.
Of course, the author does not think that community group buying will disappear completely. Subsidies aside, community group buying does have a lot of places to attract customers, compared to the market to buy vegetables, community group buying has more convenient advantages.
Moreover, the purchase method of making an appointment in advance is conducive to suppliers to prepare goods more reasonably and reduce vegetable waste.
So, since there are so many desirable points in community group buying, why would the giant company abandon the business and resolutely withdraw from the market when it has burned a huge amount of money.
Why does community group buying suddenly cool down?
In the author's opinion, there are two main reasons why community group buying will suddenly cool down:
One is the endless burning of money, so that many players are overwhelmed; the second is to put pressure on the relevant departments and not allow capital to disrupt the market order.
Although Ali, Meituan, Didi and other companies are not short of money, long-term high investment has also brought great pressure to the development of enterprises. For example, Meituan once fell into a loss because Meituan preferred to burn too much money, resulting in fluctuations in stock prices and a decline in market value.
From this point of view, in the case of burning money and not seeing the end, it is also the right choice to actively give up competition.
Of course, the most critical factor is that the relevant departments have made a number of restrictions on community group buying, resulting in community group buying enterprises being unable to grow barbarically.
As mentioned earlier, the main competitive means of the current community group buying manufacturers is to burn money, and the purpose of burning money is to seize more markets, establish a high degree of monopoly, and then harvest users. The development idea is highly similar to that of online ride-hailing and takeaway business.
But today, the relevant departments do not allow companies to dump products at low prices, which means that monopolies cannot be established in the short term.
For investment enterprises, rapid profit is the core purpose, but the emergence of new restrictions has completely made rapid profitability a complete failure. Therefore, divestment and withdrawal have become expected. Looking at the essence through the phenomenon, what is cool is not the community group buying business, but the dream of giant manufacturers monopolizing the vegetable basket market.
Write at the end
In fact, in the author's opinion, if the community group purchase is viewed with a long-term development perspective, it is likely to usher in the second spring. After all, the current urbanization process is accelerating, the aging of the population is becoming more and more serious, in the context of the continuous improvement of the cityscape, the vegetable market is likely to be completely replaced by supermarkets.
At that time, community group buying will obtain lower costs by virtue of the advantages of purchasing from the place of origin, and big data can bring higher distribution efficiency and reduce vegetable transportation losses.
Of course, giant companies may not have the patience for that long. In your opinion, is there still a chance for community group buying to rekindle?